but with that i was going to say patrick was supposed to go first and he was in to say a few things that i was going to lead into obviously that's not going to happen now i've got to fly by the seat of my fancy a little bit  so i was going to thank him for his involvement he had staff members that were involved with most of you're aware we had a fairly large scale investigation it took place about a three year long investigation involving patrick myles some of his staff members all and that was pretty rare to have that take place in west michigan probably the only one that's taking place in west michigan so i want to thank him for allowing his staff members to work with some of our officers along with the alcohol tobacco firearms  organization that group did this community i think a very big favor since then as most of you know there were thirty one members of a local gang that were indicted and since then our crime rates of dropped  little a little backstory about that as soon as this gang investigation started or was basically coming to an end myself and some other city leaders city manager city council members got together and said what can we do for this community what can we do for the kids of this community to give them some kind of alternative some kind of other choice beyond instead of joining these gangs so what we did is we thought that for us to decide let's go out and talk to them let's go and see what they have to say and what we can do what's the what's the one or two things that we can do to help that would help them the most so we went out to the boys and girls club we went up to skate ministries and we sat down with a very large group of kids and this had kind of a panel discussion with them a conversation about what can we do as a city to help you in the number one overall mean response was that to provide jobs provide summer jobs for us so what that does is i think two things what i've seen as has been in existence for three years now what i've seen is that it does two big things as many more but a few things i've noticed this when you join gangs obviously that are the there's a sense of belonging as a sense of family there's a sense of group  having these these teams of workers they go out they can come out and be with a five person team to go out in the community and provide services in get paid for it so does is allows them to be part of the family unit or team  also provides them an opportunity to have some in some and we all know it's you know you're involved again to those kind of things drugs and guns those kinds that takes place well there's a sense of belonging in this there's a sense of income and there's a sense of worth that goes along with going out and working as a group right so you need that up here so the so that was that was one of the things that was brought up at those that those meetings so we thought  let's do that so we partnered with mr west coast chamber manpower lakeshore advantage machine works we got all these groups together and come up with this holiday use connections program in that's been going strong for about oh this is this will be the third year and we have so many kids that have signed up we cannot provide jobs for all of them i don't know the exact numbers but it went from like sixteen or seventeen kids the first year to like eighty some we have hundreds of kids that are standing in line come out and work we just can't we just can't find the employee employers to do that so the one thing i was going to ask all of you today is yourself friends family anybody that you can think of that have that has a business or non profit or profit churches you know you name it could be any in the area these kids are staying alive a way for a job and like i said before every since this sort that those two things are helping out this community and you know you and i don't like bringing up gangs and gangs and gangs that we talk about that for years right so hopefully this is something that gangs or something of the past and we can look forward to the future so that's that's what my my hope is yes are fourteen to seventeen fourteen seventeen year old kids  yeah i have this here we have all this information in the back and it's a one thousand dollars per week you get a team of five kids and a supervisor adult supervisor that is with them at all times we provide transportation all the paperwork the filing as far as workman's comp pay all those kind of things not another cool aspect of that is we give them a debit card so they can they also learn how to set up their own bank accounts or not a deposit money withdraw money in some of these kids this is the first time they've been able to do that and i know for a fact i was out into a car park the last two years where we had the celebration of the end of the year and i've had conversations with these kids and i tell you it's it's it's well well worth it because i've looked into their eyes and they're like this this is the coolest thing and i said what it would do using the money for i you know i bought myself a new bike i save so much money for to give to my sister i've never had that i feel like one kitty so i feel free i feel free because the now could say i go out i can make money for myself spend it the way i want work with the team you can you can list ten reasons why this is good right so i doesn't want to bring that up today hopefully most of you heard about that i don't know if you have or have  not but at the end here will have a pamphlet and everything in the back they look like this you can certainly take them with you read up on it it's on our website as well so the website can go on there look it up so really want to bring that up so you can you can pass the word that we really need some some employers for the summer really lacking we've got way more here to have jobs at this point in time so it is it's a thousand dollars per week so it's up to you on how many how many weeks you want to hire that group of individuals summer that is