2023-04-04 00:00:00 - Joint Committee on Ways and Means
2023-04-04 00:00:00 - Joint Committee on Ways and Means
(Part 3 of 5)
SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Secretary? The floor is yours.
TERRENCE REIDY - EOPSS - Good morning, Chair William's and good morning, it's actually afternoon, Chair Gomez and members of the joint committee on ways and means. I want to thank you for allowing me 90 minutes for my opening statement. I will not go over it, I promise. My name is Terrence Reidy, and I serve as the Secretary of Executive Office of Public Safety and Security. With me is our CFO, Emmy Joy. Before I begin, I'd like to thank the legislature for the opportunity to discuss the Healey Driscoll Administration's FY 24 House One budget proposal. On behalf of EOPSS and our agencies, I'd like to express our gratitude for your thoughtful consideration of our public safety and finance requests. This morning, I'd also like to thank my team at EOPSS, the agency heads and the staff for their public service an unwavering commitment to advancing public safety, criminal justice reform, police reform, homeland security preparedness, and emergency management in response. Today, I have just about all of my agency heads and their support, the way I'd like to conduct the hearing if you have specific questions for individual agency, the people that you need to speak to directly without going through EOPSS are in this room, and I will bring them up for you to talk to.
We have made significant progress in promoting public safety, furthering critical reforms, and strengthening the Commonwealth's preparedness and resiliency. With these vital investments, we look forward to building on that momentum. Today, we will present information about the $1,500,000 budget proposal and highlight investments designed to improve outcomes for returning citizens, enhance standardized police training, diversify our workforce, modernize data collection and security, and achieve meaningful reforms that align with the national best practices public expectations and legislative mandates. This progress depends on your support for the Governor's H1 budget proposal, and now it's my privilege to share with this committee some of the remarkable work planned for the upcoming year. I have a number of highlights that I want to talk to you about. I'm going to skip the agency summaries as they will be available to you to to speak to and any specific financial questions, Emmy Joy is here also to help answer any questions.
I want to start off with our reentry program, the Healey Driscoll Administration fiscal year FY 2024 budget invest approximately $10,000,000 in educational opportunities and reentry programs for returning citizens, including $3,140,000 to expand high school acquisitively tests, HSAT, in hybrid learning opportunities. $5,100,000 to maintain170 learning opportunities, including resources such as personal tablets and $1,500,000 to support school of reentry and the credible messengers' mentorship program. The administration's first H1 budget dedicates vital funding to facilitate successful reintegration by providing those preparing for post release with expanded access to education, job training for in demand skills, and transformative mentorship programs. The School of Reentry, School Reentry is an immersive reentry program in Boston for incarcerated people preparing to return to the community. Founded in 2016, EOPS, the school of reentry is a 12 to 18 month residential program located in the Boston prerelease center at DOC minimum security men's facility.
The school of reentry deploys an all inclusive model that encompasses education, vocational training counseling, job preparedness, and the tools to empower returning citizens to make positive decisions upon release. In partnership with various Massachusetts colleges and universities, the School of Reentry has developed high quality college in prison programming designed to empower incarcerated individuals as they prepare to rejoin the community. Inside our classes are college level courses that bring students from an incarcerated upsetting, and students from outside the collegiate institutions together to take the same credit bearing functional learning opportunity for all students to see their shared community and provide opportunities for them to learn from one another.276 The school of reentry has pioneered and expanded partnerships with the Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology, Brandeis University, MIT to provide in and out programming both in person and virtually assisting students as they reach their full potential and prepare for reentry.
The Credible Messenger's program. The H1 Budget also invests in the Credible Messenger's program, a mentoring initiative to help justice involved individuals and their families successfully navigate the transition back into the community. The program connects returning309 individuals with mentors known as credible messengers. The messengers who are EOPSS employees have similar backgrounds, have shared lived experiences to those exiting the criminal justice system and as such are uniquely positioned to serve as credible sources of advice and support. Participation in the credible messengers program is voluntary, and often to individuals expected to be released within 90 to 120 days from a DOC facility. Since the program's inception, the messengers have worked with 299 people returning to the community. State ID program, the administration offers a newly enhanced and streamlined process to provide individuals with a government issued photograph identification card upon release from the DOC. An essential tool for successful community reintegration, the Massachusetts ID card program empowers returning citizens by removing barriers to critical reentry services following the incarceration.
I just want to highlight the extreme valuable work Karamichi and my under secretary, Andy Peck has done on this endeavor with the registry of motor vehicles, it has really made a difference. Transitional housing, a significant barrier to reentry is to access the housing. To be paroled, inmates need to have approved housing plans, that can be challenging for inmates that have been out of the community for an extended period of time. We know that recovery from substance use disorder is not always a linear path. Individuals committed to this recovery, but slipping back into substance misuse need treatment. Unfortunately, their relapse is404 also a public safety issue as substance abuse may be timed to cryogenic behaviors. The FY24 budget recommends $1,500,000 at the trial court for sober and traditional housing for parolees, which is projected to support more than 1600 individuals. Phones. Today, it's almost impossible to have a phone.
Having reliable access to a phone is necessary to coordinate healthcare, employment, and appointments and to stay in touch with loved ones. Individuals released from custody do not always have access to phones, so the FY 24 H1 budget includes $50,000 for EOPSS to create a pilot short term cell phone coverage for up to 200 released individuals as they get out of custody. No cost calls.450 Perhaps the most significant public safety proposal in H1 is the initiative to provide 1000 minutes of no cost calls per inmate per month. Maintaining community connections is not only vital for mental health, but also essential for successful reentry to keep incarcerated individuals in touch with their loved ones. We crafted this proposal to be achievable under existing infrastructure constraints, but we are committed to working on additional programming enhancements in the year ahead. We ask for your support to get started on this mission and to walk alongside us to troubleshoot our way to its success. Investment in the DOC.
As of this fiscal year, every inmate in the DOC has been issued a tablet which allows individuals in various housing settings to set, work towards and achieve personalized learning objectives outside of the standard classroom hours. The503 fiscal 24 H1 budget includes $5,100,000 to annualized tablet licensing costs, inclusive of DOC initiative to provide ELS materials, not only is ELS available in English, but it's also available in Spanish, Chinese, French, Italian, German, Swedish, and American sign language. During the first three weeks of activation, this new application had over 180 inmates reviewing the content. H1 also includes $3,400,000 to expand HSAT and hybrid learning opportunities. These funds will help construct a studio within the DOC to produce a virtual educational videos and allow teachers additional space with the goal of broadcasting live to more students at one time, therefore, decreasing wait times for class enrollment. Additionally, these552 funds will allow the DOC to enhance554 current classrooms with a more productive environment. The fiscal 24 budget adds $600,000 to pilot a peer to peer program designed to develop foundational relationship and structures that support growth, foster respect and enhance overall wellness and culture.
An important part of this innovative program is that for the first time, the department would pay inmate participants minimum578 wage for their work in recognition of the importance of their roles in the facility and contributions in changing the culture inside the facilities. Recognizing the need to support emerging adults living under its care, the DOC created building responsible adults through validation and education, the brave unit that is at MCI Concord. A program that provides educational and builds up support for successful fatherhood. With a capacity of 45 emerging adults, the the participants live in a community with 15 fathers who DOC engages as mentors. Together, the emerging adults, mostly between the ages of 18 and 26 years old, complete programming, focus on life skills, including parents in a dedicated space with a unit specific common space in a visitation room for visitation with children to play in. To get up program, police training. The inaugural class of the Massachusetts State Police get up program636 began its four week training courses at the state police academy in New Braintree on Monday, 11/28/2022. A key provision in the landmark police reform legislation, the first ever state police cadet program is a comprehensive on the jobs, a training initiative to introduce the next generation diverse candidates to skills, knowledge, and experience needed for a career in law enforcement.
The recruitment initiative attracted a broad range of diverse young men and women across the Commonwealth interested in pursuing a career in public safety with more than 200668 individuals taking the cadet entrance exam, this summer at multiple statewide locations, including six community colleges. The first class of 47 cadets was selected through a rigorous application and screening process from a highly competitive pool of statewide candidates. Of the 47 inaugural candidates, 53%, 25 individuals are people of color and 27%, 13 are women. The cadet program was designed as a recruitment strategy to broaden the diversity of the applicant pool and provide hands on training while offering a paid, benefited, full time, civilian position within the department as a cadet. The program requires a one year minimum commitment with711 the opportunity to be extended to a two year position. Massachusetts residents age 19 to 25 are eligible to apply, and those who complete the program successfully and receive a passing grade on the civil service state trooper exam received preference for appointment to the state police academy. Upon completion of the month long academic and physical training, most graduating cadets will serve their first rotation at a barracks for eight weeks.
They will serve as civilian employees who will work administrative shifts, who will not have any statutory powers or authority reserved for sworn members, they will be issued uniforms that clearly denote them as cadets and they will also be issued flashlights, identification cards, and ballistic vests. At the conclusion of the first assignment rotation, the cadets will be reassigned to a specialty unit or a different barrack for the next rotation and will continue these alternating assignments at stations and special units throughout their tenure. Fiscal 2024, House 1 includes 2$,000,000 to continue to support of the776 inaugural cadet class as well as status second class. Missing persons. As a March 1st, 2023, Massachusetts law enforcement have reported to the FBI's NCIC a total of 1927 active cases including 1908 missing persons and 19 unidentified human remains. Fiscal 24 H1 proposes $300,000 to establish a missing and unidentified805 person's coordination unit that will support municipal law enforcement and strengthen statewide coordination on the handling of missing and unidentified person's cases.
The new unit will be designated several full time positions at the state level to enhance stakeholder collaboration, advanced continued policy development and824 participate in the825 development of training curriculum and lead the standardization of data collection and uniform reporting. Community partnerships. This proposal is near and dear to my heart for a lot of different reasons. Healey Driscoll administration allocated $2,000,000 for a newly created grant opportunity, focused846 on improving the847 quality of life in bolstering youth programming reducing street violence and preventing illegal drug distribution in Massachusetts. The Safer Communities initiative is a collaborative public safety model that that brings together prosecutors, state and local law enforcement, and community stakeholders to identify emerging trends in a community and develop results driven programs to advance prevention, intervention, diversion, and enforcement. Managed by the executive office of grants and research, the competitive grant opportunity would deliver needed funding to the Commonwealth district attorneys who will be required to distribute at least half of their award to collaborate with community partners on intervention and prevention initiatives in the balance to engage law enforcement in crime suppression.
