Task Force to Reimagine the Public Safety Advisory Commission Meeting - September 25, 2025

I'm seeing a panelist. That's great. Wonderful.

Okay, um, well, I'm, I'm gonna get us started. So I believe I see the recording going. Do I have that right? Yes. Okay, let's do it.

Um, well, good morning everyone. Uh, welcome to the task force to reimagine the Public Safety Advisory Commission for Anchorage. My name is Denali, and my team at Denali Daniels and Associates is providing facilitation support to the task force, and we're really excited to be kicking off a series of information sessions to help inform the task force as it considers what a future Public Safety Advisory Commission for Anchorage might look like. So today's session includes a panel of key leaders in Anchorage who have expertise that makes up the public safety system for our city. And so we're pretty excited about our meeting today, and I'll talk in just a moment about the overall process before we get into the panel.

But just a few housekeeping items before we dive in. Welcome, members of the public and members of the task force and our speakers. Thank you so much for joining us. In the interest of getting straight to the session, we're going to skip official introductions. And also just want to remind everyone, today's meeting is being recorded and that recording will be posted on the project webpage.

So it is a public session. And it is a public meeting that will be posted for the public to see. So please keep your devices on mute unless you're speaking to avoid background noise. Our program includes 2 rounds of questions from our speakers that I'm going to move us through because we've dedicated some pretty— a good chunk of time toward the end for a robust Q&A session. So we're going to let 2 rounds of questions happen first before we open it up, but we do have, if we can stay on schedule, we'll have plenty of time for an open dialogue at the end, but we will have a little bit of structure with today, so that is part of our format today.

And then just a word about the chat function, unless you're having technical issues, we ask that you not use the chat function. Anything that gets entered in the chat needs to be read into the record, so that's not something that we're using as part of our format today. So with that, I just have a few slides that I want to share just to ground us in the process. And I think Jasmine is gonna be pulling that open, so I'll just give you— wonderful, thank you. Great, okay, so maybe just jump on into the next slide.

And to ground everyone, and why we're here. The task force was established last spring to develop recommendations on a new Public Safety Advisory Commission in Anchorage. And during the summer, the task force held a discovery phase. And during discovery, a kickoff meeting was held back in June. Many of you were there.

It was a hybrid format. And in that meeting, we heard some pretty important feedback that we have been taking very seriously. Feedback about creating more of an open format, considering when we meet and the scope and definition of what public safety means to people in Anchorage as a necessary step to accomplish the charge of the task force. So based on that feedback, the task force created a feedback form, and that resulted in, I believe, over 70 submissions. And also hosted a community workshop in August, and that allowed community members to share what pa— public safety means to them in Anchorage.

And after all of this, an information paper was written, and it's pretty robust, and it provides some background on the previous commission and some of the history and kind of grounds us in what we heard during the discovery phase and provides a framework developing recommendations this fall and how this is all going to work. So let's go to the next slide. Today is the first of 4 meetings. It's a series, and before we know it, this process is going to be over. So we have a lot of work to do.

Today we want to continue to define what our public safety system means to us in Anchorage and specifically focus on how people in Anchorage can currently engage. So before we talk about where we're going, let's talk about where we are today. And so after today's discussion, our hope is that we have a shared understanding about how current agencies and organizations and initiatives, the key ones that are currently providing a forum for public voices to be heard on public safety issues, that we're really we have a shared understanding of what's happening and how voices are currently being heard. And then I think that's going to give us what we need to start pivoting into where the gaps and what opportunities are there for the future. We have a session in October that's going to start really focusing us on the mechanics.

So specifically, what are the options that we have before us. What are the decisions we need to make in our recommendations about authority, sustainability, and membership? And we've got some panelists lined out for that. Both of those panels are virtual. They are intended as a format that, of course, folks can join us, but it's a way for us to actually post the information and create a way for folks to, even if they can't attend, they can view it online and prepare themselves.

So from there, we have 2 deliberation sessions. Both of those are in person, and our hope is that with these dates, we provide plenty of notice, and these were the times that we, we really had to settle on. So we're really excited about this process, and during those meetings, we're calling them our deliberation meetings, we'll be taking up recommendations, and we're excited about that process because members of the public who attend or view at least one of the previous attend meetings are invited to actually participate in the voting on recommendations during these sessions. So we're hoping that that's a meaningful way to engage. And so let's go to the next slide.

And it's just a summary of how, how can we engage in this process. So number one, participate in the panel sessions or view them live if, when your schedule permits. So this is the first of two information panel sessions. And then we will have, after the second information session, a feedback form. And so we're really interested in hearing, after we hear all the information that we're about to talk about, what should be included in the recommendations for a new commission.

And this input will be considered as we tee up the decisions that need to be made in November. So watch for that after the next information session, and then those sessions in person are November 13th and 20th. All of these meetings are 10:30 to noon. Everyone's welcome, but again, members of the public are invited to participate in the actual voting part in November, so we hope that people are able to participate in that. So with that, that brings us to today, which is the next slide, our agenda today, and then we'll dive right in.

So today we have, as I shared, this is the first of 4 meetings, and during the August workshop, we heard from community members that public safety really is broadly defined. And it touches on many areas that aren't always limited to law enforcement. So how does— how do— how can we focus our work when it's a very broad definition, right? So today we're really excited to have joining us leadership from a range of agencies and organizations and experts on the existing public safety system in Anchorage. And with us today We can go ahead and pull the slide down.

So we're going to go ahead and do the panel. I think let's go ahead and dive in. With us today, we have Cameron Perez-Fortilla with the Anchorage Assembly, and he is also the chair of the Public Health and Safety Committee. We have Chief Sean Case with the Anchorage Police Department, Chief Douglas Schragl with the Anchorage Fire Department, Director Kimberly Rasch with the Anchorage Health Department. And we also have Thea Agnew-Benben.

Not only is Thea with this, Thea, the special assistant to Mayor LaFrance, we also asked her to join us on this panel because she is a subject matter expert on crisis response in Anchorage, which we've heard is a very important part of the system. And so while she wears multiple hats, our ask for Thea is to share that expertise with us through the lens today on our agenda. Okay, well, if we're ready to get started, again, a special thanks to our panelists. We haven't done a sound check, so we'll just see how it goes. We have two rounds of questions, and if each of you could take anywhere from 1 to 5 minutes answering the first round of questions, and same with the second, Then that'll kind of get us about halfway through.

We're going to hold questions and leave plenty of space at the end of, of the program to have an open forum with the public and with task force members that are joining us. So the order that I just read off is the order I'm going to use, and I'll just stick with that just to keep some order. And so the first question is, and we'll start with Cameron, So can you please share your organization's role or area of focus, if that makes the most sense, right, in Anchorage's public safety system? So what is the role, and then what are the ways that community voices are currently heard to improve Anchorage's public safety system, and are there any gaps? So Cameron, let's let you take it away, and then after Cameron, we'll move to Chief Case.

