I'm sorry, I'm sorry. you So good morning Captain Sean Gagan, I'm the director of our major crimes division here in Montgomery County. Good morning Captain Jeff Bungie, I'm the director of the Special Victims Investigations Division. Good morning Captain Rick, I'm the director of the Special Victims Investigations Division. Captain R. Kovary, Director of our Cleveland Investigations Division. Good morning. Lieutenant Lisa Inxram, I am the executive officer for the investigative services bureau. And good morning, Assistant Chief Nicholas Augustin. I'm Chief of Investigative Services Bureau, and I'll be going through the packet this morning. First of all, our opening statements is, you know, Montgomery County Police is committed to helping those that are vulnerable as well, those that go missing in our county. And we have established great partnerships within the department as well as outside the department with our federal agencies, state and local to ensure we have an adequate and quick response to investigating missing persons, whether it be juvenile missing persons or those with intellectual disabilities, dementia, and so on. We also look at our policies, and what we're also talking about today is how we've revised our policies to ensure we are doing the best practices to ensure the safety of our community. I'd like to thank Kristin for this great package she put together. It's not much I'm going to have to say after everything's included in this pack, but we're definitely going to go over this and answer any questions you all have this morning. But we appreciate the opportunity to be here today. Thank you Council Member Katz. So, to start with, I think we'll try to walk through the packet. I'm not going into too much detail on everything by highlighting some of the newer things. So starting with Maryland State Missing Person Systems, there's three primary systems for missing persons. In addition, there is a system for individuals involved with the killing or injury of the police officer. So in Maryland, we have the Amber Alert. The Amber Alert, also known as America's Missing Broadcasting Emergency Response Alert Plan, is a partnership between broadcasters, Maryland State Police, and local law enforcement agencies to spread the word about a missing child under the age of 18. There are very specific criteria that need to be met for an amber alert to go into effect. This includes the law enforcement confirming a child has been abducted. That they believe that the law enforcement confirming a child has been abducted, that they believe that the law enforcement believes that the circumstances surrounding the abduction may indicate that the child is in danger of serious bodily harm or death. And when an in-bure alert goes out, it is broadcasted on highway signs. If a vehicle is suspected to be involved through radio and through phone alerts amongst other means. Similarly, the silver alert system is specifically in response to missing individuals who've been diagnosed with cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer's disease or dementia. In Maryland, silver alerts can be issued both for vehicle and non-vehicle missing persons. And our officers will go over that a little more in depth, but the non-vehicular option is a fairly new update. The most recent update we have in Maryland is the purple alert system. This actually just went into effect on October 1st. And the purple alert system, this actually just went into effect on October 1st. And the purple alert was established to disseminate information to assist and locate a missing person who has a cognitive impairment, mental disorder, intellectual or developmental disability, or brain injury who is deaf, deafblind, hard of hearing, or late deafened, who does not meet the criteria for us over alert. And as mentioned earlier, Maryland also has the blue alert system. We did want to call this out as this was issued in Maryland earlier this year due to the death of correctional services agent Davis Martinez. I did want to just highlight as well that the public can subscribe to Blue Willard updates on the Maryland Stateplace website. I took over some of the more local Montgomery County updates for missing persons. Recently there has been a collaboration between MCPD and the Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security to use alert Montgomery as another avenue for missing person alert systems. There's also been several updates to missing person procedures, also known as functions 617. These include adding clarifying questions to the missing persons of the missing person's abilities to the search urgency evaluation form. The scoring of that form has also been updated so that now any score under 15 will trigger an urgent response. There has been updated documentation of caregiver and parent information and information on the autism IDD Alzheimer's dementia unit has been reflected to be updated with changes of the unit's name and responsibilities. I also wanted to highlight just some other things that are going on in other jurisdictions as well as federally. Disparities in how demographics of missing persons have been classified and reported have been drivers of recent changes to missing person alert systems across our country in various years. American Indian and Alaska Native Persons in the NCIC database, they amount to approximately 2% of the database, while the overall population in the US is estimated to be around 1.1%. You also see this over-representation with African-American black Americans who are reported to be approximately 35% of the total numbers of entries in the NCIC while being 12% of the U.S. population. So some of the federal change drivers that have been initiated in recent years to address this disparity include the Ashanti Alert System. This was a federal law that establishes a voluntary nationwide communication network to aid in the search and recovery of missing persons over the age of 17 who fall outside of Amber and silver alert systems. And very recently, as of this past summer, we have the MEP missing and endangered persons alert code. This actually was just introduced in August. And this new nationwide alert code is for missing and endangered people whose circumstances are outside of the criteria for amber alerts. The FBI has identified 188,000 missing persons in 2023 who fell outside of this criteria. It should be noted that the Maryland State Police Coordinator at this time has not drafted the criteria for using this code in Maryland but is is aware of it. And that is something that we might be able to see sent out over EAS alerts for missing persons in the future. In other states, we have missing indigenous person alerts or feather alerts. We have those for missing American Indian and Alaska Native persons. The first one going into effect in Washington state. And they're also seen in Colorado and California. the first one going into effect in Washington state. And they're also seen in Colorado in California. And in California, effective January 1st of this past year, the Ebeny Alert system was implemented. It was designed to show coordinated alerts in respect to Black youth, including young Black women and girls who are reported missing under unexplained or suspicious circumstances at risk, developmentally disabled or who have been abducted. And this was created with the intention of minimizing the racial disparities and California missing person cases and the associated media coverage. This is of course a statewide alert system, but should something like the ebony alert system be implemented in the state of Maryland, it would expand our officer's ability to get state alert notifications for adults between the ages of 18 and 25 who do not have vehicle information associated with the missing person out a little bit more. And with that, I endless there any questions. I will turn it over to our officers to explain some of the more recent changes in depth. Thank you. Two. Please. Hey, good morning. I'm going to briefly talk about the two most recent alert systems that we have available to us in Montgomery County. And then take any questions out there. Again, this was a very detailed packet. So I'm hopeful to answer any questions that you have on our next slide. So the first one's going to be a purple alert, which did become effect October 1st of this year. This is coming any person whose wearabouts are unknown, who has a cognitive impairment, mental disability, intellectual developmental disability, or brain injury that is not an Alzheimer's disease dementia, or a physical and mental emotional related substance abuse. There is other criteria on here, but with the purple alert, all of our alert to Courtney and through mail and state police, and they are still working on the criteria to implement this. We have been in communication with them. They said if you do have a situation that falls under the mail and law to contact us and we will put the purple alert out but they have not established their criteria. One thing to I think with the amber alert where we're most often familiar with is the roadway signs that say amber alert and flashing and giving vehicle description information. When a vehicle is not involved that's where it becomes a little more confusing on what information is going to be put out. Roadway signs are only going to be authorized most likely if a vehicle is involved because we just can't put someone's name up there and expect the community to know who Mark Jones looks like or anything like that. So that's going to be specific to vehicles. But the most important thing about any of these alerts is the priority and disseminating information. In Montgomery County with our police department, we have over 74,000 followers on our social media. And we immediately get that information out. Our detectives contact our public information office, 24 hours a day, and we put that information out to get the information there. So all these alerts add another system to get information out using our statewide