H1 also adds $500,000 for a total of $1,000,000 dollars to enhance human trafficking, enforcement, training grant program launched this year. The purpose of the grant is for the Massachusetts Attorney's Office to strengthen their investments and prosecutions of human trafficking as well as enhance the local community relationships and municipal law enforcement capacity to work on anti human trafficking cases. Additionally, these funds will support the expansion of victims centered in multidisciplinary approaches to working with survivors through trauma informed programming and to support services that promote justice, access, and empowerment. This budget level funds, the Senator Chelsea, Shannon, Jr. Community safety initiative grant program at $12,300,000. The Shannon grants are centered on the key elements outlined in the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Comprehensive Gang Model. The funding supports regional and multidisciplinary approaches to youth violence, intervention, prevention, enforcement prosecution, and reintegration services.
Each grant recipient will distribute funds among partner agencies in the programs identified in the grant application. The initiative is designed to serve youth and emerging adults between the ages of 10 to 24 living in a community968 that has been identified as a hotspot who are at risk971 or high risk for gang involvement. In addition, pre and post release grants are funded at $4,000,000, the non profit security grant is funded at $1,500,000 and the EOPSS grants and research at $200,000, which supports one full time employee and rent obligations. I have a fuller set of remarks that I know will be made available to the committee, but those are some of our highlights, it's not all of them and there's a lot of really great work done at the agencies that are represented by the folks behind me. With that, I am open to1010 your questions and if you have specific questions, I will1013 bring up the1014 agency personnel to help give you better answers, if we can't answer your question today, I promise you we will get back to you and get that information to you the best that we can. But Chair Williams, thank you. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Thank you. Thank you, mister Secretary. And
you have a lot of folks here that would be a lot of questions, and we're1035 gonna try to limit to
So maybe 2 or 31037 a decision, you might wanna1038 have some questions. We'll1039 go to well.
Certainly wanna try to speed this process up somewhat. And I'm gonna have 1 question, and that's my colleagues to limit 1 question. If they have a follow-up, then they can follow-up with you. I've I've already had my meeting with you. So this I don't have a question. But
REP WILLIAMS - This question is on behalf of Representative Tyler who had to go back, pick daycare issues, pick up a kid. She1067 says free telephone calls, which you can't adjust, Governor added in House One, very narrow language, she's overall supportive. Right now, we're working to perfect this Bill 1796. How many phone calls will we provide a day? Rep Tyler suggests 200 minutes a day, the average person spends 200 minutes a day, perfect world unlimited calls.
REIDY - I know that the Governor has spoken at length on the phone calls that this is the first step and she wants to see what's working, what's not working, and be able to adjust in collaboration with the legislature and with the partners in the community. But right now, it's 1000 minutes per month and we do have plans once the infrastructure changes in the DOC to evaluate in advance. And I know we've had a lot of conversations with Representative Tyler.
SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
ollow-up with her. I spoke to her before she left.
Okay. Thank you. Senator Miranda? I'm sorry.
SEN MIRANDA - Thank you, Secretary. I don't have just one, so I think it's incredibly important. I'll follow-up, but I just want to share some things. I do think it's really important to have the DOC come up, I know that you're trying to be efficient with your time but I do think that many of us work with that agency, and so I think it'd be important and if you'd oblige me, I think that they should come up I just want to speak to my colleagues for a moment. So we have I think now 15 Department of Correction facilities, and I've had the pleasure of going to at1183 least 11, like my colleague to the left of me, Rep Holmes were pretty consistent and1190 we1190 oftentimes are1191 badgering the undersecretary or the commissioner around those that are incarcerated. So before I have my remarks for the department of correction, thank you, Commissioner for being here. I just want to say thank you on the cadet program, I actually just today posted the flyer for the May 5th deadline and encourage all my colleagues to do that because it works.
We saw that with the police cadet program in1221 Boston, we have the fire cadet program, and us in the Black Latino caucus worked really hard with the colonel1226 on making sure we push the cadet program1229 because last year, it worked so well that I was actually visibly able to see more people of color who wouldn't have had an opportunity to just enter and pass the civil service test if it wasn't for the pretraining done in the cadet program. So I want to1246 say thank you to that.
1247 REIDY1247 -1247 We're1247 really proud of it and I know we hosted a number of legislators recently, and I know we've had a conversation with the caucus Chair Gonzales is going to talk to you all see if we can host you again up at the state police academy and give you a really in-depth overview of the cadet program.1274 I know we're very proud of it, I know colonel Man, who is is present, is very proud of it and I thought it was a really great day to give an inside look of all the successes of that program and we will host whoever wants to come up and highlight that cadet program because I think it's something that we all collectively can be very, very proud of. Thank you.
MIRANDA - For those of you that know my story, I lost my youngest brother five years ago to gun violence and an interesting thing that happened earlier is Rep Tyler, myself, and our attorney general, all three black women have had either issues with the incarceration's system and or losing a sibling to that incaceration system or to gun violence, and that is not a badge that we want to wear but I think1322 for all of us, we work that much harder in honor of our siblings that we've lost and so I'm particularly interested in gun violence. The other badge that I don't want to wear is that I represent the 2nd Suffolk and previous to this was in the House1338 representing the 5th Suffolk that had a badge of being technically the most incarcerated corridor, but also the corridor that had the most gun violence in terms of non fatal shootings or other penetrating wounds and or homicides. I know I'm very proud to be in Massachusetts. We have the lowest number of gun deaths, but that number is not 0 and until it's 0 and for communities like Roxbury or Brockton or Lowell, where we are disproportionately impacted by gun violence, I'm not going to rest. Right? Because I don't want other families to go through what we went through.
So I had a specific question around equitable distribution. So we know equal distribution is what we've been fighting for and across the Commonwealth, we spend monies to fund programs through Shannon and SSYI to all communities, we try to be as equal as possible. But when you have a community that's disproportionately impacted by gun violence, I'd love1404 to hear about how your administration is looking at either increasing distribution to communities that are more impacted to changing distribution through SSYI or Shannon to make sure that the communities are really impacted. A couple years ago, we heard that in community, the list of SSYI had not been edited for a long time, and so we made a push in the legislature to say, like, you know, this list of gang involved young people or young adults, how often are we resifting this list to make sure that we actually have the right data or the right distribution based on the fact of what we're knowing in terms of gang involved young people. So I wonder if you could just spend a moment talking about gun violence and gun funding. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Thank you for the question. So for for people don't do not know, I didn't see it either, but I just wanted to put them together so often.
Yeah. It is. I mean,
Sorry. Can you use the mic my apologies. Yeah. Sorry. And Brad Holmes was just saying that he did not see it in your remarks. Or in the budget.1480 So yeah. You wanna talk about that?
EMI JOY MAFFEO- EOPSS - So it's a program owned by HHS, and we work closely with our colleagues there. I think your question of equity is something very important to us, and we're happy to follow-up with HHS on it and connect back with you together. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Canadian grants are under the Office of Arts and Research, right. So before my colleagues, those are the biggest pools in terms of gun violence distribution.
REIDY - So my background, I started as an intern in the Suffolk DA's office in 1996 and I started about six months after Assistant Attorney General Paul McLaughlin was murdered in West Roxbury, working in the safe neighborhood initiative, which was a collaboration between the AG's office and the Suffolk DA's office. So I knew nothing about prosecuting, knew nothing about policing, nothing about the courts, but I started six months in a unit that was decimated with the loss of a loved one because of gun violence. Although I'm from Worcester, my professional career in law enforcement started in the Suffolk DA's office, primarily in the gang unit and then in Roxbury district court, and then I started in the Dorchester district court. My area was the Boden Geneva area, in District Court and in Superior Court. So it's a section of Boston that is near and dear to my heart, the lessons I learned through the safe neighborhood initiative program because it was a program that emphasized prosecutors getting outside of the courtroom going into the community, working with the community, working with stakeholders on the police side, on the business side and it's a model that started in the early 90s in Roxbury with project right.
They were fractured times, and I know Senator Miranda, you know better than anyone with the levels of violence in Boston we were in the early 90s and those are my form of years and seeing how through some of the separation and dysfunction between different groups and different entities who all want the same thing at the end of the day, they want things to be better and safer for for their children and their families that was my background. My desire is to try and get funding to recreate the safe neighborhood initiative. Through the DA's office offices, through that $2,000,000 where they know working with their community partners and with the people that know what the violence levels are in their communities can use those funds. Half for outreach interventions and the other half for enforcement because there has to be an enforcement1644 aspect to this. So my priority coming to EOPSS as well as now being Secretary is community violence, primarily gun violence because there's nothing that tears apart street, a community, a family, a neighborhood more than a shooting. We had a recent event, Rep Laurel and Senator Collins came last week up to the church at the community center up on Boden and it was a impressive meeting where we heard from a lot of different perspectives and what was really constant from the community, was that while statistics may show that shootings may be down or non fatal may be down, they're not down for the people who are living in communities that are dealing with gun violence and there isn't such a thing as once the year changes to January 1st, hey, everything's great, we're at 0 shootings.
This community memory, I have that community memory, and I brought up a1708 story at at the meeting last week but there there was a1715 a family that was pretty well known that I worked with them out on prosecuting side as also working with them as a as a family where one of the oldest sons was murdered on Hamilton Street. This was I believe it was 2006 and I was in a unit that responded to all the shootings and all the murders, in Boden Geneva. What I carried with me to this day is hearing the mother wailing on her front steps, it was at 3:00 in the morning, one of her oldest sons is dead and just the wailing. That's a family that lost two sons to murder, one son was partially paralyzed, and one son is kind of gotten out of the game and so that stuck with me. I think everybody in this room probably know someone that's having to deal with gun violence, so I want to do anything possible from this position to get funding because at the end of day, it's funding for enforcement as well as community outreach.