Wonderful. Thank you, everyone, for being here and for being part of this conversation. My name is Cameron Perez Verdia. I serve on the Anchorage Assembly representing the West Side of Anchorage and serve as chair of the Public Health and Safety Committee. So the section that I'm really responsible for is related to the Assembly, right?

And the Assembly's role is primarily to develop policy and to allocate funds. And so as we think about the role of the Assembly, the role of the Public Health and Safety Committee to listen to the public, to gather information, and to essentially use that information and those relationships to develop a budget each year and allocate funds to priorities within the city, and then to make policies that relate to public safety throughout our city. The way that voices are heard now, folks can come to the Assembly meetings and they can testify on items there. People can come and attend the Public Health and Safety Committees, and then certainly they can reach directly out to me and other members of the Assembly to talk about and share their ideas, concerns, related to public safety. So those are the general systems now, and that's the sort of the role that I play.

And yes, there are certainly gaps. There are, because of the way that the system is set up, it's very limited in terms of how long folks can speak and what they can speak on. And so there are ways to reach out to us, you know, through email and meetings, But I think there's a lot of opportunity for us to have better communication, collaboration, and certainly trust between the Assembly and the committee and the public.

All right, thank you, Cameron. So next up, Chief Case, I saw you, but I don't see you currently. Are you with us, Chief Case? Yep, I'm still with you. Pop back up on your screen now that I'm talking.

There we go. Okay, there you are. Welcome. Thank you. Good morning, everyone.

My name is Sean Case. I'm the Chief of Police for the Anchorage Police Department. I think the very simple answer for the first part of that question is we provide the policing services within the municipality. I can tell you that I do some public speaking specifically on what our role is in the public safety system here in Anchorage, and that's about a 45-minute conversation because there's a lot of different things that we do. So it's not just about law enforcement.

We provide a lot of different services, some that I would put on the spectrum of really kind of crossover with what Kim Rasch does, public health, because we're available 24 hours a day. And so, you know, we get to crossover in several different lanes to try to make sure that the community is as safe as possible. We do some case navigation for people in crisis. So we, it's not just about enforcing crimes, but generally speaking, police agencies, their place, if you will, in the public safety system is the enforcement of laws, very simply put. What are ways that community voices are currently heard to improve Anchorage's public safety system?

That is, there are a lot of different channels. Member, Perez Verdia mentioned some of them. You know, there are community council meetings that many of us attend. The voices of various different communities are heard through those community councils. I had some businesses that met with me just this week that went to the community council president, and then the community council president, you know, because she regularly meets with me, that was the connective tissue, if you will, to have that meeting between the businesses and me so that that becomes very, very important.

We have an Anchorage Police Community Task Force that's been going on since the late '80s. That's another avenue where no matter where you're at in Anchorage or what community you, you represent, you can go to that, that task force and have interaction with the public safety system here. I have a very open-door policy when it comes to if a group an organization asks to have police representation there, not just to provide police services, but specifically for, you know, community conversation type of thing, we always attend. I go to most of them myself so that I can have the consistent conversations. You know, the Park Strip was very active over the summer, and I probably went just about every weekend.

I was going to one of the events down at the Park Strip, many times having a speaking role at some of those big events. So, and there are gaps, and the reason why there are gaps is we are a very diverse community in many different ways. Geography makes it challenging here in Anchorage. We are just very, very, very spread out. You know, obviously age and race and ethnicity also play a role in that diversity that we have in Anchorage, and depending upon your location and, and, you know, how you get your information, how you communicate with, you know, whether it be Facebook or social media, navigating the municipal websites to try to get to when the Assembly is having a meeting or when there's a subcommittee meeting.

It's very difficult to, to make us available in all of the different ways that people want us to be available. So I, I'm very comfortable in saying that we are very available and very open. It's just navigating people to where they can make the request, to where they can have contact and give input. And one other thing that I'll say in the gap in the system is that we have, we have concerns in our community, and one of the concerns that I hear over and over again with many people in our community is that some of the public forums that we have available to provide feedback or ask questions, they're formal, they're recorded. And it creates a level of fear because some of the things they want to talk about are whether they're private or they think they're opening up them or the community to criticism or retaliation or retribution.

There's all sorts of reasons why certain members of our community will, will not want to have that public forum. So they want, they want the communication, they want it accessible, they want to know where they can get access to it, but they also want it to be a safe environment. And that's very difficult to do all of those at the same time, you know, a city like Anchorage.

Thank you, Chief Case. Very interesting. Awesome. Thank you. All right, let's move on to Chief Shragg and then Director Rasch will go after that.

Okay. Hi, everybody. I'm Doug Shragg and I'm the Fire Chief. Happy to be a part of this effort. So thank you all for taking time out to be here.

My role is to run the fire department, and even though our name is the fire department, we do many things that don't relate to just fighting fires. Our mission, our formal mission statement is to serve the community before, during, and after an emergency. And we do that in a variety of ways and through a variety of services. The most common service that we provide is our ambulance response to medical emergencies. We, we have a tiered response system that involves advanced life support, basic life support, and mobile integrated healthcare, which is we respond to 911 emergencies for behavioral health crises.

We also manage the contract for the Anchorage Safety Patrol, which is the service vans that interact with the public and also operate the Safety Center, which is where the clients can go to sleep off over the night.

We, of course, we prevent and suppress fires when they break out. We do this with the same workforce that that staffs our ambulances. All of our firefighters and EMTs or paramedics are cross-trained, so we have great depth and capacity. In addition to firefighting fires, we do a lot of rescue services. We have— we provide heavy rescue, which is responding to equipment and vehicle crashes, entrapments, things like that.

We also provide water rescue. Backcountry rescue, structural collapse and entrenchment rescue, and other technical specialized services. And then we provide dispatch. So we have our own dispatch center, which is— runs parallel to the police department's 911 center. We receive the 911 calls that are transferred to us, and we consider our dispatchers to be first responders as well because they are able to provide lifesaving instruction over the phone while waiting for the responding units to get on scene.

And that includes, for example, teaching somebody on the fly who doesn't know how to perform CPR how to do it. And we have a very, very successful, a very positive success rate in that. So those are our— that's our role in the community. The mechanisms for feedback, we rely on both direct and indirect feedback. The two best sources for feedback are, first of all, our participation in the community council meetings.

We do our best to send a company, a fire crew, to each one of the community council meetings throughout the community and throughout the year. In addition, we interact regularly with the Hillside area landowners. Group, the Wildland Urban Interface Action Team, and other stakeholder interest groups. We, in addition to that, provide a lot of public interaction. We—.