partners. So when the proper alert, when we do have an incident with government county, we will use this system to coordinate with Maryland State Police so they can decide on the information there. information out using our statewide partners. So when the proper alert, when we do have an incident with government county, we will use this system to coordinate with mail and state police so they can disseminate information even further beyond our audience that we have here locally. Because time is also important in these missing person cases to get information out. Next slide. If I can interrupt one second, you have a listing of saying what it doesn't do for if you have Alzheimer's, etc. I think if someone has Alzheimer's, what alert would they be? What alert would you send down? That would be the silver alert. Okay. So I think for information, we need to put in parentheses, though it's saying what it won't do, it should have something in there that says what would you do for it? Yes, yes. And what is actually done with the alert scale, that's controlled by the state police and where they're sending it out. And particularly we really have an alert that covers every type of missing person in Montgomery County that we're getting information out. Depending on the situation, what information we have, that's going to depend on what information is put forth, which is also why we collaborated with emergency management and establishing the local alerts in Montgomery County where we use a word Montgomery to send information out. And we tested that alert recently back July with our missing juvenile and Gaitisberg and actually tried out the system, got information out there and then debriefed about and see how we can improve the system. So really getting information out and I think that's important but purple alert is the criteria under state law is listed here and then when we go over to the silver alert, we also have the non-vehicle option. We're familiar with the several alert vehicle option. We also do see that on the roadway signs that has that information. And a lot of our alerts, whether it's silver or amber, they're located, the people are located through law enforcement. They actually come about the people using technology, whether it's license plate readers and we get information that this vehicle has passed down I-200 or it's passed by an officer That's how we get the information out there But it's also good to have the community on the lookout for the vehicle But a majority of ours have been found by a law enforcement in surrounding jurisdictions The non-vehicle alert this it basically is a silver alert, but they're not in a vehicle And this information will be broadcasts through the state police, through their outlets that they have, our MCAT, our Intel Center, as well as a lottery terminal. So the information will be broadcasted through their system that they have there that goes out to their retailers. And passing it out to non-profit organizations that concentrate on helping find missing persons and their social media. Next page here is about mail and state police alert process. Again, they're all coordinated, our detectives and our supervisors knew to immediately contact a duty commander with the state police and provide that information out there. They do have criteria. One of the important things is when we have all these alerts, we don't want them to be desensitized. If we're sending out an alert every day about, hey, and people's phones are going off or they're at meetings and missing person this and that, we want to make sure that we are using it correctly and going to be the most efficient to get the community's attention for the most drastic situations where life is at risk. So that is why the state police also has this criteria there to make sure an alert isn't going to be going out. So often people are not going to be paying attention to them. So that's a priority that we have here. And with the, we will continue to coordinate with the amber, purple, and silver alerts. This lists the different types of ways they are sending out the information, whether it's through the lottery terminals, the wireless alert statewide system to search and rescue, aviation, MSP media. So again, increasing our network after we are sending out to 74,000 followers through social media to increase throughout the state and throughout the region. One update we recently did with our function code on missing persons. We took a look at this because one of the things I noticed is I did some review of critical missing calls that we had for adults. And I noticed some confusion when patrol officers were filling out our search urgency evaluation form. One instance I saw an officer at the scene filled out and make their notification in their score was different than when they submitted in a report. And it wasn't due to any reason. It was mostly confusion. Our form was not specific enough to talk about when we say, okay, are they fit? Well, that's a very question that puts out there. If I think someone's fear of someone else thinks someone's fit, they get confused and that could be a different thing in the score of one to a score, three. So really putting parameters out there make it more clear, clearing on what fit means. Are they able to dress themselves? Are they able to feed themselves? Do they know their name? And not just looking at the physical appearance of someone or if they're able to walk or certain distance but looking further down into that. So that's one change as we made there, but with our new forum, if they score a one, I think the old forum is in your packet on page eight, and the new forum will be on the PowerPoint presentation. But anyone that scores a one is automatic notification to our search management team. And our search management team will get notified. They will get the information from Petro Officer and determine their search efforts on how far we're going to extend our search efforts. And we're, again, the experts, the subject matter experts involved to help locate the missing person. Again, other questions we added to the new forum about information on them, but we also have the Form 592, which is now a social media test-mit statement. We had this for NCIC having a caretaker or a representative sign allowing the person to be put into NCIC. Now we're doing this with social media. Obviously, anytime we put a photo on our department website or on our Facebook page it is out there and even if we take that post down a week later the community needs to understand that that photo has been disseminated across many different outlets and most like the photo will still be out there even if we remove it from our website. So we want to make sure the community understands that that when we do website. So we want to make sure the community understands that that when we do post a picture, we want the picture to be put out there, but even once the person is returned that most likely out there somewhere in the social media world or on the website, somewhere else, we only can control what we put out and what we take down from our website. So given that information on privacy concerns, as well as understanding what we are going to do when we have that information, we're posting it out to our network. The next slide, this is the new form. And if you compare it to a page eight in your packet, you can see how the differences were made to be able to make it more clear for officers that are responding out there to really understand that what search efforts were going to need to do. And so also at the bottom here we have the role of the person that's reporting to get the caretakers information for people that are not living with their family and are in a home setting outside of where they typically live and a group home or some other. We want to also have the parents information so we can make sure not just holding the caretaker responsible and no different than the parents, but also contacting them and having that information. So they are aware of the missing situation and we can get in contact with them if they have any history or information that could assist us in locating their loved one. And we also know what time and who contacted them to make sure that they are aware of it, and they're not finding out through other means or we're trying to hold someone else responsible for making that new notifications. That's a priority of ours to make sure everyone is aware if someone is missing that does not typically live with their loved ones. Next slide. So, this is again our update to our recent function code. We talked about the update to the forum, but I think one important thing that Chief Yamada has done reference missing person. We are now responding emergency or lights and siren, whatever you want to call that to. Critically missing individuals. Where time is of the essence to find them, where time has not passed or we need to get there pretty quick to immediately start search efforts. So while that will save some time out there and also prioritizing the call for service, it's also important for the community to know to contact us immediately when they suspect someone is missing. We can get there in a timely manner within one or two minutes, but if there is a delay of 30 or 45 minutes of notifying the police, that is not helping us, because especially there is with intellectual disabilities, time is of that sense. And we need to ensure that we get the enough resources out there to start our efforts and bring in our fire rescue partners that have other resources available to us, or if we're using non-profit search groups like dogs to come in. We want to make sure we get those out there as quick as possible and use those resources. So, we're increasing into a priority response, but those types of calls is something new that we're doing, and hopefully we'll prioritize resources and help us give us a couple extra minutes to get out there and start their search efforts. Parenting Guardian notification