This safer community initiative, if it's funded, is going to be a step in the right direction for not just Boston, it's Worcester, it's Springfield. Because we hear the same stories from families, a1797 community activist that the money has get to get to the right1800 groups, it's got to get to the people in the street who are dealing with kids and we had the safer communities meeting on Shannon Grounds and people were talking about the great work1815 that street workers do,1816 and they do and they don't get a lot of publicity for it because what doesn't get publicized is that one call from a street worker when something's going down, one call taken a kid to a movie, taken him out to eat, may stop that cycle of ounce. That's not going to make it into the papers, it's not going to be publicized, but I think all of us know in this room that if we can fund individuals who selflessly give themselves up to work with kids that are at the most at risk and kind of lead them on the right way to prevent them from getting into the cycle of ours, we're going to make huge, huge dividends.
Now the level of violence isn't the same as the early 90s, so that's great. So that means that I think we have a platform here with a little more financial incentive and people working together on all sides of this issue to make an even bigger dent in youth violence. I know District Attorney Early was here, I don't know if he's still in the room, but when I went from Suffolk to Worcester, we were able to get a project safe neighborhood grant at $100,000 and what we did was break it up in half, half for outreach, half for enforcement and everything is about not reinventing the wheel. So Suffolk County, for those who may not know, had a program that started at Dorchester District Court, which is the nightlight program and that was teaming up a probation officer with police going out to a probationer's house and checking on them, making sure things are right. Now in Worcester, that had never been done in the Superior Court. So with $50,000 dollars, we created this program going out and Andy Peck was an ACPO then and having law enforcement going out with Superior Court probation officer in Worcester and Worcester County.
The other outreach portion of the grant, District Attorney Early collaborated with South High School and Holy Cross High School and sent a ton of kids to basketball camps1934 at all summer. And so what happened that summer and I'm sorry for being long winded, but like I said, this is a passion of mine, that summer in 2008, the city of Worcester did not have one non fatal shooting and did not have one murder and that wasn't the only reason because of that program but it was a big portion of it. I'll reach the most at risk kids in doing an enforcement initiative that hadn't been done before and we don't have1958 to look outside of Massachusetts for, you know, examples of what to do and how to do things right because the answers are here. Let me finish with this because it irritated me a portion, this this was a couple of years ago when I1971 went to the AG's office. I went to a1973 briefing on youth violence, and1975 they were talking about a shooting project and there were people from Chicago talking to us and I'm like, that's great, I love it.
1984 It1984 started in Suffolk 25 years ago, I'm sitting1988 here getting lectured and1990 it was a great program, but people from Chicago talking1993 about a program that started in Suffolk County DA's office and with the Boston police. So it's not reinventing the wheel, it's getting funding and really not worrying2002 about what what the2003 numbers are, crime is down, it2005 is2005 not down. You know it better than anyone else Senator from your constituents that some individuals do not feel safe. So long winded way, that's why we want the $2,000,000 working through the DA's office to try and bring people together in these fractured times. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Thank you.
I think we have a couple of questions in the Dolby, and I think rep homes, and that will close this. Well, mister Fitzgerald.
What's where I was to, okay, 3 questions and whatever. Thank you.
Sorry. I know you said just 1 question, so it'll be question 1, parts ABC, and d.
SEN GOBI - First of all, Mr. Secretary, I do want to thank you and you've got a great team. I want to say special thanks to Brian Merrick and the work that keeps us all very, very informed. The school safety grants, I know I met with some and many of us did meet with some of our school superintendents yesterday and that the Reps to go out because they they're definitely looking for some more help. So I do want to say thank you on that and colonel Manon, I also want to say a special thanks to Kevin Baker and the work that he does as well. On the state police academy, I know that when I've been out there because, obviously, it's in my district, in new Braintree and there are some things that obviously may need for some upgrades and I did want to ask specifically about what was happening with maybe some proposed upgrades or what could be used out there? I know that I've heard driving track in the past, and I didn't know if you could speak a little bit to that would maybe look at maybe things that we could plan ahead for on this committee?
REIDY - Yes, I think in the future, what we need to look at is a pool of water safety up at New Braintree and an Evac track and that's training police officers how to drive. That's not just a state police issue that is a law enforcement issue with the lack of an Evac track. We're alright in the near future, but at some point, we're going to be losing one of our main tracks and I know Emi and the team with with the state police are looking at ways in Bob Furlough at MPTC to see what we can do. But I would love to be able to circle back with you and talk a little more at length, but the Evac track is going to become an issue for us.
GOBI - I'm glad you mentioned about the the water safety representing now the heart of the city of Worcester and, obviously, with the horrendous death of Minnie Familiar, and, you know, I don't think there is enough training obviously for some of our offices on that. The last part of my question, this may be more directed via Marshall Ostroskey. I want to thank you for the work2185 that you do as well, but the testing situation that is going on, and I know that every one of my small towns is trying to get more firefighters and one of the issues that has come up is that they're waiting for some of the tests that need to go through the academy and I was hearing specifically from the Spencer Fire Department that I know that they're waiting for a couple of their folks to take some test and somebody's not going to have a test till like June or July. I'm just not sure what's happening and if there's any way to maybe speed that up a bit because they wouldn't dire in need of getting these folks trained.
PETER OSTROSKEY - DFS - Thank you, Senator. Good afternoon all and thank you for the opportunity to speak to that issue. I believe one of the questions that's out there is with respect to our certification unit, so we obviously have a host of classes that are provided by the fire academy, the division of the Department of fire Services. Our certification unit is very active across the Commonwealth. It's a timing issue I think that we see with a number of different communities coming in at the same time looking for particular levels of certification examination. We had taken action, and this budget does support certification unit to be able to continue to add to our examiner group2281 and to remedy any kind of weight that's happening in the certification unit but I can tell you that I've had conversation with with Chief Parsons and certainly, I'd be happy to follow-up2295 on the specifics with you and Chief Parsons but I believe for the most part, we are hitting the marks on certification, and we2304 hope to continue to2305 strengthen up our exam in a core to address2307 any shortfalls. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Thank you. I appreciate that.
Thank you.
Thank you, Chair.
REP XIARHOS - Thank you, Chair. For me to look out at you is very special, so many great people doing hard2325 work, keeping us all safe. I love the budget. I love2331 the cadet program. I just shared it, Senator so everybody could learn more about it. The on-site academy funding, Rep Lenatra and others were big on that to to give our first respond as mental health care, it's badly needed. The safe neighborhood program,2353 and also funding for the2356 state police to help2357 the local communities when they have major events or tragedies. Human trafficking, right on Cape Cod, we see that in our motels, which is a shame. And the nonprofit program to hire targets, nonprofit churches, things like that. So I appreciate all your work. I have a question, I have a concern about our children and our teachers and our schools. You know, I think we all do. For me, I was a school resource officer, I believe, in that program and I know in Massachusetts, what makes us even better is If you are a school resource officer, you have to be fully trained and certified, and that's a great benefit of2408 police reform. So I'm wondering, what can we do or what can you add to the topic of school safety?
REIDY - I mean, we just have to look to last week in Nashville and part of the Commonwealth's response, not just the school shootings, but any hostile events, whether it be at a houses of worship, workplace violence, other mass shooting targets is a program we have developed and we're funding in a different way out of EOPSS is the ASHE program,2447 it's2447 active2447 shooter, hostile event response. It's the goal standard nationally, it brings the2454 response time with law enforcement, fire departments and EMTs together. So it's a coordinated response, it was born out of some of the problems that after action reports have discovered, especially after Aurora where there really wasn't a unified command center. There was issues where where the EMTs were setting up, how to get people out of the hostile event and we're proud to say that we're we're one of the first in the country to adopt this across the Commonwealth. Bob Furlough, Jeff Farnsworth, Marshall Ostroskey have put an immense amount of time into training and coordinating.
We just had a great event up at Merrimack College a couple weeks ago. Hopefully, it's something we never have to use, but I think the reality is, at some point, it's going to hit Massachusetts, God forbid but that's the reality. The standardization2514 of training resource officers is going to be made at2518 a municipal level if an individual community wants resource officers in their schools, but we're going to have them all trained to the same standard and it is a very intensive, organized training that that Bob Furlough has put together with his staff. But I encourage you and we can pass to the committee some more information about ASHE, it's really important. You'll recognize that everybody's going to be trained to the same standard, whether you're in Western Mass, Central Mass, or Eastern Mass, if a horrific2554 event happens, people are going to be on the same page and trained to the same level.
I had a meeting with Senator Moore last week, what we're trying to do is come up with some ideas for bulletproof vest, for EMTs and fire. We have some ideas that may be able to help us in that endeavor. It's tough2583 because I've got school age kids and you know, and you see those photos, and you see that video from not just Nashville, but what we've seen over the last couple of years, it's horrific. We got to try and do whatever we can do to prevent it and try to identify and recognize the signals of individuals that may be struggling with mental health or other issues that may honor themselves and do horrible things. But I think on the back end as far as training and dealing and trying to neutralize an offender as fast as possible to save as many lives as possible and try to get injured out of hustle situations, fast buzz, we're really cutting edge into2623 something we're really, really proud of. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
I mean, do you wanna talk about the funding on ASHA?
I do.
MAFFEO - So we do have funding for an ASHE coordinator at DFS as well as some funding for an ASHE coordinator at MPTC. We continue to make funds available through our capital plan for training and equipment for ASHE trainings. I also wanted to flag that through federal funding, that we just went through looking at grants for the safer schools grant, there was $2,900,000 made available, and we received nearly $14,000,000 in request for that program. Obviously, we want to make funds available whenever possible. I just want to flag for this body that there is overwhelming demand for physical plant improvements to schools to address the risks associated with school shootings.
XIARHOS - Thank you to both of you. It's so important and the ASHE training, we do have a Bill pending, so that's House Bill 2421 where everybody in the Commonwealth would be trained the same way. So the first responders, the police, the fire, everybody whether like you said, it's in Western Mass or Cape Cod, we all respond the same way and the students and staff know kind of what it's all about. So thank you, you're right on target with all these issues. Thank you, Chair. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Thank you,
Rob. Rob Holmes. We'll have to final say.
So I'm gonna do a part 1234 as well.