Every one of our fire stations is open for anybody that wants to ring the doorbell and come in. We have a strong social media presence, and we do We do pay attention to the commentary that is submitted there, and that is a source of feedback to us. I also receive a number of letters and emails each week from constituents that have been served, speaking about both the positive and the negative ways in which we— our services are perceived. Primarily positive. And then we also send a customer satisfaction questionnaire to every patient that is transported by, by one of our ambulances.

This is generated online automatically, and we collect quite a bit of feedback about, about our medical services.

The gaps in the voices is pretty much everything that I identified here so far are people have to self-select. They have to choose to come to one of these events or go to a community council meeting, or choose to respond to the questionnaire that we send out. And so I acknowledge that there are big segments of the community that we aren't interacting regularly with despite efforts to reach all corners of our community. And so that is something that we are thinking about and looking for some help with. I think what we really I guess I'm getting ahead of myself into the third question.

So that's my response to Questions 1 and 2. Nicely done. Thank you, Chief. Okay, Director Rasch, and then we'll move on to Thea. Good morning, everyone.

Kimberly Rasch, Director for the Anchorage Health Department. So the Anchorage Health Department's role in the public safety system is providing a framework for public health to protect and promote the health of all people in all communities. We do this work through advocating for community safety through investing in the social determinants of health. We have a variety of programs such as our mobile clinical services providing education, testing, treatment, and providing protective measures through environmental health and childcare licensing and inspections. By investing in these programs, we address root causes of harm.

Public health professionals are positioned to play a critical role in reorienting perspectives on public safety and advocating funding priorities towards evidence-based evidence-based programs. Community voices are heard through a variety of outlets at the Health Department, including outreach events, community surveys, engagement with individual patients through monthly and weekly contacts, and then we elevate those concerns throughout our healthcare community networks to provide more holistic care. A lot of times we're doing these warm handoffs, especially we work very closely with our State of Alaska partners as well as the Anchorage Neighborhood Health Center. Gaps exist when demand for healthcare services outpaces the availability of providers. We hear from our healthcare community partners that individuals are not always being represented and there's a lack of access to translation services.

So one of our core focuses here at the Health Department is to really work and look at everything through a lens of equity.

Thank you, Director Rash. All right, Thea, I saw you here with us.

Hi, thanks for inviting me to be here. Um, as you mentioned at the beginning, so my role at the municipality is I'm one of the special assistants to the mayor, and the areas that I focus on are really homelessness and health, and related public safety issues. So I work a lot with Director Rash, Chief Case, Chief Shragi, and their departments to really try and knit together the resources that we have that, that promote and improve public safety in the municipality. And so part of that job is helping to take the mayor's priorities and kind of turn them into strategies and projects and then make those things happen. So that hopefully we can really achieve the goals that, that, that she's set for her term.

And so both within our strategies related to homelessness and health, and then also in the Mayor's public, public safety strategy, getting more access to crisis care is a top priority. And when we talk about the crisis response system, the municipality is really part of both a national movement and specifically a statewide movement that's been going on for a long time. And, you know, Chief Case, for example, has been familiar with the model that we're implementing here. I think going back to— when did you go to that conference? Like 2014 or something?

It was a long time ago. Yeah. Yeah. Well over a decade ago. Yeah.

So the model is referred to as CrisisNOW. That's the framework. And then here in Alaska, That, that model was really kind of became familiar to both state and municipal and other communities, probably back in like 2017, 2018. And it's really been a statewide movement led by the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority and the state of Alaska, and then of course by the municipality here in Anchorage since that time. So the framework really focuses on a few different points in the system.

One is someone to call, the other one is someone to respond, the other one is a place to go. Um, and so those are kind of the main points in the system that we're trying to develop. And the goal is when anyone is experiencing a behavioral health crisis, that we're able to provide an appropriate resource to them, um, to actually address their need. And what we often find is when that appropriate resource isn't available, we get intervention from, you know, a patrol officer or from an EMS crew, and they may not really have the training or the ability or the time to properly address that person. And so not only does the person's needs go unaddressed, but sometimes that can lead to worse outcomes for the person and for the, the first responders.

So again, this is a priority of the mayor to really make this happen. So since her administration began, we've, we've started a crisis response work group here. So that really brings primarily health, police, and fire together, but also we work closely with Parks and Rec, you know, the traffic department is part of this. So there's, you know, some other parts of the community that really are important when it comes to improving public safety and crisis care. So with all of that, [Speaker:DR. LISA GORDON] You know, I think that has a really critical role to play in both making people feel safe in the community.

So when we see people who are out in public spaces or, you know, along a road who clearly are having a behavioral health crisis, we want to know that our municipality is providing an appropriate response to them. So I think that goes for everybody in the community. And then for people who are experiencing that crisis or their families or friends, You know, again, we want to make sure that we have that response. So that's the role that it plays here. I think in terms of our ability to get input from the community, I think other folks have already laid out some of our main mechanisms for getting input.

Cameron chairs both the Public Health and Safety Committee and the Housing and Homelessness Committee. And again, we kind of report out on the crisis system at both of those committees because it's kind of part and parcel of both those strategies. And I do think, like Cameron said, it's a fairly limited way for the public. The information is kind of one way. It's like there's a lot of presentation and questions from assembly members, but the public only then has like a 3-minute, you know, time at the end to give their testimony, and there isn't a lot of back and forth.

So, you know, a contrasting example is in the world related to housing and homelessness. We do have a commission the Hand Commission that meets monthly, it's chaired and has commissioners that are members of the public, and it's a much more open environment for people to come and exchange information and make presentations and have conversations. So I think there is a gap in that regard, but I guess part of my thought on that is that part of the role of having more public engagement is also for the public to understand better. And I think Director Rasch was speaking to this, what actually keeps our community safe. And the role of the police is a really critical role, but that's only one piece because, you know, we have as much work to do to both prevent crime and provide intervention for people in crisis from other services that oftentimes the police can't, can't be the ones to do that.

So, or they, they can be part of it, but, but not, not the whole thing. So that's my, uh, response to those two questions. Nice, thank you, Thea. All right, well, I'm just looking at the clock and, um, gosh, you never know how, how things are going to go. You all are 5 minutes ahead schedule, so I'm going to congratulate you.

We'll go ahead and move on to the second round of questions, and then for those, those of you that are observing and soaking all of this in, please do get your questions ready. Write them down as you're listening because we'll have plenty of time for questions at the end here. So the next question, I'm going to bring it back to Cameron. How could a future Commission improve communication, collaboration, and trust between the community and your organization or focus area? And how could it support the work that you do in that role?

Thanks, Denali. Yeah, I can see lots of ways and I just, I wanna share a few of them. First, for me, the building community communication and trust is really, really key. I mean, I can see things like regular community listening sessions, forums in different neighborhoods, directly having an opportunity to engage with public safety leaders. I can see things like transparent data sharing that the commission could oversee a publication of a public safety dashboard of some kind and really be engaged in emergency response and data.