probably from june through two or three months in the summer when they're out there and it's so many hours per day i have all the specifics of it but it's not like a full work day or four week it's a few hours per day yeah everything we go through machine works and they handle all that for us we haven't had any issues with that we don't necessarily screen for that we're trying to supply jobs to whatever kid needs a job so that's something that we haven't really screened for  program us fourteen to seventeen year olds are doing if we can to me is for for kids going in seventh or eighth grade so they're normally in that twelve to thirteen year old range so we want to do is bring them on board have come into our apartment this year we do how we do it most importantly why we do it they will they work with the fire department they have mock crashes we have a video back you can take a look at it when you leave that's they do a lot of fun stuff too you do laser tag and they play dodge ball and they  the structures of force with the spray them with fire hoses and all kind of things right so it's a real cool deal for him to come in and get to know us on a personal level and for me that this is an existence and since the late ninety's and for me it's extremely extremely important that we stop police calls it's not for you know they're not inviting us to dinner normally it's normally something negative there's an issue there that we have to deal with and we step in and it's it's not a positive experience most of the time because unfortunately we're either you know potentially arresting a parent or something negative that that has good right this creates a positive environment where kids can come in and say all i didn't realize that you do this and why you do this and this is after so and so are these are you just a normal guy or a normal gal just like everybody else and just because we put the uniform on doesn't make us different than anybody else so i think it's very very important that we have those kids come in at that age and to get to know who we are what we do those kind of things and hopefully from there they can go into this this work program so yeah yeah yeah well the last thing we want to have is this cost versus them mentality where we don't want to have that we want to we can't do our jobs without the community helping us and we understand that we have to have that  that relationship we have to have those partnerships we have to have that trust or our jobs are going to be here are difficult no question about it and the sooner we start the younger we start i think the better right if any other any other questions about yeah of taken that grass that that's our philosophy of policing is community policing is not a traditional form of policing in a lot of other departments went to that back in the early ninety's that was kind of the flavor of the week so to speak everybody went to that and then you see a lot of  in this philosophy ever since i think in the one nine hundred ninety s before i got here i got here in ninety one and it was already in place at that time the reason i say that is because all these officers are back here they're assigned to smaller geographic areas they know all the people that are in those areas they go to those homes they deal with neighborhood issues small neighborhood issues neighbor issues those kind of things so they do and they're in the school so they understand the the kids the understand the parents the prophecy planners back there she is our resource officer at the  specific program for that not necessarily we know one of our officers our computer crimes of us to gator did a seminar do something i think it was right here a couple weeks ago about how parents can keep track of their kids on the internet and how they're to to keep that relationship open because we all know nowadays everybody's faces are very the phones and computer screens if you don't have that communication that's the breakdown so we need to we need we did have that discussion a couple weeks back so do we have a specific program for that when the with the kids and parents come in not through us i'm sure there are other agencies that may have that but we don't have that specific program  and that was that was what i was going to mention toward the end today too is that you know we have well we have these programs but that you know that these may not be picks off for people if any of you in the faith community or elsewhere have to program that you think we could get involved in or we could have an answer show up once a week or be more involved in that we're certainly willing to partner with any of you try to provide that  well that makes us feel bad as well and that's why we're that's why we're here today and that's why esther and i got together and that's that's hopefully why we're all here today is exactly for that purpose for a fair and and like i said earlier we can't do our jobs without you we need your trust we need your commitment to what we do and that's that's why we're here i think patrick will hit mean there are some others that may be very well equipped to do that i may not be i would have all my knee out playing basketball but i think that's a great idea yes of those kind of events that get officers in his together adults to other you know it doesn't matter who wins or loses even though we like to win but it doesn't matter who likes it you know win or lose but no i think that's a great idea those are those are the ideas that that i like to hear coming back our way and we can we can tap those down and say let's just try to do this  actually question do you think our officers racial profiling well i think our job involves profiling that's what we we do that and i don't always necessarily racial profiling but we certainly our job is to that well i'm sure there's other there's all kinds of unconscious biases going on there's no question about that we all have that in our mind so it's an appearance saying no there is absolutely