REP HOLMES - So that sound that you reference from a mom is a sound that, unfortunately, I don't reference back to one incident I referenced back to far too many. When I was elected in 2010, I wasn't even in office for two weeks and I got the phone call that said, Representative elect, don't drive down the bottom of your hill, walk, walk down the bottom of your hill. And I talked to the captain and he was, like, watering the walk down the bottom of my hill? He says its just because you can't drive because we have the place roped off. So2763 I walk down the bottom of my hill and in the middle of the street, are five people lying in the middle of the street. Actually, four, one was transported. But two of them was a mom holding her child while she was protecting him as her daughter as she was being killed and so that sound and these murders they happen very close to us. One of the folks laying in the middle of the street was the child as someone I grew up with and so they have to go to my good friend about her son who's now dead is a very tough conversation.
So when Senator Miranda asked about gun violence, she's passionate as I am because of the fact that very much as you said, these are real. So I don't know if you heard my question to the judiciary but they were saying that we're going to probably have some of these cases tried four, five years later. So when the question of gun violence comes up, I don't think actually $2,000,000 is enough. Quite frankly, I think we need to be as aggressive about this as possible because I don't know exactly the contours of Senator Miranda's district, but I would say 90 to 95% of the murders are going to be exactly in that district and so when she's asking you for a focus on Driven down Blue Avenue, there's there's a reason she's asking that question.
My 1,2,3,4, I'll just list them, and then I only have one question. I want to leverage all the work we did in police reform, but it seems as though we get blamed for everything. We get blamed because all of a sudden you can't going to a school,2887 so that's part of the blame you did this. Bob knows we get blame on the Western part of the state that all of2892 a sudden we want to kick all police officers off the police force. We get just so many areas, but one of the things that around structural racism, it would be good to know in paroled and probation, black and brown folks, are they being paroled at the same level as white folks? Where's the data? I don't know where it is. Probation, what's happening? Black and brown folks, are they going to probation in a similar way? I don't know where the data is, can't2923 find2923 it. Even like just talking about parole terminations, are we even doing parole terminations again? Because of that, the folks have an incident that happened when they were young, they get out, life sentence, and here you are in your 70s, and you're still on parole, right? So still that on you, are we getting rid of these terminations?
On the no cause call, are the phone calls and a video happen on the tablet. Still the challenge around the question of when inmates have a issue, does that still all land within the DOC? Is there ever going to be an external conversation about, I know we have a Bill pending around the inspector general being the person who looked at it or attorney general. The list seems long but my question but please, Brian, Tom, Mr. Under secretary, my partner, if you can get me some of these answers, that would be great. But my question comes in tucked inside that police reform Bill was one of my bills around civil service and there was some commission that that was done and they just repeatedly said, hey, we'll we'll do it and we'll wait later. But the real answer comes out this week3014 on civil service. Pay state, pay us $40,000,000 is how you treat black and brown folks. So we got an answer from the judges, right? So something we've been fighting for 15, 20 years on now we have to pay $40,000,000 of the state.
So my question is, I know you're saying about you know, all we're going to be doing about everyone being treated the same. Certainly, Bob, you know, I want everybody on the Western part of the state, do you arrest me? Same criteria, right? That's what we were talking about when Charlie and I and you were all in that meeting before George Floyd and everyone now want to hop on. We're doing it now after he died. You and I wouldn't run along before that. So the same thing should be happening. And and my question is, are CEO is going to be rolled into this? Corrections offices, are they going to also get eventually a a standard that they're gonna also have to meet that everyone meets as well? But on civil service, fire, EMS, police, what is the change that's going to happen now that we now know that structurally civil servant was at the point of the Bill from the beginning, which was the point of the commission, still structural racism is existing and the use of civil service. Where are you heading across this commonwealth around the civil service exam? Getting diversity on our police, our state police, our EMS, and our fire.
REIDY - Civil services in front of me but I'll have further conversations with the administration. I know the Healey Driscoll administration is focused on equity and recognizes the decision in that court case and I think I have shown through my career as a prosecutor and as an under secretary and as a secretary what my focus is with diversity. You look at the people around3124 my team at the Executive Office Public Safety as far as gender and race, I have a diverse, diverse leadership team and I will do whatever the Governor wants me to do in helping civil service in their administration.
HOLMES - Mr. Secretary, when you say that to me, I look at your team, I don't see a single black or brown person in this team, when you say that, who are you referring to, I understand gender, I was I was saying as a black man, you just said that I don't see a single black person in this team unless I'm not just
REIDY - Do you want to go through my senior staff?
HOLMES - I thought this was your senior staff.
REIDY - These are my agency heads as well, I'm talking to my executive EOPSS staff. Your senior staff. I thought that's what you had just so go I'm sorry. Oh, 0, I'm sorry. I'm I'm I'm I'm good. Okay. Okay. Talk with some of the people over here. Okay.
HOLMES - If you can back to me on what the administration's going to do about civil service and how that's going to roll out across this whole state? And what's going to then happen with parole and probation and get me some numbers?
REIDY - We will get you the numbers. Probation's under the judiciary. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
you know.
Sector, we thank you and
Thank you all. Your retire congratulations on your retirement.
You've done a tremendous job as a fireman. I I really mean that. City and state, so we always look to you. Oh, I got the sheriff on that.
Hi, chef Koji, my chef. Welcome.
Thank you.
Thank you.
As I like to say to everybody that's here, welcome to God's country, Western Massachusetts. Okay? Thank you. Thank you so much. And to all of my delegated staff and my representatives and senators thank you for what you do every day into the entire panel.
NICK COCCHI - MASSACHUSETTS SHERIFFS ASSOCIATION - Thank you to my friends, Chairman, Bud Williams and Chairman, Adam Gomez and to members of the Joint Committee of Ways and Means, thank you for this opportunity to speak briefly and we will be brief about the Massachusetts Sheriff's Association and the collective Massachusetts Sheriff's. As fellow elected officials, we stand committed with you in improving outcomes for all who live and work in our correctional facilities. We thank you for your continued support and how together we partner and we achieve our shared priorities in the upcoming fiscal year. The Massachusetts sheriffs are proud of the work that we have done to increase opportunity3282 for justice involved individuals in our care and we are pleased to highlight the accomplishments of the Massachusetts Sheriff's Association and the progress over the last year3293 in our enhanced commitments for the future. We are equally proud to share with you that just last week, the Massachusetts Sheriff's hosted the Department of Justice, National Institute of Corrections, large jail network meeting in Hampden and Middlesex counties. Over 70 sheriffs3313 and jail administrators from around the United States toward our facilities. We were chosen by the National Institute of Corrections because we are nationally recognized.
Leaders in the areas such as mental health, substance abuse treatment, education, and vocational programs, and reentry services. The Massachusetts Sheriff's are nationally recognized and a lot of thank you goes to the legislature for allowing us the opportunity and the support to do the work that we do. There is much to be proud of here in the Commonwealth and we thank you again for the opportunity to highlight our shared successes and challenges with you. Our goals, our collective goal is to improve outcomes for all who3360 live and work in our facilities, and to prepare individuals for successful reentry back into their communities. It is estimated that over 75% of our incarcerated individuals here in the commonwealth have a substance use disorder, a mental health and or co-occurring disorder. Many people arrive in our care and custody with acute physical and mental health challenges coupled with the significance of their charges, and this requires staffing to provide the programming services and care to meet the evolving health and security needs of our population.
The last year has been a year of enhanced collaboration by the Mass Sheriffs Association, the sheriffs throughout the Commonwealth and our legislative leaders. Secretariat's, National and federal partners. We want to share with you some of the challenges we are experiencing as well as the collaborative3423 work being done in ways that together we3428 can continue to improve outcomes and change lives of the people3432 of the justice involved. Some of our major changes are the expansion of the medication assisted treatment across 13 sheriff's offices that hold incarcerated individuals. Another is continued commitment to healthcare in3449 mental3449 health and behavioral health care for the incarcerated individuals, challenges with recruitment3455 and retention and commitment to officer wellness, the expansion and enhancement of programs to include education, emerging adult units, evaluation and stabilization mental health units, and reentry services.
We continue to be committed to the MIEP 1115 demonstration waiver that we will have submitted written testimony on. Medication assisted treatment. The MSA in collaboration with the Department of Health and Human Services, and with the support of our legislature, are pleased and proud to announce that we are one of, if not, the first state in the3499 United States, where all sheriffs are providing medication assisted treatment for incarcerated individuals experience opioid use disorder. We want to thank Secretary Walsh and the legislators for your continued support in this now, nationally recognized MAT program. Together, we are and will continue to impact and save lives. Under healthcare, the sheriffs are committed to the3528 health and safety of all incarcerated individuals. Just as it is with other agencies in the community rising health care costs are a major driving force for the rising cost of our Sheriff's Office budgets and where our budgets are being allocated.
Pre-Covid and pre medication assisted treatment programs, just in Hampden County alone, we spent just under $1,500,000 in non payroll related healthcare needs. This year, coming out of Covid and with the implementation of the medication assisted treatment program, we are projected to spend over $7,000,000 only $3,500,000 of that being a medication assisted pro treatment allocation. So we are looking at an increase $2,000,000 in non payroll related healthcare costs. This is great in part and due to the rising cost of healthcare here in the common law. For example, we currently have an individual in our care3591 who has a thyroid disease, the medication needed3595 to treat this condition is going to cost over $620,000 for one individual but it's the right thing to do so we're going to do it. I'm sharing this example with you just to make you aware of why the cost of incarceration in healthcare is rising. The other issue, if anybody in the committee saw the article recently on La Mule Shiatek Hospital, and the staff who were claiming there is significant lack of care for individual central immuno shout out, I'm here to tell you that's not the case. We use La Mule Shatic, we're proud and thankful for the3635 ability to use La Mule Shatic. Can we always improve on what we're doing in the level of healthcare? Sure we can but this article by WGBH does not reflect the healthcare being disseminated in any correctional institution, Department of Corrections or Sheriff's Office.