Community liaisons, one of the things that we find is that there are some parts of our community that it's very difficult to have consistent interaction and communication with. And so having folks who are on that commission are connected to folks who are involved in very different communities across our city. In terms of collaboration, I think there's an opportunity to have cross-system collaboration with the different departments that we've seen. I think that there is, there's an opportunity to pilot projects through this commission that can serve and really think about how to try new things within communities. I think there's also a role around advisory and oversight.

I think there's an opportunity to make policy recommendations, providing the Assembly and the different systems with recommendations on emerging issues. Certainly as an early warning system, serve as a place where concerns, rising crime trends, public health crises, and really be able to bring in information to us early to make sure we know what's, what's going on within communities. And then also as an evaluation of initiatives as we roll out things, as things are going on, be able to provide really valuable feedback in terms of how those are working within the communities that we serve. I think that there's also a real key around trust and around building trust, and I think that comes from having diverse membership, ensuring that the Commission members represent Anchorage's diversity racially, geographically, lived experience. I also think that there's an opportunity for us to have more transparency in our practices, and that can come through public meetings and developing annual reports The other thing is I think there can be a real input in terms of the community, in terms of, for the Assembly, you know, what are the things that we need to be focused on most and an opportunity to have a place and a key group of folks that can really help us to really drive an agenda that's really relevant to the community.

And finally, I will just say that I think for the Assembly specifically, Having a single point of contact of a group that can be a hub for community voices is really valuable. I think there's an opportunity to really have this commission help to build legitimacy and trust and really have a more community-driven work that we do. And then the last thing I was just thinking as Theo was talking in terms of crisis response, I think the more we know about what's going on within communities really gives us an opportunity to address those earlier. And so having a group of folks that can be really connected to the community and it can bring that information forward is really valuable. So those are a few things I think, but I think overall I would just say that I think there is a really clear role in communication, collaboration, and trust.

And I think that we ultimately serve the the community. And so having a level of oversight and responsibility so that we're doing what we need to be doing as a system. So those are my thoughts. Great. Thanks, Cameron.

Chief Case.

Yeah, I think the first thing is education. You know, there are so many things that are happening throughout the municipality in each department that's represented here today. And there's, in that education piece, I think is one of the biggest things. You know, people have various different thoughts or opinions on something that they believe an agency is doing or believe an agency is not doing. I'll give you an example.

You know, there are some people that really are excited about having a mobile response team with an officer and a clinician within the police department. And there are other people that don't have such positive opinions about having that type of a unit inside of a police department. And usually when, when I talk to folks that, that don't have a positive opinion about that, they haven't had interaction with APD and our mobile intervention teams. And so, you know, having a commission that has the ability to answer questions or go over, have the employees that are involved available to present information about what they do, how they do, you know, some anecdotal stories about how it's actually rolled out into the field on many, many different things that we do so the public really understand what's available. You know, there are, there are a lot of people in this community that think the police department is just about arresting people and putting people in jail.

And there's just, there's far more things. And without that knowledge being easily available, it's hard to get that message out. You know, not everybody's monitoring our Instagram feed or our TikTok account or our Facebook page. So, you know, we take advantage of all those different communication streams and go into the previous mentioned activities, but it still doesn't mean that we get out to everybody. And kind of on the collaboration piece, because I think the communication information going out, being able to receive communication and collaboration, both of those two things really contribute to what trust is.

And from a collaboration piece, you know, it's, it's pretty difficult to capture what the public wants to collaborate on. So, you know, if you have got an agency that's got, you know, 250 policies, let's say, on how they function, and the public says, well, I want to have some collaboration or some input or some involvement in the policies of that particular agency, there's a lot of them. And so trying to figure out what level of collaboration you have and what exactly it's going to be on, because you can't do that in crisis. You can't have an event that pops up that is a crisis event or something that goes really, really wrong and then try to bring in, you know, stakeholders and say, now let's figure out how this went wrong and let's have some collaboration. Because frequently, you know, there's a lot of emotions on everybody that's involved, whether you're a part of the community or or the agency that was involved.

And so a system really developed to kind of identify what areas that the public are interested in just holistically, and then allowing that opportunity for, you know, presentation of information, what's out there already. So for instance, what policy a police department— the police department has on, let's say, use of force, because that's always an interesting topic for the public. And then allowing that two-way engagement interaction on that policy, how it's enforced, how it's utilized, What are the accountability mechanisms that are in play? How can complaints be made? What expectations should the public have?

And, you know, there's always room for feedback and suggestions, but it just has to be a system that we're designing this so that it's easy to get the information, it's easy to provide feedback. And I think the biggest challenge that we've seen in previous versions is, you know, Chief Schraggi mentioned that it, it does rely on a member of the community to come in and opt into the program, and that becomes challenging. You know, we are busy here in Anchorage, and if it's a sunny day in the middle of the summer, people are going to go enjoy that sun. And so, you know, sometimes it's very difficult to get active participation from our community members.

Chief Schraggi.

Well, thank you.

Some of my responses are quite similar to Chief Case's, so I can be pretty brief here. As I started to allude in, in, in what I was answering the first couple of questions, one of the things that we really, really are looking for is a mechanism for broad representation. And I think we heard this from Member Perez Verdia as well. So we want to make sure that structurally the Advisory Commission includes voices from those people that we aren't reaching through other mechanisms. And I think, I think that's a common vision that is shared among probably most of us here.

And how can the Commission support us? Two ways. First of all, also similar to what was already mentioned, if the—. We—. I would like to see the Commission to be familiar with and understand our performance data so that they can provide perspective about the services that we're providing.

We have a good track record of getting our bond propositions passed by the electorate each April. To my knowledge, there's only been one that has not been passed by the, the voters, but that's not a good measure of people's— the value that people place on the services that we provide. And so I think, I think a better understanding of the actual services that we're providing and the performance that we're achieving, and then using that to make— provide data-informed advocacy to the mayor and to the assembly is where I think we would really benefit. I think that's what our missing link is. All right, thank you.

And so that brings us to Director Arash.

So the Health Department, we can create just a stronger advocacy partner for creating supportive conditions such as early childhood and safe and affordable housing. Additionally, through our 10 Essential Public Health Services framework in which we operate under, the Health Department can provide avenues to address racial inequities as it, as it relates to upstream solutions through healthcare, housing, and education. By connecting individuals through a community health worker model. So that means knitting together community partners with individuals to services or creating more robust case management services, connecting those individuals and services is gonna be our piece of how we can really contribute to this community. Thank you.

Nice, thank you. And then last but not least, Thea.