documentation. Again, we have unique settings where some of these missing individuals are not living with their loved ones. So we need to ensure that we notify them immediately to get them involved, get the family involved if they can provide us any other information, or they're typical, if they knew more about the missing person, where they used transit, whether they had went missing before and went to certain areas, so we can very concentrate on that, as well as notify outside jurisdictions. We live in an area that has a lot of mass transit, and if you're in Silver Spring, you can get to Washington, DC within minutes. And we need to be able to notify our other jurisdiction as well as documenting who we spoke to in that jurisdiction to seek their help and effort, but really work with our partners and having that great lines of communication to hopefully locate the person quicker. Also our emergency alert with alert Montgomery, which we'll talk about a little more on how that system is being implemented on next slide. Anyone from emergency management? Some of Luke is here. If he can come on up and see him sitting back there, but this again is a great partner. We know him. We know, yeah. So this is a great partnership with them. Lieutenant Ingramstrom and Luke have been working together of the last couple months to create this system. I'm just going to let Luke go ahead and talk about this and how it's going to work. Sure. Good morning. Good morning. So this is something that we've been working on for quite some time and was catalyzed with the Hassan Surge back in July as we talked about. What we realized is that there is through all these different means of of alerting for missing persons, we still had a hole where we were not, we didn't have the capacity to alert for a critical missing child. We have upwards of 240,000 subscribers to alert Montgomery throughout the county. So it's a great tool to be used for something like this. So working with Montgomery County Police, we were very closely together to develop the criteria for which this person would qualify for such an alert. In that case, there are specific criteria that you could find in your packet. Once the child has met those criteria, the executive on duty would contact our duty officer, our duty officer would then contact our alert center. The alert centers are a specialized group who are trained in exactly how to pinpoint specific areas in the county and how to leverage that tool because it is pretty sophisticated. And then they would send out a templated text message that would also go to email and voice depending on what people have signed up for through alert Montgomery. From there we do our limited on the characters as you guys know that come through. So not so much obviously on the voice side or the email side, but most of these people prefer to get them through text messages. So in that case, they're linked through to another website that will provide them full information. So the full narrative that law enforcement has provided us in terms of the description where they were last seen any of the factors they should consider about approaching them You know any of the details that law enforcement won't pass on then we make that known to the public through this Through this alert system Thank you And last slide here is just giving an update on numbers of missing person cases that Montgomery County police is handling. So when we receive these cases, initially it will be assigned to our criminal investigative division or district level detectives. They keep the case for 72 hours. If the person is not located in that time frame is then transferred over to our major crimes cold case unit, which gives a very, it's all hands-on deck approach once it gets to that 72 hour notice and all those detectives in cold case are involved in it. And that deals with, and that is for our adult side of it, our juveniles. They are handled in our special victims, whether they're runaway or missing, and they stay within there and Captain Bungie and talk about their success number right here. How many outstanding juveniles we still have. In Montgomery County, I'm missing a runaway and it is a very small number. So I'm going to give it to Captain Bungie before I talk about these. Now if he can just get over the runaway and missing person. Thanks, Chief. these now are if you just get over the runaway missing person. Thanks chief. I'm happy to report that in 2023 year to date we had 828 reports of missing children. This year year to date we are downed. We only have 629 that's still a very high number. Out of those 629 we have eight that remain open and of those eight four of those are over 30 days they've been missing greater than 30 days and the last time I got to talk to the committee three of those four are unaccompanied minors and as I explained last time those are very very difficult investigations they're here for a very short amount of time. Don't have a digital footprint. Typically don't have cell phones. The family members or people that they are staying with initially don't have a lot of information and often time don't have pictures. So that's three out of the four that are over 30 and then the fourth that's over 30 was seen as recently as last week by mom, but just refuses to come home. And there's a substance abuse issue going on with that child as well. So for this year, 98.7% closure rate, and we're very pleased with that. All right, so let's get back to the one whose mother saw him last week. So you still consider that open? Yes, sir. The child is not home. The child doesn't want to be home, so our investigators still attempt to find this juvenile. Obviously, there are numerous other cases that come in. This one's a concern for us, because we do know that there's a substance abuse issue. But they continue to look for this child, just like they do any other. It comes in for us. OK, thanks. I think the important part with Captain Bungie's team is a lot of these juvenile's of runaways and connecting them with resources. Once they return and providing that to the family is an important aspect of it. And we continue to provide resources to them. They're detectives, a status relationship with these missing or runaways, which often helps. I mean, I've seen the detectives going to Baltimore City because they have information that they're located down there and immediately get in and bring them back. But with repeat runaways, there's something else going on and we need to be able to provide them the resources or where they can go to get the resources. So we can hopefully reduce that and keep them safe. And it's a sad situation when it's leaning down the substance abuse in their outside of the home and really how we can provide resources with county and state level can provide resources to get treatment to hopefully resolve the root cause of these issues. As far as our adult cases here, we have a high closure rate in all these. So in looking at 2023, we had high high closure rate in all these so in look at 2023 we had 97% closure rate and our criminal investigator division and I often say you know we get reports for a missing adult it isn't against the law for someone to go quote missing you know Mr. Cass is tired of being at home and wants to go away for a week to get away. I prefer that right you know she might report you missing to get some stuff around the house You get away. You get away. You get away. You get away. You get away. You get away. You get away. You get away. You get away. You get away. You get away. You get away. You get away. You get away. You get away. You get away. You get away. You get away. You get away. You get away. You get away. that they are in a certain location. So we also look at that and it's a lot different than our juvenile cases or people that do have disabilities. So that's probably why we're not at that 100% closure rate because there is people that change their digital footprint, change their phone, change their credit cards and so on that they have left the area and trying to relocate to for whatever reasons. Our cold case numbers in 2023 the number of cases they had is 35 and to date they've closed 29 in cabin gating. Do you have any information just generalization on those open cases on what type of cases they are? So thank you chief. So some of the cases that we work in the co-case missing person, you know, unfortunately there is information that there could be the potential that these are victims of homicide. Just so happens, we're working this year, 2024, we're working several cases that the person that went missing has completely gone off the radar. And last time they were seen, we have information that they were potentially victims of a serious crime. So we keep working those cases that the you know one of the reasons why these cases come from our criminal investigations up to major crimes is that we typically will assign the missing persons team along with a homicide detective just just in case you know we ultimately find the victim or or there's information that leads us to build probable cause against a person that was associated with that missing person. And last portion here is our managed search operations team. And so far in 2024, the number of missing persons that they've been notified on is 1,881. And number of those at that they've been notified on is a 1,881 and number of those at risk is 515 and those at risk require a significant response and luckily most of them are found within a short amount of time due to our search operations and the resources we now have to bring out to conduct those search operations. So I am of course available to answer any questions you have on this topic. Well first of all let us begin by thanking you all for everything you do. You know many times people believe all this happens by magic and it's you all are the magicians. Something someone goes missing you all are the ones who have to go find them. I mean someone says why didn't someone do do something near the someone that's