We want to be very clear, this is not the case in your county Sheriff's Offices, we pride ourselves on the medical care our staff provide to the incarcerated individuals in our care. A little bit on mental health and behavioral health, we stand committed to all justice involved individuals to support and provide their mental health and well-being. The individuals in our care requiring mental and behavioral health care are at an all time high whether for substance use, mental health, and or co-occurring disorders, not surprisingly, the staff and resources needed and devoted to these women and men are also at an all time high. Those individuals returning from Bridgewater State Hospital to one of the evaluation and stabilization units are taking great care and great due process to get them back to the county that they originated from but more importantly to get them back in a stable manner, continuing a continuation of medication and a continuation of services.
As you are most aware, there is no Bridgewater equivalent in the state for women experiencing significant mental health challenges. The Hampden County Sheriff's Office is the first in the state to offer a women's regional stabilization evaluation and stabilization unit. At our Western Massachusetts Regional Women's Correctional Center, these units are no longer optional, they're a necessity.3743 All of these initiatives take significant resources and while we understand that although the average daily population numbers are lower at this time in the Commonwealth, the resources required for these initiatives and programs are both staffed and fiscally intensive. The commitment to officer wellness and challenges in recruitment with retention, this has been a very big issue for county sheriffs, for the Department of Corrections, and for law enforcement in general. Both officers and inmate wellness remain a priority for the Sheriffs and so are the challenges we are experiencing with recruitment and retention.
We recognize this is a crisis and a challenge. As testified in December before the joint committee on judiciary, staff wellness is at the forefront of all the Sheriff's minds. The men and women that work in our offices show up every day through pandemics, snowstorms, and staffing shortages, they miss family milestones and special events because they are committed professionals. They step up when3813 other step back and unfortunately are not seen by the public as the first responders they are. These jobs take a toll on them and their families and I'd like to state now for the record that each of my fellow Sheriffs and I are grateful to each member of our staff for the work that they do and we know the sacrifices that they make and they make a difference in the lives of the populations they serve each and every day. Like so many employment sectors, especially first responders and law enforcement, we are all grappling with recruitment and retention and individually are working to address our staffing, mental, and physical wellness at our workplace, it's about life balance.
Ensuring paid parity for correctional officers across the Commonwealth is critically important in supporting these silent guardians in the important work that they do. A probation3868 officer in Boston3870 receives the same salary as a probation officer in the Berkshires. A parole officer in Boston receives the same salary as a parole officer in the court Berkshires. Why is a correctional officer in Western Massachusetts or correctional officer on Cape God, making less money than the correctional officer in the Department of Corrections or in Boston? It's the same job, just as dangerous with the same mental health issues, and the quality of life issues, we need to rectify this discrepancy. It's going to cost money, a lot of money and people don't want to hear that but I look to this panel as being the people who can bring forward in wrong, situation and make a right from a wrong, and it's going to take lobbying, it's going to take challenging leadership in the House and Senate to put the money forth, to show the respect to the men and women who again go to work every day and step forward when many others in the community will step back.
We would like to work with you and find avenues that allow us to continue to fulfill our core mission while making greater strides to ensure our staff can thrive. Here are just a3957 few examples that are work3958 currently being done that could be expanded upon. The Massachusetts Sheriff's Association enlisted the National Institute of Corrections, the NIC, to assist the Massachusetts Sheriff's in providing mental health first aid training for our correctional officers. It is a program designed to assist correctional officers experiencing a mental health or substance use related crisis. The correctional officer learns risk factors and warning signs for mental health and addiction concerns. Strategies for how to help somebody in both crisis and non crisis situations and where to turn to for help. The Massachusetts Sheriffs participated in a discussion with principal deputy assistant attorney general Amy Solomon to discuss the nation's staffing shortage crisis in4008 our nation's jails.4011 Identified4011 challenges4011 and proposed recommendations from the 14 Massachusetts Sheriff's Office were included in this important dialogue in Washington.
We provide and continue4021 to provide crisis intervention training, CIT, training for correctional officers. We are providing national experts to lead discussions with staff on topics involving recruitment and retention, resiliency, and suicide prevention. Among many examples we do, and will continue4040 to offer staff, include our employee assistance program, peer counseling, specialists to talk to with staff about their wellness, summit on officer wellness hosted by Sheriff Carthusian, Officer wellness included in both in service and academy training and specialized critical incident training to just to name a few. As you can see, the Massachusetts Sheriffs are committed to exploring any and all options for staff and inmate wellness with you. Programming in reentry services. Sheriffs collectively believe that reentry begins day one of someone's incarceration. Each Sheriff's office continues to enhance and expand their community reentry and post release services. Along with the programming and services offered inside each facility, as outlined in the programming matrices provided to the legislature each year, here are a few highlighted examples.
Employment services and job assistance, vocational training, educational training, housing options, clothing, counseling, substance use and mental health care, a GED or HSAT opportunity, college courses partnerships with community high schools to offer real diplomas, not a GED or high HSAT, but a diploma, education offered during incarceration and offered post release and community partners just to name a few. The Sheriff's recognize and appreciate the commitment from the legislature on providing funding for reentry services. We recognize that no matter how robust our reentry services are, those in our care and custody do not stop needing assistance once they have left our facilities. A continuum of care is an essential factor in the prevention of reincarceration but also gives us the ability to help improve4160 successful outcomes for individuals upon their reentrance.
Several Sheriffs are currently operating community based reentry centers and those that are not are actively working on standing one up this calendar year. These centers are one stop shops for those who have4185 been in our care and custody, but also a resource for those who are in need in a part of the at risk population in our respective communities, shouldn't have to go to jail to reach and to assess, and to receive reentry services because if we can provide those services prior to criminal behavior, prior to engaging the criminal justice system, again, we're saving4211 the taxpayers money on incarceration, and we're supporting somebody to live a law abiding life4216 that they not only need to, they deserve to, but we need them to. For example, the Hampden County Sheriff's Office has an all inclusive support service facility as located right down the street from here and it's been in effect since 1996, the first of its kind in the country. My predecessor Sheriff Mike Ashe brought this from Europe, an average of over 100 people per day come to after care seeking some sort of assistance or guidance.
This center is also open to any individual in the community, not just formally incarcerated individuals. In Essex County, the STAR program, supporting transitions to reentry, streamlines access to resources and reentry services for individuals returning back to their communities. Middlesex County has a restoration center that supports people leaving incarceration and in the community. We know and believe these centers make a difference, we would ask that when the legislature appropriates money for reentry services, that they appropriate money directly to the individual Sheriff Offices for these type of services. So each of you in your county can get the services that are needed in in wanted by not only the sheriff's office, in the sheriff, but more importantly by the individuals going4298 back to the community. Together, we can have the state lead and guide others as we navigate this extraordinary proposition to improve health outcomes and address health disparities of the4315 current MIEP. I would like just to close with, we continue to uphold our commitment to improve the outcomes of all who live and work in the facilities across the Commonwealth.
We are stronger because of the relationships we fostered with legislative leaders, administrative officials and federal partners. We ask for your continued support and partnership as we continue to grow and accomplish these goals together. We believe that we are on the front lines in making a difference in each day striving to make that a reality. I thank you again for having us here today, and we would be happy to answer any questions. I'll just end with when you look at criminal justice reform, and I take this from my District Attorney who took this from one of his mentors and I hope they bring this up as they speak after. The victims in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts have become invisible and the defendants have become the victims. I'm asking us to always put a handout to help others, we believe in second chances, we believe in putting people on a path to succeed but let's not forget the people, the quiet people in the community who have been victimized, the communities that have been vandalized, and those that have been horrified. Let's remember that sometimes a stint in your county jail facility, if done the way we are showing we're doing it, could put someone's life on a path that is going to change the rest of their life for the betterment of them, their families in the community in which they live. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
At this time, I'd like to just let Sheriff Pat Kaye Halleen speak on an issue he has.
PATRICK CARLEY - HAMPDEN CO SHERRIFS DEPT - Thank you all for allowing us to speak and we appreciate you coming to Western Mass on such a beautiful sunny day, but I promise to be very brief. A couple of points that I would like to illuminate from a financial difficulty over years. Each year, I would submit a responsible budget that's based on fulfilling the core mission of my office. When the courts place people in our care, the expectation is that those people will be in a better position to succeed as family and community members when they are released. All of the Sheriffs in Massachusetts practice reentry that is based on their community's needs, and every community is a little bit different. We achieve this as we already heard from Sheriff Cocchi by emphasizing substance use disorder treatment, medical and mental health services, education programming, and successful partnership with external partners. As an example, in my department, I'm working very successfully with the4505 Department of Parole through the undersecretary4507 of public safety to give people an opportunity that are being paroled, that had no other housing, a place to stay until they can get housing4517 outside of the secure facility.
The budget I4521 submit is based on the true and predictable needs of my office, which is required to achieve our mission and our legal responsibilities that we have to uphold to the citizens of our community. However, over the years, the mandates of criminal justice reform, the MPTC requirements for some of our staff, FMLA and PFML are representing a larger and larger portion of my annual allotment and those of many other agencies. These are areas that also drive our overtime costs within a facility because we have to replace the people that leave, and we have to make sure that the posts are filled. My budget, which has been chronically underfunded, and that's well documented in past legislative studies just further becomes destabilized by the unpredictability of demands for our services and there are more and more demands that are made every day as Sheriff Cocchi has spoken to regarding the individuals that are coming into our care and our custody. Simply put the budget is now growing4599 in a proportion that outgrows our mandates and so that becomes problematic. I, along with my fellow Sheriffs, are supportive of the legislative actions that have been taken, and we're working diligently to meet in many cases and exceed in most cases the requirements of4622 legislation that4623 has been enacted over4624 the last four or five years.
But there are unintended consequences of some legislation that have created an unstable fiscal reality that has the potential to compromise some of our core mission practices based on the costs that are just continuing to rise day in and day out, whether it's where we are as far as medical concerns and treatment of individuals, that is going to continue to rise. The other4655 issue that comes into play with that is the ability to hire qualified individuals to do that treatment and that becomes a problem across the Commonwealth and we're seeing it when some agencies on the outside are offering much more than we as Commonwealth agencies can offer those individuals when they come to work for us. So I respectfully ask this committee to carefully review the FY 24 budgets, and I have submitted and given special consideration to the impact that unintended fiscal realities will have on my ability to provide services to those who are in my care. I thank you for all the considerations, and I hope we have continuing dialogue over the months ahead. Thank you. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Hearing no questions?