[Speaker:JENNIFER] So I think one of the things that I observe in my role is that there is like people's perceptions of public safety are largely based on their very individual experiences. And that of course is super important. I mean, we all want to make sure we feel safe in the community, but I think that it would be really beneficial to have a forum where people were getting, and this is a little bit echoing what both the chiefs were saying, is like, is actually providing more a broad, like, factual account of where we are as a community. I mean, for example, right now, I think, you know, one of the things just in terms of crime is we have actually seen the violent crime rate fall, but I think that's happened at a time where some other things have really increased. So we've, during that same period, seen a real increase in people using opioids and overdosing.

And, and that's a very visible experience and it drives other behaviors sometimes, such as, you know, theft and vandalism and just erratic behavior in public. And so I think sometimes the, the community feels like, oh my gosh, the place is falling apart. And I don't want to like, I don't want to diminish that feeling, but I think in order to actually make it better, we need to be able to correctly understand what the problem is that we're trying to fix and then bring the solutions to it. And so I think it would be wonderful to have a forum where, you know, members of the public are more regularly engaged in like, you know, seeing what the information is that we can share and then, and the information that they can bring. And then kind of hashing through what are we learning from that?

What's the story behind those numbers or that, you know, whatever the information is? And then what do we wanna do about that? Because I think the other piece of it is that oftentimes when we're in public forums, you know, people have pretty divergent ideas about what they think the solutions are. Like Chief Case just mentioned, you know, just put everybody in jail. It's like, well, you know, not only does it not help, but it isn't at all practical.

Like, this is Alaska, we don't just randomly put people in jail. And even when we do, people come out pretty soon after we put them in. So, you know, we have to work together with our neighbors to help our neighbors, you know, like, it's all, it's just us, right? So I think just getting a better shared understanding, both of the problem and kind of what different solutions are, and then also just understanding the limits of what the municipal what the municipality can do, because I think people often come to us as if, you know, we are the one entity that can solve the problem. And the fact is, we can bring, you know, considerable resources to the table, but then there's so much that we don't have.

You know, we don't have all the input from different cultural communities. You know, we don't have the solutions that other types of agencies can bring. And so I think somewhere we can really mesh those together is what will actually help us make our community safer for everyone, which I think is ultimately, you know, should be our goal. Nice. Well, that was a really good foundation in my opinion.

Thank you all for sharing and being so succinct with the answers to those questions. So I'm going to go ahead and pivot us into our Q&A session. I just want to remind everyone, gosh, we heard a theme already here that there's some limitations with public meetings. And while this is a public meeting, we do want to create as much flexibility and space for folks to ask questions in this particular forum. And so this is the opportunity.

Hopefully folks know how to use their hand-raising function. I would also offer if members of the panel or task force members or our friends on the Assembly. This is an open forum. So, but what I'd ask is if you have a question for one of the panel members, go ahead and use the hand-raising function. We'll see how many there are and I'll call on your name.

Please state your name for the record. And then if your question is directed at one of the panel members, if you could let us know that, or if it's just a general question, that's that's okay too. So we're ready for questions.

I see Trusted Connections. Can you tell us your name and let us know your question?

Yeah, hello, my name's Terry Light and I'm part of Trusted Connections. We're a new organization working to help navigate Alaska Natives coming into Anchorage. Speak up. And also working to help those who are stranded here. And getting to safety.

My question is, how can education go forward? Hey, Terry, I am so sorry, but I don't know if it's just me, but I'm not hearing you.

Okay, it's on here, but I don't know why it's not hearing.

Terry, I wonder if you can— Can you hear me now? I can. I hope others can. Why don't we give it another run? Well, I have my mic on.

Oh, shoot. I'll figure out some of the sound. I don't know why it's not working.

Maybe just turn your video off, Terry. Yeah. Okay.

Try turning the video off.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Sorry, Terry. It's not working very well.

You're coming in and out. We'll give you a chance in a minute, but I'm wondering in the meantime, could you try to formulate your thoughts in writing and put it in the chat and someone else can read it if you're comfortable with that? Yeah. Thanks, Felix.

I can't wait to hear the question from Terry. Who else has a question?

Mercedes has her hand up. Oh, um, gosh, I need to change my view apparently. Mercedes, go ahead.

Hi there, uh, sorry, I had to get my, my sound working. Um, yeah, so I, um, my question is based upon what we have had in a previous kind of, I guess, pre-official task force meetings. And part of it is understanding that, specifically addressing stuff like civilian oversight and how public can have a more involved process besides what is currently offered to them. And I remember at one point that the chief had brought up that when we had talked about things like oversight and whatnot, that he had pushed the paper away and had said, well, this is a non-start, and that we need to talk about the, the trust portion and building that before we go out. And I think what I'm curious about, and whether the chief wants to answer this or not, is that civilians are coming forward because they feel that trust is broken.

And as it stands right now, with public process, and even the things that are being implemented at the muni level, at law enforcement, assembly, and mayor, mayoral administration, and any other government agencies, while all those efforts are helpful and need to continue and continue to improve upon, we're still asking for more. And so I guess this could go to the Chief, but this could all go to anybody else who feels that they would like to answer this, but my question is, as it stands right now, if we want more involved civilian involvement and/or we're supposed to take trust and take the lead of those saying, well, we don't want you to have, you know, a civilian oversight, that's too much, you got to trust what we're doing. What are people— what are these agencies doing currently or what do they have planned in order to build that trust so that either we can trust that they are taking the lead on things that it's actually going to help our issues and not just kind of pacify us? Or what are you doing to build that trust so that we can get to a place where you can, you can comfortably work with your, your constituents and hold yourselves accountable and be able to work in, in that aspect without this fear of losing officers or losing, you know, people who want to be involved in mobile crisis?

Who wants to tackle that one? Yeah, I can. I think, I think we need to recognize that when we talk about trust, there's a, there's a two-way street, right? So when we, when you ask what are we doing or when we bring up, you know, specifically civilian oversight, one of the questions that I've asked folks that would like some sort of civilian oversight, the, the question that I always ask in return is what specifically do you want? What specifically are you getting after?

What would you like us to do differently? And very rarely do I get a response that's something specific other than, well, I just want you to support civilian oversight so that we have a voice. And when— and that's challenging because I don't know what you're asking for. You know, I don't— and we make ourselves available. We have a lot of feedback that are provided both in our policies and our training and We are communicating drastically differently in the last year and a half than the police department has ever before.

I believe our relationships with the community continues to get better. I believe that the things that we are working on with training and policy, outside assessments that we've had done, public-facing information, use of force dashboard that is out, out in the public that people have been asking for. The things that people are asking for, we respond to. And if there's not a specific ask or there's not a desire to have a sit-down conversation about something that somebody doesn't understand or a group doesn't understand or something that they want, I can't respond to that. But, but right now I can, I can tell you that what we are putting out for public view the information that we're putting out on critical incidents are, are much, much different today than they were, you know, 2 years ago.

And that's because we've gotten a lot of feedback that the public wants more information. They want access to what we're doing and how we're doing it. And so I think, I think the biggest thing is when we get told that the public wants something, that's a specific ask, um, we respond. I'm sorry, can I just say a really quick thing? And this can be added to whoever's question.