none of that going on i don't think that would be an accurate answer and i think we address it very very well we ought to numerous train policies and all those kind of things we do everything we can to prevent against it obviously for us but the biggest thing is when we hire people we ask those questions we hire him it we we go through great lengths and we hire officers to make sure they fit our culture and what we have isn't that the whole police department and we've done that for years and i really think it starts with the hiring process are there are conscious biases of course there are we all have them so that for me to say there isn't any no we do everything we can to prevent that there's no question about it and i think that we do a better job than probably a lot of other communities do here the data it takes for your traffic backups to figure out if what you say you're doing is really working like and you know you might get the fi set up a different program to do that we do not track those  very well because if we don't know where these people are driving where we patrol the most are we in certain neighborhoods they have to be set up by an outside independent agency to make sure it's statistically valid and we can disclose numbers ourselves because that doesn't really and it's been proven in court that those those numbers are the rest numbers of the worst numbers that you can bring up because arrests are normally a lot of them are dictated to us we show up at the scene say the mastic for instance we don't know who we're going to contact until we get there right and then once we make that contact especially with i think that sort of i think that's a policy issue for council to take up i think that's something that's more of a policy issue for people above me to make that decision are we are really afraid of it no i think i i don't think there's going to be a problem with it but that's something that's going to have to be a policy decision that would be made about my level  it members of the community around us we said that we go we meet every every month we gather all kinds of data we provide that to those individuals that we have a round table there's representatives from hope college grand valley you see their we look at certain problem areas and we may have we take suggestions from individuals that are there at the meeting and what we could do in their neighborhood to make things better all those kind of just this is an open conversation that we had  dialogue back and forth that should that should be on our our web page is best and then there may not be but the last i knew that it was sure we have we have to borrow millions on a regular basis we have training that involves that we have a huge training division i would say that would i would love our department against any other department in the state as far as training shoot no shoot identify and actions those kind of things we do that on a monthly basis we train more than probably any any other department that i know of we sent officers to the resound that's we do that every year there's conversation about it there's policy about it obviously it's talked about all the time now everyone's talking about it so you it's something that is on the forefront of everyone's mind so we do we do have those conversations and training just all i can share many many many of those stories all kind of thank you letters and everything that we've gotten especially over the last few months all kinds of positive comments about unfortunately people don't focus on those the focus on the negative aspect and to me you got to take the good with the what i would say is if you're serious about establishing a relationship with us and come in and see what we do how we do it and why we do it before you have any kind of judgment on what we do whether it whether you're being profiled whether you're not being profiled i want you to come see what we do so the other tasting is open to you as well  in but i'll be honest with the one we're we are oh you know we do have one of the highest rates as far as minority of employees as far as police departments and less machine or one of the most diverse there is here but having said that we need to get better and we've tried and tried and tried to get qualified candidates to fill those roles and the last couple years i'll be asking is going very very difficult to very difficult to fide because we could you have to go through the academy you have to be certified you have to have a degree all those kind of things so it's not like an other employments and you go through a background all those kind of things so it's a little bit different than just hiring for any other corporation would be great so i'm not going to stay in a deuce one of them right now because we are running behind on time but well what i will do is introduce patrick myles patrick is a native of grand rapids michigan you completed his undergraduate studies that aquinas college and is a harvard law school graduate in two thousand and twelve patrick was nominated by president obama to serve as the u s attorney for the western district of michigan he works with communities throughout michigan to bring countability transparency and work to build community trust he is an author and speaker  really good police force here we work with them very closely and you know we really are very blessed in this area that we have good law enforcement and we have good relationships among law enforcement as well the district that i cover for the u s attorney's office is actually forty nine counties it's about half of the state everything including lansing and all the upper peninsula so we have a wide variety of territory a wide variety of cities that we work with and a very large part portfolio of cases that we work and work on cases of course violent crime and firearms cases that are paddocks trafficking we have all the white collar and financial frauds and health care frauds as well as national security cases and we also