I got questions.
Thank you, Mr. Cheah.
XIARHOS - I'll be quick. Sheriff, fantastic presentation, I can tell it's in your heart and I like the way you talked about preventing crime so we don't have people in prison but when they do go, or have to, the way you treat them is important, as well as your corrections officers. So the mental health and wellness of the officers I noticed you talked about, and I appreciate that as well. The pay, we have Bills in the House and Senate right now to make everyone paid the same, all across the Commonwealth, it sounds like they should be. That's House Bill 2338 and Senate 1519. Two other quick things, when I was4766 a police officer, I had parents tell me, that they were glad that their child was incarcerated especially when they struggled from mental health and addiction which many of them do, and sometimes it's both. They knew they were in a safe spot and that they would get the help they need and that was important to hear that. Lastly, Matt Tidman, corrections officer, was attacked by an incarcerated person, struck with a free weight, had his head caved in, thank God he survived, that was in a state prison, what I'm wondering, what do you do about exercising safety of the officers and fellow inmates in the exercise area.
COCCHI - Thank you. We do have a staff fitness room but more importantly, on the offender population,4826 we have a Rec deck and in the housing units, we also have non free weight type of nautilus equipment where they can work out. But more importantly, we try to get them away from pushing the weights, and we get them into mindfulness programs, and we get them into working out with what we have, staff fitness individuals that do cardio things, things that get them away from watching TV and away from playing dominoes and get them actively engaged. But the number one thing we do is we exercise the brain, we bring them to a program's building, we teach them skills, graphic arts, carpentry, welding, sewing, custodial maintenance, an arbiter's program, serve safe, things that when they leave incarceration, they have something tangible to walk down to the next place of employment and say, I deserve a shot and they'll walk into that appointment with us, a representative of the Sheriff's office, and we will vouch not only for their training, but the stent they did while they are incarcerated, their behavior, their ability to be sincere about making a change, and we put our reputation with them to succeed.
But again, we talk about reentry services and we talk about, so we help people get jobs but we also employ an employment retention specialist to go and visit them while they're at work, making sure they're going to work, because what happens, I've been in this business for over 30 years, and it's changed, but unfortunately, it's like a cyclical cycle. What I've seen is that people that are on probation or parole do extremely well in the community. When probation and parole, is done, people start to now no longer have a4948 hand on their shoulder, and they start to make decisions4950 that are in4951 the best interest of their recovery. I'm a firm believer in post release supervision to some extent, not to suffocate somebody because you have to give them the tools and the resources to succeed but to have a helping hand. Out of the 100 people that walk through our all inclusive support service a day, maybe seven are mandated to be there, 93 others come on their own free will because we built relationships with them, we expect and we want them to succeed. So there's a lot of good work that's happening and part of it, we talk about mind, body, spirit and we have a very holistic approach in all the Sheriff's Officers around the Commonwealth.
This is evidence based stuff, we're not rocket scientists, I'm certainly not. It's evidence based things that make sense and that have proven statistically5002 good results. After being in the business for three decades, I've learned the best thing you can do is borrow, copy and emulate programs around this country or around this commonwealth that work. You can take the pride and put it off the table and take somebody else's good work and hopefully turn into something successful for our department.
SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
you, sheriff. Thank you, Chair.
Thank you. I got one quick question, Adam Gomez. Sure.
WILLIAMS - This comes from Gary Porter through me, I would be grateful if I would ask the question, how are you working with the only black month, the health agency in Hampden County, the Avid Astra Mental health association. What steps can we do to come to work with this association?
COCCHI - So I did have a chance to speak with Gary previous to coming up and speaking and we're going to set set up a meeting and sit down and talk because it makes sense. One philosophy that we have as the Sheriff's departments and the sheriff's officers around the Commonwealth is our population of men and women that work there need to represent and resemble the population of5070 men and women who are incarcerated in our offices from a diversity standpoint. The same has to go through for that relational model to continue to reintegrate back to the community is to let our men and women gravitate to a place where they feel most comfortable for services because if you're working and you're attending your substance use meetings that you need to be at, and if you have the wraparound services that are engaged, you have employment and housing, you have the three legs in a stool that can keep you on a path of recovery and sustainability. You lose one piece of that stool, one leg of the stool, that stool will collapse, and we've seen that over time. So I'm very much looking forward to meeting with Gary in talking about SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
it.
Thank you.
Senator Gomez?
Sheriff Coachy, thank you for your testimony and your colleague. I don't know what district you represent, but I apologize.
Sorry. Hampshire County. Hampshire County. Thank you so much.
Oh, okay. Well, it was my pleasure.
SEN GOMEZ - Just one question specifically5138 a little bit towards the district that I come from. I'm very humbled to know Sheriff Cocchi, I know all the great things that you do in your county and obviously, in partnership with the rest of your colleagues. This one is kind of a little troubling to me is in House One, it eliminates the Hampden Sheriff Section 35 program. This program was proposed in the Governor's FY 2023 budget and was not included in the FY 2023 GAA. Will this program H1 recommended in the Section 35 treatment and the facility investments under the office of the Secretary of Administrative Finance? And if so, how?
COCCHI - Our Section 35 program is DPH licensed, period, one of the best in the Commonwealth. Our average stay is 52 days, the average stay anywhere else in the commonwealth is somewhere around 21 to 25. Why? Insurance, we don't do insurance, we're providing a service to people who are in peril. People cannot be dying behind dumpsters, they can't be dying in cars, they can't be dying5234 in abandoned buildings, we have to show them the respect to see and reach out and show them that there's a better tomorrow. So the Governor's budget gave us approved spending of $14,000,000, that's a great thing from A&F. If you shut our program down, you will close down essentially half the beds in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for Section 35. I received that phone call on Christmas Eve, I received it of a female who passed away in one of our5265 bands going from5266 a lockup in Chicopee to a place down a time. Since then, a great complement to the legislature, we've opened up some section 35 women's beds in greenfield, Western Massachusetts has those beds now.
We have 140 bed Section 35 facility on campus in Lelo and right now, our count today is about 112. It never drops below 100, and in the summer months, unfortunately, it gets up to where it's a one in one out cases but nobody gets pushed out of that facility based on necessarily a need for a bed. It's when they're ready and prepared to go back to the community.
GOMEZ - If anybody has a chance to visit this facility, I promise you, Sheriff Cocchi, he means it's second to none, and it was something that popped out on me that I was concerned for because I know how essential this program is, not only to the Hampden County, but to the rest of the5325 Commonwealth. So thank you for your answer, and thank you for your testimony, Sheriff.
COCCHI - I would just like to say for the record and for the minutes. A lot of people don't they don't think we can't do the job, they just don't like the fact that a guy wearing a badge does it. There's not one parent I've met who's lost a son or a daughter or anybody who's lost a family member to addiction. Now when I5347 meet them, they said, I wish I had my son or daughter or my husband or my wife with you because you can't get them back. So let's take this and put it in my pocket and realize that a DPH license facility is exactly what it is. A DPH license facility second to none, I would ask for each of your support in making sure we continue to provide that service to our community. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Yeah. Absolutely have my support. And I was on board from day one. Realized how important it was being a trial court and a digital probation officer when we didn't have that service. So thank you for your testimony sheriff and no Chair, I'd be remiss if I didn't introduce miss Carrie Hill, who is the executive director of the Massachusetts Sheriff's She is the 1 that many of you will seek out, and she disseminates to a very difficult job trying to wrangle in 14 and sheriff's more on the comm hall.
Yeah. Good luck. Pretty5406 much for the constellations.
But thank you. Alright.
Thank you, sheriff. We got the d a's5410 on deck. Thank you.
Good afternoon.
Thank you. We do have our illustrious d a's SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
here, my DADA gomoni, and by way, a background5422 when we have chief justice Bud. Chief justice Bud was here. Her grandfather, her father, role models for me as I was coming up in the city of Springfield. And his dad, Frank Gollone, was my role model when I was coming up going to the trade school and also His dad was very instrumental working with then Edwin Piggarvey who started this fine institution. So they were the brain brain child behind it. So I wanna always thank you what your family has meant to me, your dad, especially. So with that being said, The floor is USDA.
Thank you, representative Williams. No greater introduction than talking about my father, and that means the 1 out to me. And I try to live up to his example in the work that he did every day. And I I haven't reached it yet, and I don't think I ever will. But thank you for the Who's driving?
I will.
ANTHONY GULLUNI - MASSACHUSETTS DISTRICT ATTORNEY ASSOCIATION - Thank you. I am delighted and honored to be here. I am Hampden District Attorney, Anthony Gulluni. Springfield is one of my 23 cities and towns in this district, I'm honored to represent my colleagues and myself before the esteemed panel. I appreciate Chairs Gomez and Williams and all the committee members for having us and allowing us to speak to our financial needs and request and we may efforts to be here and to represent our group. President of the Mass District Attorney's Association, Tim Cruise, was here and had to go, Worcester District Attorney Joe Earley was here and had to go and Northwest District Attorney David Sullivan was also here. I'm joined by two of my colleagues who I'm sure would like to introduce themselves. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
So to my right.
Good afternoon. I'm Mary and Ryan, the Middlesex District Attorney. Now,
I'm Timothy Shogou, the Berkshires County District Attorney. Thank you.
GULLUNI - Again, thank you for allowing us some time. I am currently the vice president of the Massachusetts district attorney's association and again, I have the honor of representing myself and my colleagues who I consider distinguished public servants. I want to begin my remarks by expressing our gratitude, all 11 District Attorneys, thanks to you all for your support over the years. The ways and means committees and the legislature as a whole has been very generous and supportive of District Attorneys and our very important work in this Commonwealth. In particular, I would like to highlight the work that you all have done in supporting the assistant District Attorney's salary reserve which has essentially allowed our offices to strengthen, to mature, and to better serve our communities and to make our Commonwealth a stronger and safer place. As you all know, Assistant District Attorneys just a few years ago and had a statutory floor salary of $37,500.