I think what it boils down to for a specific thing that I can think of at the top of our head is whatever we need to do for police officers to not have the knee-jerk response to shoot people and kill them, um, when that was not deserved, I think is the biggest thing that I think a lot of people are— have their minds set on. I literally taught, like, went and actually had conversations with officers a couple weeks ago, was within the department, and I can't tell you how frightening it was that there was an incident that they talked about that involved a child and the jokes being made about what force that they would use on them, and that they had to thank an officer for saying, hey, Officer So-and-So, thank you for taking, for taking the time to talk her down when she was in a crisis because I don't know. I don't know if I would have had the patience for that. And so that's where my question, and that's where I'm coming from and stuff like that.

Thank you, Mercedes. Yes, Cameron. Can I add something? Please do. So, yeah, so the, so really appreciate the question.

And I think partly what I've struggled with is, you know, to achieve cases, like, What do we mean by oversight? And so, you know, I think that one of the things that I would like to see is rather than— I think there is a need where if there's something happening within the community specifically and there is a need for more information or a need for training to shift, or to Mercedes' point, which I think part of it is if there is indications that there is a some attitudes or culture within one of our departments that is not what we want. How do we learn about that? How do we address that? How do we work on that?

Those kinds of things. But I think what I'm really looking at is a commission that can have access to information, like for instance, the work that is the Chief Case and a lot of the other departments are doing to really evaluate the effectiveness of what they're doing, and then that this commission can be a part of reviewing the results of that and being able to communicate out the results of that to the community and be involved in making recommendations. So I think that there is an opportunity for folks who want to commit more time to be serving on a commission like this and having access to information about how our departments are doing and how our community is doing and then to be able to not only be in a position of making recommendations to the department about things that they think, but also being able to communicate out that information to and from their community. So that's partly what I would like to see as it relates to oversight, and I would like to see that we have evaluation functions built in on a regular basis, and I think that there is— the departments are I'm open to that as well. But I think there's two parts here.

There's one is that responding to specific concerns that are about an incident or that are about something that's happened within the community, and then an ongoing process of having a group that works with the community and works with the departments on an ongoing basis to make sure that that information is shared and communicated out. So that's what I wanted to share. Thanks. Thanks, Cameron. Nice.

I am going to read Terry's questions. Hopefully, Terry, you can hear us. It's kind of a two-part question. I'm going to read it as one and see who'd be interested in answering this. So how can we facilitate education and learning both ways?

How can reflection and introspection help in this process? And who teaches cultural understanding for Native Alaskans?

I'm happy to respond to that. Great. I think this is one of the most important purposes that we could really highlight for a future commission because again, you know, the municipality does have a lot of resources and we have a fair bit of work to do just on our own end to make sure that we're connected and that we're really like optimizing all the things that we have available and that we're, you know, kind of focusing that towards the right problems and to get the right results. So like that, a lot of that is kind of internal work. But then I think, you know, that the danger is that that all kind of happens in a vacuum and that we're not really seeing seeing, you know, what other partners are doing in the community, and we're not necessarily learning from them about ways that it can be done better or differently to reach more people.

And just an example of that, I mean, one of the things that through the time that we've had the Crisis Response Workgroup going, we've been piloting some different ways of making sure that we're really getting some of our resources out to people who need help, are in crisis, but they're not necessarily the ones picking up the phone. So for example, at the fire department, they added a second mobile crisis team over the summer, and we really focused that team on going to locations where we knew there were people experiencing behavioral health crisis that weren't necessarily calling us. And so we're really interested in that. We're interested in like trying new things, learning about them. Um, but I think to do that, we need, we need a forum where we can, you know, talk about that.

Try something out, but then also get the feedback back from the community. Like, did it make any difference? Did you—. Did that help the people that you're most concerned with? And then specifically around Alaska Native people who are here living in Anchorage, who are from here, this is their home, and for Alaska Native people who are coming from other parts of the state, you know, that's again such an important priority in all of this work.

And You know, one of the things that we've been working on here is just really trying to make stronger connections with some of our different regional organizations. The ones here in South Central, I think we have some pretty good working relationships with. So when it comes to sort of South Central Foundation or Cook Inlet Tribal, Cook Inlet Housing, like those are organizations we're working with a lot. But of course, we know there are, you know, people coming in for services, for healthcare, for other things, and sometimes folks get kind of stranded here, exactly as Terry and Alaska Native Hope were speaking to earlier. And so we really want to have better connections with some of those home organizations.

For example, we were just in a meeting last week where we were talking about children who might be in state custody, partly because their parent might be here, but nobody knows where they are, right? You know, we may be coming into contact with them. How can we actually, in a, you know, safe and appropriate way, help make those connections back? So that's just one example. I think there's, there's tons of ways that we could really be strengthening our connections with the rest of the state and learning through that.

And I guess that in terms of the how, to me, the how is just we have to get together create those relationships, work together, you know, learn from each other, listen to each other. Like, it just happens by doing it and by getting out of our little bubbles and making connections with people who are, you know, coming from different perspectives. And that's, again, I think the purpose of having a commission. That's, that's one of the purposes.

Thanks, Thea. Anyone else want to touch on that one?

Felix.

Yeah, thanks. And thanks, Terry, for raising that issue. It was actually one of the questions that I had as well, because there was a lot of— and I appreciate all of the panelists for everything that you brought to the table. One of the things that I heard a lot is education and educating the community.

And I guess, you know, one of the things that I am curious about, and it's one of the things that I hear from community members, is sort of the dual nature of that education and how the community also has a lot of things that it could offer our public safety officials. And so I just want to like sit in that space of one of the feedback that I get is when community members want to bring something forward, some of the responses that they get is, well, you aren't a police officer, so you don't really understand. And so I'm wondering, um, how we can get over that hurdle that comes up in so many of these discussions of really listening for understanding and not building up those professional roadblocks that sometimes get in the way of shared understanding? Yeah, I'll respond to that. And thanks, Cameron.

That's— or Felix, sorry. It's a— that's a very important point. And I'll go back historically to kind of answer your question a little bit. If I go back to the beginning of my career, there was a real big push within the law enforcement community, and it kind of, kind of took throughout the entire country that we did not, we did not see race or ethnicity. And that training was my first academy.

It was when I got here. It was throughout the entire country. And the logic behind that, although clearly flawed, can be somewhat understandable from where law enforcement was at the time, which was we're trying to get out of law enforcement being, being a racist organization or a profession. And so the response was to train the employees, hey, we don't, everybody is the same to us. Everybody gets treated the same.