work on civil rights cases for criminal prosecution of civil rights cases and civil civil rights cases so  you heard me say i'm a native of grand rapids and this area my parents were always very involved in growing up its community a lot of different organizations i was when i was in private practice for twenty years i was very involved in a lot of different non profits as a volunteer board member a lot of them were faith based hope network appliance college i was on their board for eighteen years growing up it's area y m c a and the inner city christian federation which does nonprofit housing  in the course of the grand rapids so i understand the role that nonprofits and faith based another community organizations and activists play in the community and now in this role working with law enforcement i really see the value of the importance of those groups working together we interact as i mentioned with the with with not just local law enforcement we interact with overriding of different law enforcement agencies we see you might have seen that  with the prosecution this is also a prosecution of the homeland kings here in holland it was my first week on this in this job and i was in a meeting with the police department the ottawa county african american community the latino community and the immigrant community in our district what i've seen over the last two and a half years the u s attorney is there are so many commonalities between law enforcement and these various communities there's a lot of commonalities they share the same goals they just have different means of getting there but they share the same goals they are everyone wants justice everyone wants justice every community people some leaders from a variety of different demographic groups and so on as well as law enforcement so you have representation from the ground up the police department from the michigan state police from the federal law enforcement from and those topics can range from there was a lot of a lot for example there was a lot of misunderstanding and misperception example in the immigration area that the the hispanic community felt that ice was coming in and doing just these big raids and round ups in the community and they were bringing dogs in they were going door to door and roasting people and saying where's your papers and what's going on and i said absolutely do not do that that is now what a lot of times that is are actually kind of bought bail bondsmen or bounty hunters and that kind of thing and they kind of they kind of trade almost betray themselves to be federal law enforcement but when you see a true federal law enforcement they'll have a jacket on and on the back it'll say in big letters yellow letters usually ice or f b i raid t f and and so there was a lot of misperception that ice usually when they when they do there they do very specific and very targeted approaches they know who they're going after they just don't go door to door and are checking people's papers that is not their policy don't have the resources to do that there was a very good discussion we had that over a year ago to kind of confidential discussions the room what is said in the room is meant to stay in the room so people can be open and candid and to build those relationships and build those that trust that's necessary i liked it because i thought it was very proactive in other words if you're in that of a crisis i was the worst time to very difficult time to try and develop a relationship with somebody when you don't have trust but to do it in advance and you know i have i know i can talk to sheriff so and so i know i can talk to the state police commander so and so i know i can talk to  the leader of the hispanic center that's very important that plays a really great role in that sort of understand and provide even some education and training for the community to understand some of the tactics that law enforcement is using and in their decision making and and here you know that they are thinking about these issues you heard the chief say that you know we we're thinking about these officer involved incidents you know on a monthly basis we're talking about training about shoot no shoot that kind of thing says no we don't do that but of course individuals do like the chiefs might have an individual biases and those are going to come into play and we try to address those so you get that kind of conversation and so it really allows i think for a wrap marathon bombing incident so we have a tabletop we have a tabletop exercise talk about what happens if somebody's at a major event like the you know the grand rapids for third bank river bank run or at a michigan state football game or wherever you know someone that needed a bomb who responds where's the tree at center where's the command center who's who's calling the shots who's going to do what when where how so we as long foresman think about these things in advance and we can because you don't want to have a crisis and then be scrambling around when really you should be addressing the initial need which is to you know home situation address the crime preserve the evidence and maintain control crowd control and so on so these tabletops really come in campus and with a rifle and start shooting who does what when you know what will the campus security do what will the you know lockdown procedures be so we're law enforcement is thinking it's part of the job to think these things through proactively and that's that proactive approach is something that i have brought even more so to the u s attorney's office where i've gotten are you assistant u s attorneys more involved in case development from the ground up from the beginning of a case not just at the end but really working to make sure the evidence was gathered properly so we don't have constitutional violations there and search and seizure and and to help develop the case you know from from from start to finish and that's our task force approach so when we  whenever we have