These are attorneys obviously have gone to law school, who work5595 every day in the courts of the Commonwealth very hard to support and represent victims, to support our communities, to prosecute very often very complicated cases and make weighty decisions that affect people's lives, victims5610 and5610 those charged with crimes. So the5612 salary we we felt was woefully low and through your advocacy and your support and the legislature support, we have now been able to raise those assistant district attorney salaries to $72,500 on par with other government attorneys, NAGE, Council one positions, which was our goal. So over the last few budget cycles, your leadership, your support has gotten us there, and we are deeply grateful for that. I will suggest to you all and I think it's already something you know that our ability to retain lawyers, to have prosecutors grow in our offices, get experience, do their jobs as best as they possibly can, not only improves our offices, it improves our communities and the constituents we all serve.
So without you, without your support, we wouldn't have that and we've done a much better job, we've been much more capable of retaining lawyers and therefore making our offices stronger, more experienced, and better, so I thank you for that. It's also allowed on a personal level, I have about 85 Assistant District Attorneys who work most of them anyway, just a half mile or so from where we sit today, they are all passionate public servants, they love their work, they love love working on behalf of victims love working on behalf of their communities and supporting public safety and doing all the things that are so important about DA's offices and many of them can do it now as a career, and they can support their families and they can buy homes. Obviously, in this day and age, $37,000 or $40,000 makes that very difficult. Now many of5707 the lawyers in my office, and all our offices across the Commonwealth can really stay as prosecutors and do the job that they're passionate about, and they can do so and buy a5717 home and have a livable wage and live a good life5720 and again, that's due to your work, and we appreciate it immensely. I will now transition to our specific requests, and again, I'm doing this on behalf of President Tim Cruise who had to go.
I'm going to read from some of the things that are sort of technical that I don't want to be inaccurate about. So forgive me as I read from our specific request and again, I appreciate you're listening and your advocacy for us District Attorneys. District Attorneys offices have submitted budget information5749 and request to your offices. We were asking for a 5% increase to our operating accounts and for the annualization of the FY 2023 salary reserve. I will talk at more length about that, but that is critical, that will essentially allow for the raises that have already been given and funded for half a year to be annualized and essentially made sustainable and permanent in our offices. So in other words, Assistant District Attorneys, as I talked about, have had raises pursuant to the monies that have been appropriated. Now, we need the money to sustain that over the course of the next fiscal year and going forward. So that is obviously critical without that money, we would have to withdraw raises and we would have very upset people working in our offices to say the least.
More particularly, a request for a 5% increase is based on our many increasing costs. The fastest growing5802 costs is the result of the increased use of body worn cameras by police as more and more departments employ this technology. We are happy that this technology is becoming more commonplace but with it is a lot more work for our offices. We need additional staff for the very time consuming task of downloading the hundreds of hours of body camera footage as well as we're required to review and provide as discovery to defense counsel. We also need to purchase large capacity storage required for all the camera footage. The video files are so large, we are required to store them independent of our network,5836 so each office is responsible for those costs. These costs continue to grow as the number of police departments using body cameras increases. I would just add that I think all the District Attorneys and certainly I, with the city of Springfield, having body worn cameras now for a fairly lengthy period of time, one of the first department, certainly one of the first big department, Senator Gomez in the Commonwealth. It's been a terrific thing, I think, for public safety, for officer safety, for prosecutions.
We've had very serious incidents, including police involved shootings, where the body worn camera footage was absolutely instrumental to my making a decision about the proper use of force and it really served the community in a very important way. I think Representative Williams and Senator Gomez could could speak to this, to have, you know, uncontroverted evidence of a police involved shooting from a body worn camera really made a potentially volatile situation really very calm because we were able to substantiate the decision, what happened to that particular police officer, what happened in that circumstance by the the footage. So they're very important, but again, it comes with significant costs. The next issue that we would suggest supports the basis for a 5% increase is that we have non attorneys in our offices, I have about 100. And5923 in particular legislature, you all have recognized and worked hard to improve the salaries of Assistant District Attorneys as I talked about over the last several years through the reserve fund.
However, we also request this 5% increase humbly to our operating accounts to improve non attorney staff salaries in our offices. Our budgets have had to absorb so many increasing expenses that we5946 have not been able provide in many instances across the Commonwealth adequate or any raises to our administrative staff and victim witness staff. Our offices like many other agencies and private businesses are operating with less staff than we need. Employees are taking on additional responsibilities and it is essential that we recognize and compensate them for it. Related to this, many of our offices have lost large numbers of these non lawyer employees to other employers even other state and local agencies that are able to pay them more money than we can. These employees work incredibly hard every day dealing with the public, shepherding victims and witnesses through some time arcane criminal justice processes. They're the girding of our offices and we hope with your help that we can increase their salaries to meet rising living expenses here in the commonwealth.
Again, I have upwards of 90 or 100 non lawyer staff, many of them are victim witness advocates. As I mentioned, they're working directly with victims of crime, with witnesses who are pulled into the criminal justice system through no overt act of their own, really innocently and they're very hard jobs because they're dealing with people in crisis, they're dealing with emotional people who have been harmed by someone else. In superior court cases and district court cases in a very serious way and many of these employees across our 11 offices in the Commonwealth have not seen the sort of raises and increases anywhere near where our lawyer staff has. When I tell you, they are really the framework of our offices, our support staff people, our advocates, do such incredibly hard work and without them, we couldn't serve the public in the same way. So that 5% increase or requesting is really much of it directed at getting their salaries up to match the rise in cost here in the Commonwealth and to compensate really for years now across our offices where they have not gotten any kind of raise.
Our expenses have also significantly increased over the past several years and our budgets have not kept pace. However, in addition to the cost associated with police body cameras, we're facing significantly increased costs6078 associated with DNA testing, expert witnesses and their travel expenses, software used for investigations,6084 and the increasing costs of licenses for Microsoft Office 365, for example, which are required to have in order to remain part of the state's email system. Additionally, we're seeing an increase of complex cases from litigation of the use of breathalyzer instruments to defendants with mental health and addiction issues. These cases are more time consuming, last longer in duration and are more costly to ensure a just result. Speaking to that just very briefly, as things have gotten more complicated, so over prosecutions and expenses post pandemic in the glut of cases that resulted have really increased our costs.
As the local Representative and Senator, know, we're trying a lot6130 of cases in the Hampden District Attorney's Office, and I think that's consistent across the 10 other offices as well. Getting caught up with really a complete stoppage of court work over the course of the pandemic. So we've tried, I think, five murder cases in6145 the last month in Hampden County along with dozens and dozens of other kinds of cases and expenses have increased, as I mentioned, expert witnesses, we're doing more and more DNA testing, FIGG testing or genealogical DNA related testing is now becoming more mainstream and a real tool for prosecutors and police to solve cases. We've used it in a lot of cold cases or unresolved cases to great success, and it is the way of the future but it's very expensive, especially as the technology gets online and becomes sort of a more commonplace, so that is also a part of our requested increase.
As I mentioned before, this is really one of the most critical pieces that I'll mention to you is the ADA salary reserve. This is in addition to our request for a 5% increase for each office.6194 We're requesting last year's assistant District Attorney salary reserve to6198 be annualized into our individual budgets so that we can sustain the ADA salary6203 increases mandated in6205 the FY 2023 budget. As I mentioned earlier, this fund, which has broader ADA salaries, up to other government attorney salaries, is initially funded for half year, we are not asking that this reserve account be newly funded in FY 2024, but we do need the full year of funding totaling $10,000,000 from the FY 2023 budget for these new salaries. This increase will maintain the salary increases that have already been instituted through the legislature's appropriation. This is only for that purpose, and cannot go towards other costs in our office and that is absolutely critical as I mentioned. There are two sort of specialized accounts that I'll mention now which have been funded by the legislature for some time.
These are two reserve accounts funded under MDAA and they are the retention fund and the drug diversion and education fund. The retention fund is traditionally this fund was for the purpose of retaining the mid level prosecutor with at least three years of experience, that was a statutory language. Last year, the legislature removed the restriction that it could only be given to Attorneys. We ask that this be level funded at $750,000 and the language of the line item again allow it to be given to all staff for retention purposes. The adjustment to that language was made by the legislature by you to allow for that money to be given to non lawyer staff. As I mentioned, we're having probably more difficulty now retaining those non lawyer staff members and this allowed us to give some of that money to victim witness advocates and to staff members and made a great difference to provide a small amount of money. That $750,000 is divided between the 11 offices, so it amounts to a substantial but relatively modest sum and it allows us to then pass on to non attorney employees with that change in language, and we ask that respectfully, you do that again.
The second reserve account is the drug diversion and education fund. This is used by our offices not only for drug diversion, but also prevention efforts. We ask respectfully that this be level funded at $499,950. Well, each office's portion is only $45,450, it has a real impact on our programs and our communities. We use this funding differently depending on the need within our counties. I can tell you, Senator Gomez has probably seen, we use it to support community organizations, we've actually used it to a large extent in the last few years to buy NARCAN that is then supplied to first responders, particularly in small towns where their budgets can't sustain the need for NARCAN, really through the program in partnership with Bay State Hospital here in the city of Springfield, we've been able to provide NARCAN to communities that just frankly can't afford it. So now it's in almost every ambulance in Hampton County, it's in almost every police cruiser, we provide that NARCAN through the money in this fund to these first responders for free. So there's obviously a system to make sure it's it's handed out responsibly, they get it at Bay State's pharmacy and police departments and fire departments and ambulance companies will go and pick it up.
It's really allowed for NARCAN to be much more prevalent, much more available on the streets of Hampden County, and we all know that saves people's lives and that's incredibly important to me, incredibly important to my office and other district attorneys have used it in similar ways. My next request is on behalf of the Massachusetts District attorney's association, MDAA, as you all know, supports the district attorney's offices by managing our statewide business technology services, providing prosecutor and police trainings, and working on budgetary6431 and criminal justice issues on our behalf with other government entities. MDAA's entire network account and the majority of its operating account are spent on technology for the 11 district attorney's offices. They are essentially the technology hub for the 11 district attorney's offices and everything that we do, Internet and so on and so forth, runs through the Mass District Attorney's Association.