doing something? So we sincerely appreciate that. If the public, the fact that there's so many different color codes for these various missing situations, the public really, I think, doesn't have to involve. If someone's, if a loved one is missing they call 911 and all this I see had shaken here They call 911 you all figure out how you're gonna Dispense that information. They don't need to worry with that And I think that's something that people have to keep in mind during that during that time of excitement that that we're there And then we'll figure it out is there time, a waiting time for someone to be missing? I mean, you always see on long order that it's, you know, that they haven't been missing long enough. So, that is that work. That's TV. So, no, there is not a minimum requirement. We respond on immediately if someone is reporting missing, or they think someone is missing, whether it's even just a couple minutes. We'll make that decision once we arrive at CNOMRUP research, we've been put forward to look for that person, but we encourage a community to immediately report a missing person as soon as they have any suspect that they are missing for whatever reason, especially theirs with developmental disabilities. So it's important to, you know, what you see on TV is not accurate here in Montgomery County. Our officers immediately respond down. That's why we also prioritize our critical missing response to be a priority response now, rather than a non-emergency response, just so we can get out there and get that information. And then our officers and detectives immediately start looking for the person. And you touched on it earlier and I'm certainly glad that we have the great communication in the DMV but how much of if the state sends out information, how many times do they send it to the district to Virginia? Do they get it automatically as well? Yes, it's sent out through their network now. to the district to Virginia. Do they get it automatically as well? Yeah, so it gets sent out through their network now. I can't say how often they repaint and send it out. Their alerts immediately get sent out to all the regional and jurisdictional. So it's immediately put out there, but we have information, especially if we talked about the bluer alert, that suspect was located through investigative means. And once was located through investigative means. Once we investigated means determined that the person can be located in a certain area, we then reach out to that law enforcement agency and bring information forward to them to rather more intel about saying we think this person in your jurisdiction are around. Here's information again, because with the alerts going out throughout the region, if we get one here in Montgomery County that's coming from Oklahoma, you know Priority of wise do we have any relationship that that person may be here? But if we get a call from that local jurisdiction saying hey, they have family that lives in Rockville so on We then prioritize that information to put more resources resources out there as well as put it out on our Radio channels so we know and officers to be on the lookout for that once we receive additional information. Very good. Questions please. Yes, go ahead. Thank you all for the work that you do. I know it's so like California and some others they are trying out these other alerts, the ebony alert, the indigenous persons alert to try to minimize the racial disparities that they're seeing in their data. And I wondered how ours looks in terms of our closure rates when we look at the, break that down by demographics, is there potentially, you know, should we be looking at something like that? Sure. So I can say that every missing person case on Montgomery County Police gets we provide the same information and information out to the community and immediately putting that out. In 2023, we had 739 Black or Brown individuals that went missing and that also includes a teen population under that. For white, we had 614. So there is a higher number of black and brown missing people in Montgomery County. And that also includes our juveniles too, and not just adults. So but as my captain's here, I spoke, we have a very high success rate, enclosing those cases with missing person, But as my captains here have spoke, we have a very high success rate, and closing those cases with missing person only, running ways only having four out of over 800 cases, we prioritize that, get that information out. So I know from the Montgomery County police stance, we understand the priority and disparities out there and getting the information out. And we provide to all of our media partners But we can't speak about how they prioritize putting information out to the community So I think that's an important aspect there and as I stayed earlier at the more alerts that we create The more confusing is gonna I feel it's gonna be for the community But prioritizing Information get out there the federal government now has a alert system that covers anything that is not any of the other alerts. But it's just different ways of disseminating on information. So I think having a priority, whatever the alert is called, by understanding that we are committed to providing that information out to disseminating it and putting it in all of our resources for any missing person in Montgomery County is the priority. Thank you, yeah, I appreciate that. And I mean, I can't obviously, can't speak to the success and the other jurisdictions of creating our, they saw a result with the media and from whatever other reasons. And this is their effort to address that. I don't know how successful it has been, but it might be helpful for us to, now four is not a big number, but looking at these variety of data sets that we have overall, it might be interesting for us to get that all broken on my demographics at the state level, as well as at the county level, where we have a bigger set, and even if adding on multiple different alerts might not be the answer that makes the most sense. But if this is something that we should have our eye on, it would be helpful to know because that's clearly, obviously there's huge disparities in terms of who goes missing and that's something that we need to be talking to HHS about and really across the county about addressing those disparities, but it would be great to get the closure rates in all these different categories, broken-owned demographics also at the state level, given the size of the data set. And one thing I will mention, which I definitely don't want to forget is we have a great relationship with our media outlets here in the Montgomery County area, especially being such a large geographic area right near DC. Our public information officer knows producers on first-name basis. We also have a lot of small media outlets within Montgomery County. And having that great relationship with them, if we contact them, say, hey, this is a priority because this person is missing. They immediately put information out quicker. And they're often sharing our social media, which intensifies the number of people who are reaching. But having that great network as well as collaboration with our media outlets and having that transparency and trust between them is really beneficial. I know a lot of other jurisdictions outside of Maryland don't have that great relationship with their media outlets. And really having them in the DC metropolitan area is a benefit not only to getting our cases saw but really helping the community. That's great. And that's a great point. And so there certainly are vehicles for if we need to be intentionally doing something more for certain subsets of people that we have vehicles to do that. And so we just need to know if there is something that we need to be doing extra in certain categories. Maybe it's a racial demographic, maybe it's another category, but it'd be good to be taking a good look at those variables that some other jurisdictions are seeing patterns. Thank you. Thank you, please. Thank you. And thank you for flagging that the purple alert only went into effect six days ago and that MSP hasn't done the guidance document for it. You know, I do know that bill came about due to ongoing concerns with the silver alert was enacted in Maryland in 2009. Right and and the statute itself doesn't have an age cutoff to it. It's for adults, but it doesn't have a 65 and over cutoff. But when the state police were tasked with creating the guidance for that did it, they wrote a 65 and a guideline. And so that's what all local law enforcement agencies were told to do. Right? There had been some back and forth over time trying to figure out why that came to be and why it was focused on 65 and up. And that's truly where we've had some ongoing challenges, particularly with adults who have developmental disabilities or other impairments that make it challenging for them to be on their own. Taking aside those who elope and just don't want to be found but are not otherwise impaired because that is a, they are allowed to do that, as you said. So I know that MSP revised their silver alert guidelines in February while the purple alert bill was pending. I know I probably need a whiteboard behind me to explain the different alerts and things I'm talking about. But my hope is given the many different types of alerts. And again, public education and information to understand what does a color mean? What does that mean about the person we're seeking? That perhaps there's a, this is my wish list for MSP. Perhaps there's a more intentional look at how to reconcile the different pieces. And how to do that in a way. And perhaps also to dispel some of the CSI type things that people think were the myth-busting of, well, there's a wait time, there's no wait time, so that the public has a better understanding of what happens. Because I don't think that's clear. I just don't think that's clear. And I know you all can do it here locally, but it's something we need to have statewide that's