a task force that's meant to be a proactive typo's of work but also part of that those task forces is to go out into communities and educate how to prevent crimes or how to identify crime so we've got people  been really strong believe that that these things prevention is part of our job not just prosecution but preventing crime is obviously the best the best approach so number one is violent crime and preventing violent crime and there is definitely a role for community intervention violent crime perfectly and i was going to do research on this fifty to seventy five percent of homicides shootings are by zero point five zero point five percent of the population so it's a very small shootings in urban areas are very concentrated in an area and it's a very small percentage of population that where the shootings are going on point five so less than a percent and what usually you see you know watch the newspaper read the newspaper and watch the news you know social bigger cities will see this it's usually young men typically african american ages eighteen to twenty six shooting each other ok so it's not very rarely random shot shootings occur but usually it's young men shooting each other and these are not criminal masterminds he's are not gangs these are not organized hierarchical like latin kings were they that was a that was a very organized but actually there's an inverse correlation usually the older the criminal are the less violent and more sophisticated the crime and so these are these are groups   they're not arguing about money oftentimes oftentimes it's about respect it's about you disrespected me or it's a girl issue boy girl issue you look at my girl you went out with my girl you talk to her something like this it's about peer a show that if somebody is a cousin or brother of somebody who's been shot they're likely to get shot at this proximity to is part of this the violence so these are very concentrated  you might might hear of heard or use of the phrase that you might have heard were street soldiers and their community approves what we're doing we're not a death of prison the enemy of my friend is my cops are against us and so these are these are this is part of that street code that's going on and so and the local police  community together because neighborhoods neighbors don't want this violence they do they they do not actually approve of this violence and so what you do is you are going to fight these who these groups and use your group is about twenty to twenty five people in that demographic that i mention and you may not get everybody but bay have one or two representatives do a call in at a community center at a church building or something like that and you have a very scripted  presentation by community people like community activists and leaders by mothers and grandmothers maybe who've lost a children a child to a shooting by local law enforcement and by the feds because actually and but deep down they hated prison and they hated every second of it and and that was state time federal time is a whole different animal than federal time it's gone we're talking five ten fifteen twenty mandatory years no parole but you're usually going on this trip as you're going out of state so you're going several states with you not going to get visited on the weekends by family or friends you're gone and so we've actually seen a lot of people at sent cry when they've gotten federal time because they you know they may have been arrested and done time many times before they have another third or fourth state allegation and done three four five years of a stint in other looking at twenty five years and that's that's a whole different sort of federal stop the next the next the next shooting we're going to crack down we are going to crack down and we typically in the federal we don't take every case we can we have limited resources so we take what are truly federal cases however we can do things w everyone take everybody off the streets and get them out the problem is when the federal prosecution withdraws what happens if this starts over again so it's just a cycle and so it's really not being smart and so this is kind of really with the purpose of saying we're going to do a crackdown because you you did another shooting now we're coming in you know because otherwise it's actually the violence by these young men is actually very rational you know we just all they don't have a moral center and these are dispraise of kids and the control you know they're actually acting very rationally they don't trust the police someone is trying to kill them so they're going to kill that person first that is extremely rational behavior by their code that is rational behavior so if you say so just if we just come in and say hey we want you to stop shooting each other or want you put your guns down they're not they're going to say that's crazy there's these guys if i put my guns on my guns with duel by that these guys will come over to shoot and kill me and i'm defenseless everybody and focus on the most violent groups and you see tell them you say look we're going to we're going to crack down then you're going to practice what's kind of saying you've got an excuse now to have a truce you have an excuse it's not any disrespect it's you're going to go federal or are called some serious state has actually now the state has a very serious career offender law too so you know it's we're trying to appeal to rational side there and this is worked  mayor and and took a group out to new york for the seminar on the cease fire you do have to it's costly i mean because you have to have consultants to come in to help you get that gather the evidence keep track of the evidence go through the call and do some of the kind of  to some these guys you do want to try to get them into some services you know if you don't call it mental health services because then they say that means i'm crazy but that but you say things like well i having trouble sleeping you know