One of our biggest technology challenges is the increased use of body police cameras or I inverted that police body cameras as I mentioned before. The uploading, downloading, and viewing of streaming or of body camera footage has caused an incredible strain on our statewide network such that any 1 office could slow down the entire network for the other 10 district attorney's offices and the Mass DAA's Association. This means, for example, a prosecutor6480 downloading and reviewing body camera footage in Springfield can cause staff in Boston and across a state to have non responsive email and an inability to access our case management system or web based product. So our system is stretched so thin because of the increased usage that one individual or one task can really have ripple effects across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. For instance, causing folks not be able to access email. So given the work that we do, that's, quite frankly, a public safety issue, it's very, very important. In light of that issue, we are respectfully requesting $500,000 to upgrade the connection speed of at least 20 of the main and largest DA's offices location.
So that improvement to 20 of those sites within the Commonwealth will have an impact across the Commonwealth and for all the District Attorney's offices. We also request respectfully an additional $400,000 to upgrade the Mass DA Association common uplink to the executive office of technology services. Our offices receive our Internet, email, and etcetera, through MDAs uplink, to EOTS. As the need for better connectivity increases for our offices, so do the needs for MDAA's connection to EOSTS Without an upgrade to MDAA's uplink the end users in our offices will see little improvement from the upgrades made within our offices. Essentially, the network demands would bottleneck at MDAA's connection without this upgrade. Therefore, in order for our offices to realize better network speeds and eliminate brownouts, we're respectfully suggesting that we need upgrades to our offices connections as well as MDAA's connection to EOTS for a total cost of $900,000.
So in other words, the first request of $500,000 and the second request of $400,000 are symbiotic, we need them both to make any difference at all. That's sort of unfortunate because it's a considerable amount of money, but the fact is we can improve the connections in the data on the ground, but if we don't improve that connection to EOTS from MDAA, as I mentioned, it will bottleneck. So the two upgrades sort of run together. So we respectfully request a total of $900,000 to make those critical upgrades to our technological services that again are due to increased technology resources and body worn cameras in particular. Those are our requests. Once again, I'm deeply grateful for your work over the last years in your advocacy, the time you've afforded us today to talk about our financial challenges. I'm happy to take any questions, SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
and I'm sure District Attorney Ryan and district attorney should group are as well.
Thank you, district district attorney governing for your testimony and and your colleagues, looking to my left, any questions? Just a comment. No problem. Senator Goby.
Thank you, miss. Yeah. And thank you. And
GOBI - I do want to thank you for the work that you're doing on DNA, I think you're familiar that we've been working with the forensic oversight board as well as heatherbich in the past on a familial DNA. And I'm just curious if you have any comments relative to the use of what you think the use of familial DNA could do for you?
MARIAN RYAN - MASSACHUSETTS DISTRICT ATTORNEY ASSOCIATION - I think it's a wave of the future, if you've had an opportunity to see our office has been fortunate enough in the past couple of weeks to make a resolution in two long outstanding cases. I'll just talk briefly about one of those which occurred at an act in train station over a decade ago, a young woman waiting for a train on an early Sunday evening standing alone, she was using her cell phone,6716 she was approached by an individual who as soon as she finished the call, brandished a knife and sexually assaulted her. When he had completed that act, he threw her cell phone away, and left her there. This was 10 years ago and we forget there weren't cameras there, there weren't lots of other points of access. She crawled around in the dark until she located her cell phone. Once she found it, she called the police, police came, they did everything completely appropriately, she went to the hospital as sexual assault evidence kit was done.
We were fortunate enough to get a complete DNA profile, which in itself is an incredible bonus, that profile was uploaded for eight years being searched through KOTIS with no results because obviously somebody has to be in KOTIS to make that match. Using some of the forensic genealogy, we were able to begin developing a family tree. One thing that's really important is using that technology is really only a piece of an investigation, it doesn't get us to a person that we can charge with a crime. But we were able to develop a family tree and going backwards came up with a person of interest who matched in part the DNA profile that we had, we knew from the genealogy and also who lived in town.
Police began thinking about ways that they might be able to approach that individual, was there a way to do that? About 18 months went by, and then that individual was involved in a traffic accident. Police responded, they found in the car nip bottles that had been drunk by the6810 individual driving the car. Also, as you probably always seen, when the first responders come, there's a lot of medical waste that's left on the street after they've6818 been treated, they collected that, we analyzed the DNA from the fireball bottle as well as from the medical waste and got a complete match to the profile we had been uploading for 10 years. That's the story of the case, we were then able to make an arrest and begin the process of bringing that person to resolution. What that doesn't tell and what I think, you know, I credit all of you for sitting here all day hearing us come and ask for money but I think what it does speak to is the human piece of what we do because we were then able to reach out to that young woman 10 years later, now married and living out of state and the first thing she said was after everything I went through, I thought people had forgotten about me.
It's hard to put a price on that, that was an incredibly expensive set of prosecution needs in terms of doing that testing. Like anything else, I assume that we'll get to be more affordable. Right now, it is a very, very expensive piece of what we do. I'm fortunate in Middlesex that we are a big enough office that we can accommodate some of those because we did another one a week later but that is going to be what we're going to have to offer people. It is also going to require a lot more research and litigation, there are appropriate privacy concerns about using the commercial genealogy sites, we're going to have to be able to accommodate all of that. I feel especially here in Massachusetts, we are a hub of technology, we owe it to everybody in the system on both sides of the case to use the most updated technology, get to the best answers, and also avoid the situation that we've now seen all too frequently which is 20 or 30 years after someone has spent their time in custody, we find through new testing that perhaps that wasn't the right result. So that will be money well spent, but it is a substantial sum of money that all of us will be looking at spending. But it is that human face that we sometimes lose in all of this.
GOBI - I appreciate that and we can have further discussions on that. Because as you mentioned, no, there there is a cost to it but, you know, the cost of not doing it as well. And as you mentioned, it can be used as much to exonerate as it can be to to prosecute, right? Out of curiosity, how much would you say that that cost?
RYAN - For that one case, I would say close to $100,000 in total because you pay for testing by the sample, you often have to test a6981 lot of samples, you obviously then want to be6984 to ensure that you've ensured the defendant's constitutional rights of child, you've eliminated any other prospect
GULLUNI - And then you have to pay for the witnesses, so the cost, you know, it sort of mushrooms once you have a prosecution from that case, you're then flying an expert in who did the testing, and those costs will mount significantly. Senator, you know that the work we've done on unresolved cases, in particular, the Zager case,7010 we're using the same technology as district attorney Ryan talked about on two unresolved murder cases. One in the city of Springfield that I did an announcement on recently. So we're using it much more commonly, you know, Maryan told a wonderful story about how it works. It is going to reap benefits. It's gonna make a difference for victims in this commonwealth, for criminal justice, in this commonwealth, but it's expensive. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Yeah. Thank you very much. I appreciate that.
Alright. I have two questions. Justin? Okay.
GOMEZ - I have two questions and then we can move on. My first question is in H1, it7048 recommends $3,300,000 for district attorneys wide area network, an increase of $906,000 from the FY 2023, which was level of $2,400,000.0 And the question is, as most courts we heard from our trial courts, most courts continue to conduct business virtually whenever possible. How will that level of funding help maintain the district attorney's office IT infrastructure?
GULLUNI - Well, Senator Gomez, I appreciate the question. It sounds like not having those numbers in front of me that that is an increase reflective of our requests that would improve our technological capabilities as I laid out. You know, in one sense, when you talk about Zoom hearings, we've been very fortunate that our Sheriff who you just heard from has worked with the trial court to allow for remote arrangements and so on and so forth but our work really as District Attorney's offices is in person. You know, there's very few things that when you talk about institutional rights in the work, in courtrooms that we can do virtually. We leverage that technology as much as possible but a lot of our work is sort of getting back to normal after the pandemic. From a technological standpoint, as I mentioned, I think the most pressing need and the biggest change is the wider use of body worn cameras. So I think that money, again, as it sounds to me, reflects the request that we've made to increase our capacities across the 11 DA's offices and for the Mass DA Association for that uplink to EOTS. So I would want to see it Senator Gomez, but I think that's that's, again, consistent with what we're requesting and would put us in a better position going forward.
GOMEZ - Thank you. My last question is another budgetary question. In H1, it's recommended that $1,000,000 for human trafficking prevention efforts under the executive office of public safety and security. This is a 50% increase from the FY 23 which last year was level funded for $500,000. How will this increase in funds, if made available for the District Attorney's offices to engage in human trafficking prevention efforts.
GULLUNI - So that I think is an outgrowth Senator of a pilot program that started four or five years ago, really with Lieutenant Governor Polito at the helm. Lieutenant Governor Polito felt very passionately about human trafficking, particularly kids who are being sexually exploited and decided to start a coalition with with two or three district attorney's offices, mine being one. And we7219 worked to collaborate with with EOPSS, of course, the state police, and other secretariat under her purview around what was really our understanding of the changing paradigm around working with human trafficking in that typically women,7235 most of the time women, sometimes men who are being trafficked and exploited are victims, they're not prostitutes, they're not doing things voluntarily. Typically almost all the time, they're dealing with mental health issues, substance use disorder, and they're being used as tools of profit by human traffickers. So the work is very intensive in terms of human resources as well as the expenses involved to work with7264 people being trafficked as victims and to then mount prosecutions for those who are profiting from prostitution and trafficking.
So it sounds like that money that could potentially be appropriated by the House and then adopted through the process will allow District Attorney's offices more broadly to work in this collaborative space with the state police, with EOPSS, with our own resources locally in a place like Springfield, right? Where this problem exists, sadly, where we can work again, on the front end with those who are being trafficked and prostituted and then mount from other people selling their bodies. That money will go a long way, the work that we've done in the last few years has brought about a dozen prosecutions, we've helped many women and other victims get away from those who are abusing them and exploiting and particularly with children. And this again happens, it's sad to acknowledge and think about, but children are being sexually exploited and we're able to then hold people accountable to the fullest extent of the law if we have the resources. So that sounds like money, frankly, that'll be very well spent across the Commonwealth. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Thank you so much for your testimony. All 3 of you and this is the end of, I guess, the show up. We have no more questions. I really appreciate all of you for being here and being so patient with us. Next up, we have the post commission, and I'll be handing the gavel back to the chairman.
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