standardized. And I also wanted to touch upon what is in the alerts, because it's when people have been raised concerns about a disparity or something going on, and I receive them. I still do. From my old work, I don't get the M. Cacolerts anymore, but I still get the NCR watch desk stuff. And so there's a photo. There's detailed information. They talk about the person's age. They talk about why, right? So if it's a cognitive impairment that is listed, it gives a complete physical description, age, height, weight, etc. clothes last known wearing, even though they also have a photo of the person included. It includes the vehicle. If there is a vehicle involved, it includes the license plate, if the license plate is involved, and the time last scene and the place last scene, and who the law enforcement agency is, that's the primary in that missing persons investigation. And then they do send out a, this alert has been canceled, and the person has been found when they're found so that the departments know that that case has been resolved. And that's something that all these different agencies within both the state of Maryland through the MCACs distribution list, which is statewide, and then the NCR, which is multi-jurisdiction also. It's Northern Virginia, Southern Maryland, us, Prince George's, DC, all get the same information. But not all of that gets broadcast publicly. So can you speak to that sort of really trying to understand the decision point of where it's broadcast publicly versus what goes out on the watch distribution list. Sure. So we have a standardized template for all of our missing person cases. And we went to this standardized template. So when investigators are filling this out, we're getting the necessary information to put out to the community as quickly as possible. It has then followed up with a media release later on that will put additional information. We try to put as much information that we have and that is the important part here. We're often in the initial response, depending on the situation, if we're dealing with a caretaker that may have only minimal information about the situation until we can get a hold of a parent or guardian of the loved one that's missing they where we can get more information out there. So we try to put as much information that we originally have the initial response which may be less than the information that we get further on in our investigation but updating that information and getting it out in a timely manner. Now if we have an extended search which we saw back in July, we were given multiple in-person media conferences to talk about what our steps have been, any information we've gathered, any change in what they were possibly wearing, where we think they may have went to. So really providing that information and being transparent about it is our priority. But when we get that information, we also want to validate that information that we receive to make sure that the information we're putting out to the public is 100% accurate. And we're not. If we tell them they're wearing something and they're actually wearing this and someone saw it, that can hamper our efforts in locating someone. Right, OK. And thank you for your updates to the form. I think that's really important in breaking down the distinctions that help people to really understand how much of a risk someone is to themselves. So thank you for doing that. Thank you. Thank you all. Is there anything else that comes? Nothing, Dad. Thank you. Thank you all. Is there anything else? There's comments. Nothing to add. Thank you. Thank you all again for everything you do. You truly saved lives on a daily basis, and we're most aware of that. And the next topic that we're going to have is an update from the 911 Emergency Communications Center. Ms. Farag is going to be joining us for that. Playing musical chairs, aren't we, Chief? Okay. Playing musical chairs, are we chave? Good morning. Okay. Any other openings if not we're going to turn to. If I could invite the panel to please introduce themselves. We can, we know Ms. Frogg, she's going to speak here in a moment, but please if you could. Assistant Chief Dan Oven, I'm the Montgomery County Fire Rescue lead at PSEC. Good morning fire chief course medley. Good morning. Charles Bailey. Good morning Chief of Management Services Bureau Darren Frank. Good morning Cassandra Onley 911 director. Again we want to thank you all, as we begin for doing everything you do. We, many times forget to do that, and we never should. I don't know, does anybody have an opening statement from the panel? Chief. If I say chief here, everybody answer. I don't know. Yeah, and this is, like calling mom in a grocery store. Good guys. We appreciate the opportunity to give an update. It remains a very challenging time for our communication center. But I will say that the people we have there, both our communication center personnel and our fire personnel, are doing an outstanding job at keeping us where we need to be to serve the community. There's a lot of different efforts that we're looking at to improve our service because again we're going to talk a little bit about our response times, how fast we answer calls. We'd love to get to zero and we'll continue to do our best to get to zero as far as wait times and picking up that phone. There are some immense challenges in the way but that is certainly a goal of ours. And we appreciate the council's support as well as the county executives. There have been, I've testified before that there are some efforts that we have asked to be taken on by the council, by the county executive to include a retirement package for these hard workers, and that's made a difference. So I think all of us are working together and really making some improvements. So we thank you. And we thank you. And please don't be bad. I know you're not going to be bashful. I don't need to say it, but please don't be bashful. If there's things that we can do in addition to what we've done, and some things always, you know, can work and some things you try our best and it just didn't work, we need to hear it as quickly as we can so that we can be truly a partner in solving all this. With that, Ms. Farag, please. Sure. Good morning, everybody. And I wanted to apologize in advance this is going to be very acronym heavy discussion today and I'm going to try to identify everything for you and in some cases there are two acronyms that mean the same thing. So of course. So the Emergency Communication Center, the ECC is the call center function for emergency operations in the county that includes police fire, EMS, and is also brought on a new function of transferring or conferencing with the crisis center for certain types of behavioral health calls. Within the ECC, there are actually two physical sites. The primary one where most of the work is done, most of the time is the public safety communication center or PSCC. They also have a backup center, which is called the Alternate Emergency Communication Center, and that is the AECC. They, for years, they have done a lot of planning to ensure redundancy and backup and system integrity because it's such a critical service to provide to the community. It is a unique governmental service. Residents, visitors, business people come here and if they need help, they call 911 and they expect immediate help to respond to them, right? So as much proactive planning and risk reduction that the Fire Department and the Police Department are doing with proactive policing, still a huge portion of their job is responsive, is reactive, and it's community driven. This is what the community wants, this is what they've come to expect. And it's a very complicated system. And some of the things I wanted to get into today for you are staffing, and you're very well aware of the staffing challenges that the ECC has had for quite a while. The workload, the workload keeps going up, and the departments can talk a little bit about some of the initiatives they're looking at now to help reduce the calls coming into the ECC. There are complicated IT needs, including the computer rate at Dispatch, the public safety radio system, all of that. And there's also facility planning. I just mentioned that they have two sites and the alternate emergency communication center is in the CIP for facility planning purposes. But as we can talk a little bit today, the primary site might actually need to be bigger than it is to appropriately house both current operations as well as training plus any types of ways they want to offload some of these calls, and they're ready to talk about increasing telephone reporting unit, for example. It's not my quote, it might have come from the recent Metropolitan DC staffing study, but why do we have police officers acting as insurance agents when people have a on personal injury car accident, and they need a police number, report number to give to their insurance company. So, some of the things I'm going in, I'm gonna give a little bit of background as well to the ECC. It has changed rapidly over the past 15 years for a variety of reasons. As you know, 911 happened in 2001. There were some defects in the interoperability discovered among the region between the different counties in Washington, D.C. And that there was a federal mandate to make sure that the systems are all interoperable in case something like this happens again. In 2009, Montgomery County undertook a very large planning push to modernize the ECC and all public safety radio communications keep up to date with regional needs that I just mentioned but also rapidly changing IT. I mean most people were calling in on landlines. These are copper lines. It was the ECC was supported on copper lines by Verizon. We saw the shift over to the voice ever internet protocol occur and now I almost everybody I think is calling on mobile phones and the and that dispatcher did not respond to the call for another five or six minutes. The call taker had taken it back to try to help with medical directions on the phone. It turns out that that dispatcher was 17 hours into a 24 hour overtime shift, right? And so, over time, it's going to come up again in this conversation. And point out again, what year that was, please. 