because suffering from that just post traumatic stress her traumatic stress disorder and so that's and so you have to have some of that you know help them get a job you know buy them an alarm clock so i can get up on time to go go off maybe they might need to be put in some kind of safe house while the guy who's trying to kill them is out there and they've disarmed themselves we have to put them up in a hotel or something for a little while so there is some money involved but it's something i'm going to be talking about more in each city i've got payer am offended the by the fact that over two million people are behind bars in america ninety five percent are going to get released one hundred ten thousand are really prisoners are released from american state federal prisons each week so six hundred fifty thousand are here and nationally two thirds are going back to the criminal justice system in three years two thirds that's a national stat state system and we spend six point five billion for loan and no budget and us united states government spent more than the total seventy four billion dollars on federal state and local correction seventy four billion annually i corrections and average thirty thousand crime because a crime another crime has been committed given therefore you have more victims here more law enforcement resources more prosecution resources more jail more prison resources being used putting pressure on an already overburdened system the federal system for percent which in the context sounds really great and the federal rate is forty percent that's still too high right i mean that almost a third are back in the system within three years  so that's just not as a case of the tax payer that's a terrible way to return on our dollars for rehabilitation and incarceration and again so the u s attorney general and a of u s attorneys like myself and a lot of others are talking about that it's a federal prosecution and law enforcement purdie to protect the public and to prevent crime and so reentry is an issue that we're addressing and it's a multifaceted challenge because you have behavioral issues with people in prison why they went in behavioral issues substance abuse issues lack of education lack of job skills like the training lack of employment opportunities  bad support systems fence a million and and friend support systems no mentors no role models are not honest employment opportunities you know one thing that we've we've seen and talked about are the check the box when someone applies for a job the very first page on the application is are you have you been convicted of a felony yes or no check yes mackey that pay that application goes out the door goes in the trash can you know that sally may have been a long time ago and may have been completely irrelevant to the job that  person is seeking but that the stigma and you're not going to get hired but i am not saying giving a job preference to x offenders over qualified people i'm not saying that at all nor am i saying put somebody in a were some these folks can work in grand rapids we have what's called the thirty two two program which cast the engineer and butterball farms did which is to find thirty companies to hire to x offenders for at least two years and a lot of these folks who've gone through that program have been fantastic a lot of success and some of them moved up in the supervisory management roles just because they got the opportunity to work and so that's what's going on there but where i believe that the community generally in the faith community specifically can play a role is providing mentors to some of these particular young men are men coming out of prison providing mentors because the role models people what it's like to get up every day go to work staying out of trouble lot of these young men who are imprisoned haven't had that in their life they really haven't seen what a man does how the man treats a woman properly and how a man takes care of his family properly providing procedures in place many police departments have procedures in place to remove suspicion and preserve evidence and communicating as much as possible but there's also a next step which is to have relationships with community an officer involved shooting and one of the recent things they've done is they've agreed with the michigan state police but the michigan state police will automatically capacity that crime whether crime occurred so it doesn't look like there's a conflict of interest but what there's a lot of procedures that are because now that's evidence right but it's very psychologically difficult for an officer to surrender his or her side on his that's their security and they feel vulnerable you know there's a crowd gathering and they're going to be unarmed and this crowd who knows maybe come out and they don't have and so actually there's a procedure where they can get another weapon to replace what they have to hand over kind of the evidence and that officer that's also kind of the escort is like basically telling them you know there's a little bit of shock here too don't go to the police station washing hands a change of clothes and take a shower that's all now evidence so there's someone there was thinking clear headed to help that person go through the steps they need to do to preserve the evidence so they have that buddy system really all especially not those twenty somethings you know they knew kind of who they vote from their community relations commission that kind of knew who the you know the elder statesman were in the in the black community particularly the pastors in the ministers and so on but you know what  radio host the guy who's on the afternoon show can really incite people what about you know the guys on social media who on facebook or instagram or what have you who can send out start sending a message isn't saying you know let's let's the come down hey i might need to come down here and use a bullhorn and talk to the crowd to say don't get too