And it was this really, this huge focus on fairness. So everyone gets the same treatment all the time. And, and again, I understand where it came from, and at the time it sounded like that, that, that makes sense. But you fast forward into conversations like this and where the country has been in the last, really since 2014, and you really start to understand how maybe that helped move the needle with law enforcement an inch. It did not move law enforcement forward very much at all, and in some cases it actually moved them backwards.

And so you, so you are talking about an ingrained training and cultural thing throughout law enforcement for decades and decades. And part of, as we start to move through the training and the education of our employees, that actually we, race, ethnicity, background, all that stuff does matter. The pushback that you get from law enforcement initially when you start to have those conversations is, things like, so we have to have like a different book for this, this race, and this race, and this race. We have to change the way we police based on somebody's race or ethnicity. And the answer is kind of, actually.

And, and that then becomes a very difficult hurdle cultural hurdle within the organization. That's not something that we solve overnight. That's something that we, we then start having the conversation about what that really means. And so I'll give you an example. A couple of years ago in one of our supervisor school, we brought in a couple members from the Alaska Native community to talk about the experience that one of the individuals had with boarding schools.

And And it was kind of interesting because not only were these brand-new supervisors that were going through their training, but we had equally the number of people that weren't supervisors that knew this was going to happen that showed up just to kind of hear about this. And I can tell you that almost 100%, which 100% may not be statistically accurate, but a high percentage of the people in that room that listened to the story had a completely different view and opinion on what the impact historically has been for the Alaska Native community as it relates to boarding schools. And so when those employees walk out of that, their mind shifts from, I have to have a different book, if you will, to police the Alaska Native community, to, ah, I heard something, I saw something in that training, and that made a whole host of conversation and calls for service make a little bit of sense. And that is just one piece of the puzzle with one, you know, group or community within Anchorage. And so this is not an easy problem to solve at all.

And it is a cultural thing that, that, that in law enforcement we have to take full responsibility for. And it is, it is, it is a long process. I can tell you that We've worked through several different, several different exercises and scenarios and hired people to come up to run various different trainings. And it's interesting how the title of a training, a sentence that an instructor says during the course of the training, causes people to turn off the ears and not absorb anything that takes place through that training. We just burned, you know, a half a day, a full day of training.

And so then you have to be honest with yourself and where your organization, where your employees are at, and then you have to back up and go back to the point where we lost them and start to thread it together from there. And, and it's just time. And I don't, I don't think it's a valid answer or excuse to look at the community and say, you got to be patient with us, because that's, that's just not an acceptable thing to ask for. It's to accept responsibility and just continue to work work on it.

Okay, we have 15 minutes left. If there are more questions, now's the time.

I see a chat here.

More of a statement. I'll read it into the record. Thank you. Hello, this is Dawn Morse. It feels relevant to bring together Alaska Native people who are experiencing violent policing with current APD personnel.

So thank you, Don. I don't know if anyone wants to respond to that, but okay. Absolutely, 100% will participate.

Welcome it. Thanks.

Felix, go for it. Thanks. Sorry, I'm trying not to hug up the—. Goodness. Thank you guys.

So I did have a second question, actually something that Cameron stated that made me think. So Cameron, you talked about how the commission, whatever it looks like in the end, needs to have legitimacy and trust. And I'm assuming that that's like both ways. It has, needs to have legitimacy and trust from the municipality, but I'm thinking of it as a legitimacy and trust from the community. And so I am very curious, well, this damn fly flies around.

I'm very curious about hearing from community members who are not governmental about like, what does that legitimacy and trust look like if we were to create this new commission?

What would build that legitimacy and trust? What components of that and how important is power sharing to that building up of legitimacy and trust? A thought that I was left with. If anyone wants to respond to that, I'd be happy to hear that, but it's something that I think maybe we can explore in future sessions.

Hi, this is Tafi Toleafoa, and Felix, thank you for your question. I think the answer to your question is within the question itself. You mentioned the word power, right? When we talk about oversight, when we talk about review boards, when we talk about commission, I think it's really important for anyone involved in there to actually look into what does power— where does power lie, right? What does that mean for this commission or for this oversight committee or whatever?

Because the truth of the matter is we can be in all of these different things, right, as a community organizer and someone who works in the nonprofit world. What does— what does power— where does power lie, right? If we are to say that we're going to be an oversight specifically for police-involved shooting, And if we were to say, okay, so if any police-involved shooting incident, the oversight committee will review it and blah, blah, blah, blah, where then, what does that mean? If they are to recommend or if they are to say, okay, so this was not called for or this was called for, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, where does their recommendation go, right? Which is what my struggle is with these commissions and with these groups is that we will continue to create repeated recommendations that maybe like the results of this group might come out to be like the same results from a previous group, but who's implementing?

Where's the funding coming from to implement these things? And so, so I feel like that's where the communication needs to go is where does the power lie? And Where's the influence?

Tafi, that was lovely. Thank you. I have a couple of hands up. Thea, was that in response to Tafi?

Yeah, just briefly. I mean, I think Tafi just put her finger on the, you know, the most important piece of this. And just from other you know, kind of committees that I've participated in, and then just in, in my role now, uh, one of the things I think is really important about a commission here is that it's associated with, um, some, you know, division of a department that can provide the staffing and support for it, and that then that becomes kind of the, the avenue for recommendations to actually move move to the people, especially if it's around municipal functions, move to the people that can then like really consider that and bring, you know, thoughts back to the Commission so that there is really a connection to implementation. Because I think, you know, what Tafi's saying is 100% true that, you know, you gain trust by seeing the results of your labor. And that doesn't mean that everything the Commission says gets implemented, you know, just as they say, but, but that there's a real conversation and a real effort to be influenced by what's coming out of the group.

Thanks, Thea. That's great. Okay, so I have a hand up with Christina and then Amanda, and then I have a few chat entries that I need to get in here too. One of them is a question. So Christina, what do you have?

Oh, are you on mute? There you are. What about now? Can you hear me now? We can hear you now.

All right, sorry about that. It's not a proper Teams meeting unless one person has problems with their mic, right? I want to thank you guys again. I think this is a really cool opportunity. Once again, my name is Christina Schader.

I'm with the Reentry Coalition. I'm an employee here of NeighborWorks Alaska, but I am grant-funded through the Mental Health Trust Authority. I really appreciated that workshop, that community workshop we had at the rec center, mostly for who I got to sit next to. I got to sit next to Ms. Brawley and meet her and talk to her a little bit about reentry and the role that it plays in public safety, and Mr. Evans over there at the APDA. And I think that was pretty much the biggest benefit for me participating in that, you know, I hesitate in being in these type of things because I, I don't think I could ever tell an officer how to be an officer, right?

I don't think I could tell any of you how to do any of your jobs and the roles that you guys have been to, right? I've done corrections, I've done reentry case management, I've done community case management at the reentry center. I work a lot with prisoner reentry. I work a lot with folks who are coming in and out of the system. And right now I think there's a big conversation that's not being had in the community, and I understand why.