2012. 2012. Okay. again what year that was please. 2012. In 2016 there was IT upgrade work going on at the primary site, the PSCC. So all the staff was at the alternate site, the AECC which is a much older footprint and HVAC there which does climate control for all of the very sensitive systems failed. This caused a transfer step over to PEPCO, but instead of working like it should, it froze the whole system up and it was down for a couple of hours. And it turns out that HVAC was near its end of service life, it was 20 years old, and even though the county is maintaining and checking on things and stuff, but if when things get that old, they're gonna be failures. And 2019 finally, the Mother's Day outage of the Public Safety Radio System, that was a legacy system to again pass its end of service life. Some of the discussion that came up then is the vendor was no longer supporting the radio system. The county was actually trying to stockpile replacement parts that they purchased off of eBay. Right? And so I wanted to highlight these things because planning, long-range planning becomes very critical for all of these different facets of the ECC operations. In 2014, thanks to a Gartner Consultant report, they determined that they were going to consolidate ECC operations. They were going to consolidate it under the police department. They were going to civilianize all the workers. They were going to eliminate the two different types of call takers and create a universal call taker position. And hopefully move the career firefighters back into the field. And that plays on the fact that there was a study several years ago that showed an 180 firefighter deficit in order to meet operations as needed without the use of overtime. So in terms of staffing now, you've been briefed for the past few years on the staffing shortage in the ECC. Last year when we talked about budget, there was a 41% vacancy right for the telecommunicator positions. The budget, FY25 budget, did end up eliminating 27 total positions. It eliminated 25 telecommunicator positions and two support positions. So that has actually reduced the vacancy rate, but it doesn't mean that there's additional staff, however. Their total vacancy rate right now is about 16% and their telecommunicator rate vacancy is about 22%. They do have 23 people being trained so they have been able to close that gap a little bit to bring on more trainees at this time. The department has also done a lot, director, only has done a lot to try to make a work life balance work after COVID. That hit people had different ideas about what their work life balance should be. Instead of just 12 hour shifts, they're now running four primary shifts, which run 3 a.m. to 3 p.m. 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. but they also have two part time positions, one from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and one from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. The last study I can find of staffing and operations was from 2017 and I've got a comparison chart on page three for you to take a look at. And this was kind of like a staffing model per shift for the ECC. In 27, they had about 28 to 29 people, but notice the difference in the call taker numbers, they had 15 to 16 available, and now we have 10 to 14 available. That's not necessarily because calls have gone down, calls have actually gone up, right? And that's more a reflection, just reality based of what kind of staff they've got available right now. So this is leading to overtime. Again like all public safety departments police over times increased over the past few years for the ECC over time has exceeded budgeted amounts for at least the past two years and the ECC is advised that mandatory overtime is required almost every day. The chart on page four is showing they went over their overtime budget by about 19% in fiscal 23 and they went over last year in fiscal 24 by 36%. The budgeted overtime hasn't increased significantly at all for FY 25. But more than just being appropriately budgeted, it's important to understand what kind of impact all of that mandatory over time is having on existing staff. There's improvement in turnover. The MCPD is advised that average staff turnover rate in 2023 was 7% and so far in 2024 it's been 6% for their new higher training classes. Turnover in 2023 was 18% and so far this year it's been about 17%. This might sound a little bit high but compared to that 2017 report, average staff turnover for 2014 to 2016 was 13% and average turnover for the new higher training classes was 37%. So they've definitely made some inroads in that place. Recruiting and training, I've got a little update on the numbers of classes and the trainees over the past calendar year. I've got a list of the initiatives that the department and the executive have undergone in partnership with the union too, as far as like the pension benefit. That and of course the council has funded were available these new initiatives and I can let the departments talk about those new initiatives a little bit more. In terms of workload update I had mentioned before that last year's calls were 855,000 for fiscal 24, which is more than in fiscal 18 and fiscal 19 pre-COVID levels. The call-ode still stays above COVID. I've got a graphic that director only gave me on page five. A lot of this has to do with the fact that people aren't totally sure what number they should be calling, whether it's an emergency or not. And so 9-8 is there for crisis support and suicide intervention. You have the crisis center itself. You have 3-1-1 for things like I need a new recycling bin. I need the leaves removed, that type of thing, and then of course 9-1-1 for emergencies. And that is one question I had, whether or not there is room for public service campaigning that could help educate the community on which numbers to call and what that might look like. In terms of answering times, the ECC does adhere to National Emergency Number Association standard, which is 90% of all calls within 15 seconds and 95% of all calls within 20 seconds. Over the past three calendar years, there's a chart on page six in 2021. The ravaging the answer time was four seconds for 2022. It was nine seconds and 2023. It was ten seconds. So it's definitely well within the standard. It is starting to inch up a little bit. The percentage of calls going to an automated queue, however, has been increasing from 15 percent in fiscal 22 to 25% in fiscal 25. The average time on hold while still low is also increasing and there's a chart on page 6 for your reference. The average time on hold was 7 seconds in fiscal 22 and fiscal 25 to date, it's about 11 seconds, which isn't long, right? The council does regularly get complaints about being put into the queue. People here affect similarly like noise and they don't know what's happening. They don't understand even though they're told on the automated message, please stay on the line. Unfortunately, just for any members of the public who are watching, if they need to call 911, they need to stay on the line. If they hang up and try to call back, they lose their place and it's actually going to take longer to answer that call. In terms of funding updates, there's been a couple of changes at the General Assembly in 2019 that's allowing the county portion to increase their fee. And it also went from per household bill, I guess, to per line. So I'm paying for five mobile phone lines myself right now. So each and every one of those gets this fee per line per month. In 2021, I believe they allowed the county portion to increase their fee to whatever is necessary to cover costs. And when they had done a survey of local jurisdictions, they found that most these fees that are generated through the 911 fee are only covering about 36% or so of the actual cost of running an emergency communication center. So approximately 12 counties have increased their fees since this happened and Frederick County had just increased their fee to $2.25 per month. So this is a potential opportunity to look for increased funding if the county determines that that would be necessary to do different types of improvements within the emergency communications center. I did ask the department whether or not they're looking at this and they said they have. I don't have details on what that may look like. And the final piece I wanted to bring to your attention was the facility equipment and facility planning and capital needs. These are long-term planning needs for the CAD. A lot of things can happen including budget deficits, recessions, savings plans, limited capacity, expert capacity within the department to juggle multiple very complex and sensitive IT replacements at the same time. And Tebs is very instrumental. I'm not sure if Mike Penuple is here or not, but he's instrumental in ensuring that the planning takes place the way it needs to. Things have been delayed on several occasions. Things have gone past their end of service life. As I said in one case the radio system was not even supported by the vendor. And there's also an increased push to have community input into a lot of these public safety planning processes. And the county meets those minimums required by, you know, the planning board, that type of thing. But it may be an opportunity to understand if they can get increased community input and what would that look like and how does that change the timeline. So there's both the IT needs, the CAD, the public safety radio system, the radio's, the mobile data computers, all of that, understanding that the replacements within the physical facility necessitates shifting staff often to the backup site and make things a little more complicated and they have to be done very slowly and deliberately to