upset here's what's going on this is why they're doing what they're doing they can help really calm the situation so i'm having this because i want as u s attorney i will make sure that these local police force happen up through this and that they are reaching out to communities to in advance to to develop a relationship because i don't want nor none of us want to see you know the national guard or something crazy like that happening in our community you know that is not what we're about ye hope you know fast but i just think it takes you know some foresight in the thinking about these issues so that we don't see things devolving the way the way we think have been other areas so you know for the leaders in the community to get the people are looking to me for leadership and if i stand before them without strength and courage they too will fall so you know this is where the example set by the leaders in the shelves for purchase so that people don't falter and the leaders you know neighbors can help identify you know breaking that code of silence of identified who are the troublemakers and the drug dealers and never go to the hustlers in the neighborhood and the person to person interaction is very very important and so we've seen that and  there's a lot of information sharing that can go on at that local level so these you know these are things that are happening in the area and we're going to keep keep pushing him on these things so that you being here and listening and being a great audience thank you that again could be another way for the faith community to play a role to try and go into prisons and do some of the ngos and and say when you get out come to us and we'll help you you know will be your new family because the times people need to have a new yeah yeah i think they're slightly there's two there's two parts i think there's one part is again having an established relationship in this dance so that you know through and out pact or something so that if if if people have recurring concerns  where you know someone can always contact you know our office or the f b i say i believe civil rights people's constitutional rights are being violated you know that we're seeing unconstitutional stops and people just give a civilian review board or something like that here or your relations commission that in the night eighty's and ninety's there was the tough on crime approach build more prisons lock them up three strikes you're out and so and there was you know sentences were being lengthened being cut them were mandatory you know that was what the policymakers the legislators were responding to respond you know the voters seem to want that and so but we're now living with the consequences of that over overburdened prisons you know we spend twice as much to incarcerate as we do to educate you know so on and so now more recently you're seeing some people saying hit that didn't work you know we prisons are for you know forty percent over overcapacity and we're just federal funds available to the federal second chance act towards reentry that go directly i have no role in those will go directly to state and local governments for their programs and one thing that one thing that i had i have done is a program called facing choices where we work with the michigan department corrections and what we do with them is we organize a meeting of recent parolees people who just got out of prison  and we've done this in different cities like muskegon grand rapids come a zoo where we meet with the police and so they hear from the chief of police they are from the county prosecutor the here for me they hear from a federal agent like enough a t f and we give them the tough love speech saying you're out you can parole that's that's that's because you trust you've earned trust not keep it and there are some service providers here at this meeting that you can meet with talk about housing and job training and so on and so forth that are speakers of all because they're the ones because it's really easy for them to say look you know you're up there in a suit you've got an education oh it's easy for you you don't understand what i have to go through and i don't and so when they hear from an ex offender who says yeah i've been on the path i made some choices that now i'm  straight and it's worth it that's important so there are many you know i'm not allowed to lobby for legislation and so i can't say we should adopt this type of laws that have a lot of this type of funding but the your elected officials who are made his decisions can you know in terms of what kind of supports can be placed inside the prison like said michigan has started to reverse michigan has done so what's a profile your typical violent tear to someone as a concerned citizen mean yeah you can yeah we can talk more yeah i feel to help with that so you know just you know help advocate you know i can't i can't advocate for a specific program like i'm not allowed to do that either but i can  all right well first of all i know we did things a little fair words and i do apologize for that just a little glitch that happens often before you leave i do want to say one thing this is one of many events that i am going to be hosting in the community if your faith community is interested in hosting an event please feel free to say after and i'll get the information and will will get together and  identify some dates that can work in the future again thank you you know city government we take care of the roads we take care of taxes we assess taxes we do all kinds of things but we really rely on our f because you're the one who are the stewards of the spirit of the community of that which is good in the community and again we just thank you so much for being here there are some refreshments at the back of the room please feel free to help yourself all the they say they're the heart and soul they're out there working with neighbors every day so they're they're the ones that do all the hard work so thank you