But the fact of the reality is the majority of people who release from our incarceration system in Alaska release out into the Anchorage streets. Now, I'm not saying that everybody that releases out is going to recidivate. I'm not saying they're gonna commit crimes and they go back in, but there's a huge issue that's happening. It's almost becoming a boilerplate, as it were, of folks happening in community where you have people that need to be stabilized who who need resources and situations who are not, for whatever reason, getting access to them. And one of the biggest issues I saw is when we had the idea of maybe criminalizing the idea of homelessness.

And I understand perfectly that it's a tool for the toolkit, right? But I think there's a misconception about what happens when you put people in prison because of something like homelessness, right? Or because they're having a behavioral health issue on the street. You know, I, there was a statistic that recently got put out that over 60% of people that come into our incarceration system in Alaska have a substance use disorder. Substance or a mental health issue, less than 12% actually get access to treatment while they're inside.

So what happens? They release outside and they have the same issues. And if even then they're even more destabilized because they don't have those opportunities. Homelessness, I, you know, I know there's a committee for that, so I don't wanna take up the time, but 20% is the national average of folks who experience homelessness because of their touch with the incarceration system. And that's just the national average.

I can't give you an Alaska statistic because we don't track that. And I think that's another big issue that's happening right now. So my role at the Coalition and hopefully here within the community is to provide resources and education and supports. One thing we like to do at the Coalition, not only to help the prisoner reentry, but to help the workforce that supports it, which is the cops, the courts, the corrections, and the community. If we can do anything like pull together resource guides or get the right people in the right rooms to talk about how we can do better as far as maybe doing referrals or things like that.

That's what we want to provide. We want to support our officers and we want to support the people that are doing this work. I know that sounds fun and fancy, but I guess my question into that too is maybe even for Chief Case. Sir, have you noticed an uptick in folks getting arrested or returned to incarceration because of homelessness? And part B to that question is, if you could have community support for folks like us who are kind of a network of stakeholders that are supporting the work that you do, what would be the ask there?

How can we support you in that realm?

Christina, first of all, thanks for the work that you do. The coalition plays a pretty vital role in the reentry services.

[Speaker:MICHAEL_STRANGE] So we, we are not really seeing an uptick in the rearrest. And one of the reasons why we are not seeing an uptick in that, even with some of the, the law changes that we, we made, really the law changes were trying to, to be a tool to provide resources. We are, we are in the low single digits on arrests for any of these folks. And, you know, with the HOPE team and even with our mobile intervention team and, and now coming online, our IMPACT team, A big portion of what they do is to try to connect to services. And one of the nice things right now within the municipality is this doesn't fall just on the shoulders of the police department.

You know, we're doing our part, but, you know, as you already heard, the pilot program that the fire department ran this summer was a huge role in that. The health department and what they're doing, and then having Thea at the mayor's office kind of connecting us and making sure that we're all communicating and meeting on a regular basis so we're pulling the right direction, we're pulling the right resources. So, so I think, I think we're, we're headed in the right direction there. As for the Coalition and what can be, what can be utilized, years ago we did a pilot, APD did a pilot program with the Coalition where we had access to all of the reentry services and we moved them up to a pre-arrest diversion. Now that project was a little bit crazy because we were trying to do something that didn't have anything put into place.

And so there was a lot of behavioral health issues that came along that Anchorage as a community just didn't have systems in place to deal with those behavioral health issues as a pre-arrest diversion. So, you know, we were having volunteers trying to babysit somebody that was coming off of, you know, methamphetamine or heroin. And so I think connecting to police services, when they qualify, because what I learned through that process was you don't have to be a reentry person to necessarily qualify for reentry services. And I think that's the one thing I think we can do better is use reentry services on the front end like we tried doing before, because now we have some of the infrastructure in place to where we can actually utilize those services, keep people safe, deal with withdrawals, deal with substance use and misuse.

All right, thanks guys. I'm just looking at the clock. I want everyone to say something that has their hand up because we were waiting for a minute for those. So Amanda, I see your note in the chat that this is in response to Felix. Please go ahead and let's see if we can make it real quick so that we can have Rich ask his question and then I can read the stuff in the chat into the record.

Amanda? Thanks, I'll be fast. Hi, I'm Amanda with Native Movement. We are a statewide nonprofit focusing on environmental climate policy and social justice issues that affect our BIPOC communities. Felix, thank you for your question, and in response around building trust and kind of having that dual back and forth, I believe that transparency around how a lot of these are administrative things, right, that the community would like to collaborate on.

Chief Case, to kind of speak to what you shared earlier about the specificity. So for example, understanding how investigations are triggered following an event, having non-government community members provide input on that process, also criteria around when not only investigations happen but if it's third party, who decides who that third party is, and I think that there's a role there for for the Commission to have that type of oversight, that could go a long way to building, being responsible for that transparency and also building trust and having that contribution. So that was mostly what I shared. I want to leave space for— I love that. That's in the record.

Thank you, Amanda. Rich? This is in response to the Chief's question about what does civilian oversight, what do we want. And I've been working with the Alaska Coalition for Justice for weeks now trying to have a vision of what, uh, reimagining what the commission could look like. And I think where we're headed is having a commission with what, what has broad representation of community and community organizations, because we are a diverse city, also has representation of law enforcement, APD, the mayor, and assembly, who could speak to that.

And I think most importantly, it has to be funded so when an issue comes up within the community, we can— this commission can investigate it and communicate to the public and all the powers that be what we have found out about this issue and make suggestions of policy changes. I can tell you right now, policy changes I think that should be addressed in the future about use of force and things of that nature, But anyway, I think we're— I just want to put it out there that a group is working on this, about maybe 6 people from our coalition are on this call, and we're working to have something concrete that we can present as a proposal. All right. Well, look at you, Rich, right on, right on time here. Nicely done.

So I'm just going to real quick recap because I think part of my job is to get these chat entries into the record. Dawn Morse had a follow-up, excellent, and to recruit staff who want to grow the HOPE team support for the community. And we saw a response from Chief Case to send him an email, so that's just lovely. And then Anna Brawley is joining but unable to ask her question, and I'm just gonna read it into the record. We can all be thinking about it.

To everyone on the panel, they want to answer, and everyone to think about, what does good representation of the public look like? Not specific people or organizations, but what perspectives, communities, etc. And then she says, if we run out of time, this question can be something to think about for next time. So thank you, Anna, for getting that into the record. We are at 12:01, and I want to be respectful Well, thank you everyone, to the panelists, the task force members, to the members of the community that made this a priority today.

We hope that you'll come back on October 16th when we will start to take a deep dive into the mechanics and some of the important decision-making that we'll need to make and learn from some other groups that have similar entities. So with that, I'm going to go ahead and close our meeting down. And again, this recording will be put online, and we hope to see everyone in October.