make sure that they can minimize any potential opportunities for mistakes So I've got some discussion questions listed on pages eight and nine of your packet I'm hoping that it kind of fleshes out the need to identify needs of IT staffing facility, also identify potential funding to support these and timing necessary to make sure these things happen in a timely fashion and not let any gaps in service, and also identify ways to be flexible and adapt. Again, technology is changing. People's needs are changing, and to the extent we can to make sure that we're ready to anticipate and service those needs. So I do have discussion questions listed if you wanted to ask the department a little bit about their initiatives as far as recruiting and retention where they're having some good successes and overall planning Needs for the next few years First of again, thank you for your packet and we do want to go through the discussion questions But I also wanted to say to Ms. Onley to you and your staff I know it is a brutal job. You get 23 undercalls on an average a day or whatever those numbers are. You have people that are in the middle of perhaps the greatest crisis that they've ever been calling you. And we do hear about the times that it didn't work, but there's so many thousands of times that it did. And so to your point, Susan, that there was a time that everybody had to run home to use the telephone. Those days are long gone. And so you get so many calls for the same issue, which is a good thing, but in the same breath, it's not. You know, I mean, so it truly is a great issue. But for the discussion questions, the release staffing study for the DC Metropolitan Police Department indicated that police calls for service decreased by 18% driven in part by the enhanced use of their telephone rating unit in an effort to reduce call volume to the ECC. Has the department explored, I know they have, enhancing its T-R, it's a telephone reporting unit and the potentially developing companion online reporting system. Jave. So currently our telephone reporting unit, we receive calls through ECC. The calls come into ECC. They triage them in the term and if they meet the qualifications to go to telephone reporting. That's an important aspect for us because we want the calls that need to go to an officer, to go to an officer, and the calls that should be telephone reporting stay there. So regarding that, we have increased the number of calls that are true qualified, that actually go to our telephone reporting unit, but they're still funneled through the Emergency Communication Center. So we would have to set up a separate call center for that. We don't think that's the right way to go right now. We'd rather focus on more hiring and getting up to our authorized staffing through other efforts. So we can treat it as the calls that way. Now there are other efforts that we do wanna look at. We spoke already about a public campaign about routing people to the right phone numbers, 988-311. Those are two of them that we'd really like to enhance the use of rather than calling 911 and then 2798,000. We do get some, we do get a decent amount of calls that should have been handled by 3-1-1. And, you know, the reality is, the number that anyone can call that's always open is 9-1-1. And so they call it and we do our best to triage it and we have to get away from that. We have to have our citizens recognize that because there is something, and I believe it's been mentioned in a number of places so far. We could get 30 calls, 100 calls in one moment. I rolled up on a traffic accident last week and there were four people there at the traffic accident and it wasn't a personal injury or critical thing. There were four people trying to call 911 at the same time. And that's what we have going on out in the field. We could probably hire 100, well, it would take a lot to hire so that we had 100 people. If we could hire. Yeah, 100 people at one time, we're not going to overcome that. We have to look at other opportunities. The other thing that we are looking at are online reporting. We have an issue there because, again, technology for law enforcement hasn't caught up to where it needs to yet. So our online reporting right now, the status of that, if we had some, well right now, the only products available to us would allow you to enter some information in online, and then we'd have to create a staff to then write that into a report on the other end of it because it's not working yet. It doesn't work the way we needed to yet. So we are looking at that and we have a desire that the new RMS system offers us opportunities there and we think we'll get somewhere with that too. But again, it goes back to people want to talk to humans and they call 911 and 2798,000. But the biggest problem there that we're working through is the people, everyone calls 911. At least 60% of the calls that come into 911 shouldn't go to 911. They should have gone to our non-emergency number and then some of them should have gone to 988 or gone to 311. So we're really going to focus on that in the coming months in creating a difference there in the minds of our citizens of what's really appropriate to call 9114. Because at the end of the day, if we're depending on the numbers you look at, and thank you to Ms. Farag for again again, another outstanding report analysis, the depth of history I learned a few things. So thank you. When you have, let's say we were ideally staffed and had 10 to 14 people, right? Again, still, the calls need to be answered and if we're getting a call about a dog barking on 911, we have to take that call and get it routed, and that takes away from getting the call from someone who has someone in front of them that just collapsed and needs CPR. So that is really where we're going to focus some things. There's some other technology areas too that we'll probably touch on, and I'm probably rambling at this point, because it is such an expansive, the efforts that we'll probably touch on and I'm probably rambling at this point because it is such an expansive the efforts that we have right now are so expansive and I'll be happy to talk about them more but I'll stop my rambling for a second. Well and I appreciate it I know that for instance animal services is not does not answer their calls 24 hour and I can see this only agreeing immediately here does not answer their calls 24 hour and I can see this only agreeing immediately here does not answer calls to people call 911 or 279 8000 or whatever and that becomes an issue we need and and part of that is us I mean we need to fund that somehow that They do answer calls 24 we but we have to know what we have to be reminded of what we need and how we can correct what we need. And we've had good conversations over time. The fact that we've lowered the number of employees or from last budget, if we, first of all, we couldn't find people to fill those positions to start with. But I think what we need to do is start from zero-based budgeting and say, how many do we need? What is the timeframes we need them and figure out how we're going to pay for them, but we need to know the final number. That becomes a very important part. We go through budgets once a year, but we go through budgets every day. We need to figure this out. And so that to me is important. When for the answer time that you had on the listing, does that answer time, that's the time that somebody says hello to the person calling on the assembly. That is not the time that you're switching over to somebody else. Do we have numbers for that that somebody who's actually going to listen to the call, dispatch the call to talk to the person? Do we have that? Do you mean for going into the various cues? Yes. So I believe director Ongley can give you times for our 2798,000. But once the 911 call hits and someone answers it, and it's 911 qualified, then the dispatcher will handle it. We put the non-emergency calls into a queue, and honestly, we have people waiting five, 10, 20 minutes for that, right? And we want to find other options for that like online reporting. But so the call comes in and again the average right now is 11 seconds to hearing a human voice, not just the system picking up. And then it gets routed through there, Director, their director on the do you have anything you want to add to that okay look at that she taught me things the the problem that we're seeing and and we've handled a number of the complaints that the constituents have sent into either council or to us directly is those times where you have to wait and their're outliers, they truly are outliers, but they're incredibly frustrating to citizens. Is when we get to the 42nd mark of not speaking to a real voice. Generally in the complaints we've seen in those times where our system is overwhelmed with calls, people get to the 42nd, 52nd mark and they hang up the phone. Now, I want to be clear, we have another problem on the other end. And this is something psychologically we're delving into the director and I about revamping our 911 message. Because I will tell you when you don't get an immediate pickup by a person, there's a recording that tells you exactly what to do. In fact, I got a complaint forwarded to me at the end of last week where the person did exactly the opposite of what the recording says. Now, what that tells me is that we're failing on our communication effort in that announcement. So we're going to, we actually talked over the weekend about umphing up the 911 so that people hear it because one of the things that you have to take into account and Councilmember Katz brought it up, people are in situations that are frantic, that are traumatic to them and they're looking to talk to a person and they get a recording, it really doesn't matter what the recording says unless you grab their attention. Because the first thing that goes off on the recording is, do not hang up. Unfortunately, it's not getting through because we have people hanging up and the way the system works is just like like if you're calling AT&T to get service. Your call will be answered in the order it was received. And when you hang up, you go to the back of the order and if we have 30 people calling, you're now at the back of the order. So we have the, we're going to change our 911 recording to in a sense, super emphasize. Don't hang up. It's also explained in there what the tones are. And the tones, the tones are for our deaf community. Are very important because we need to provide services to them. There's also a recording immediately after the English recording is a Spanish recording. And then the tones. All of this is explained, but the message isn't getting through because we have people that hang up and hang up and hang up. Or get frustrated at that 42nd to 52nd mark and hang up anyway thinking that they're gonna come back around. So, again, going back to our campaign to get people to call the right number, we're also gonna emphasize that, and we're gonna change again the recording because it's clear that we can do a better job. Well, in a gets back to one of the questions on here is like the increase funding for the fee. First off, I always like to know how much are we getting now from the fee and how much do we need and if we get more, what are we going to do with it and how fast can we do it? And I don't know those answers. I don't know whether or not we do know those answers, but go ahead. So the again essentially this is an extra tax. And I know that the Council and the County Executive have always been concerned about it. And we have done our best through the years to manage our resources. And right now we're, we did bring up to the County Executive that there is an opportunity to increase the 911 fees and now is the right time. So I actually have a meeting this week that we've had several meetings already about getting to what is the right number from Montgomery County. Now our 911 fees can pay for salaries, can pay for facilities, can pay for equipment. Now, to be clear, we do already get help from the state, paying for computer equipment for consoles and such. So we do get a lot of things reimbursed there, but there's many more things like salary, like bonuses, like other facility needs that need cover. So we have proposed, we've made the proposal that we raise our 911 fees. And again, as already discussed, that's a fee on every single line. So for me, for any citizen, depending on how many lines, every line will get that. Unfortunately, I think I'm paying for like seven people right now. But it's so critical of all the calls you want to have answered or to make the 911 is most critical. So to me, it's worth it. We are going to look at what the number should be. The highest right now is Frederick County and they up at, their total fee to be clear is $275, because it's $225 is a county fee plus $0.50 to the state, and that $0.50 goes and pays for the things that I talked about us getting reimbursed for. When you talk about long range planning and funding, whether it be a facility, whether it be a new CAD, this funding can do that. So we will be coming back to you so the timing question for you would be, we want this in effect for fiscal year 26. So we would be coming most likely in the spring to get approval to raise the fees. And again, I don't want to say what the number is going to be yet, because we still are OMB analysts. We're looking at that. But most likely, obviously, we're the one of the lowest. We've purposely been one of the lowest. But now it's time to change. I could see anywhere from a dollar to two dollars. And really, I'm going gonna let the analysts do that because it is a serious thing when you put on a fee attacks and we wanna make sure that we're at the right place. And I appreciate the way you said it. But what do we pay right now? What is Susan Frog paying for her five lines? Some per line right now. You don't wanna know? Yeah. I think he said it's. What is it? 75 cents for the county portion, what 50 or 75 for the state portion, per line per month. But it's 75 from the county portion. Correct. Which we couldn't do. And anything else, if not, I'm gonna turn to my committee Okay. Anything else if not a return to my committee members here? Since I went with her first, we'll go with you for a system. Have a dad for fairs. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you. And thank you for suffering my through my questions or comments during the last session. But more, I'm appreciative of your goal of trying to help educate the public better on how to use the system. We do want them to use the system when it's the system that should be used, but we also want them to know 911 does not fix all the things, right? And so we have other avenues for that and we need to not overly stress it. And since there's a great video embedded in our packet that Ms. Farab puts together, but Cassandra Tressler isn't here. I want to commend her and you Assistant Chief Frank for putting together all those informational videos that go out. You know, she does a great job with the community outreach. So I greatly appreciate that. I have a question regarding whether the state funds are able to be used for things like the HVAC or for system redundancy, which are two big critical problems we have. Yes. Now the PSCC we share that building, the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the portion of the fee? Right. So they would still have their separate other fee because that means our county fee is one third of what Frederick counties is now. Correct. And part of Frederick County's increase is goes to an infrastructure change that they're making and they have a independent 911 center and that increases helping to pay for that. Right, and you know totally appreciate that they have an independent 911 center and however we choose to do this in the future, you know, and I want to make clear sort of the situation we find ourselves in now whether it's on find ourselves in now, whether it's on the capital infrastructure side or whether it's in the staffing side or not new issues. These are things that have been building up over time and magnified over time. But you know, give me a lot of heartburn in terms of risk management, right? And people are people. We can only go for so long in a day's time and we can only expect so much. And Council member Katz pointed this out that of course our 911 folks are call takers are hearing people at the absolute worst times possible. But one of the other things that I think is hard for people to understand about the work that they do is that they hear what comes in, they don't get closure on what happens. And that's a hard thing from a processing standpoint to really wrap your head around because you have now passed it off and you don't know what happened and you've got to go on right to the next stressful call. And that's a lot. But the state of the infrastructure piece is really significant to me from a risk management standpoint in terms of being at an utmost critical level and need to be addressed. And this is not a nice to have or it would be great if we could make it better. We are, as someone once said, being held together with duct tape and spit in that regard, right? And we can't live like that in the emergency management world. That is bad for everyone. It is bad for our residents. It is bad for our public safety professionals. And it makes doing the work day in and day out all that more challenging. So I look forward to getting the report back from OMB about what needs to be done, but I think we need to be really literal about that and not in its words about it because this is going on for far too long, and we have to get this done. So thank you. Thank you. How do you remember, Meg? Thank you. On the same theme, how are we judging the success either formally or informally, qualitatively or quantitatively of the hiring bonus in the pension plan? Like how do we know if we're doing enough? Obviously, we want to see our retention rates improving with the pension plan. We want to see our recruitment rates tracking upwards as words spreads about the hiring bonus and about the pension plan. We want to see our recruitment rates tracking upwards as words spreads about the hiring bonus and about the pension plan. Are we seeing those things? What do we need to know about where we're at with that? So so far the response both on the $5,000 bonus and the and the pension program is very good. It's making a difference. I just got to speak with our latest group of new trainees and again, the information we're getting from them is the $5,000 made a difference. And also when you look at hiring all around for all of public safety as far as police and R911, it's needed because it gets us a seat at the table. Like every, all the other agencies are offering the same thing and if we don't offer it, it's a problem because they will look at the other agencies. So that is a benefit. I will say that in going back to the attrition, I know the numbers didn't sound that way, but I get all of the notices when someone leaves ECCC. I get either the resignation or they got a job somewhere else in the county. I will say that as soon as we enacted the pension program, those numbers significantly went down. I was not getting those notices, so you know that was an anecdotal thing to me that we're on the right track. And then also as you've mentioned the attrition during training has been great. Fantastic training team with our academy, with their academy if you would. And they're taking on more than ever because they're also doing the call taking for fire rescue and then also our call takers are learning to be fire dispatchers. And I've got to commend our fire rescue partners for the effort they're putting in to help educate our people and get us trained up so that we can continue to move down that path towards consolidation. It's a very hard job that Fire Rescue does and I will tell you as a police officer, I get on a scene when Fire Rescue there and I see them, the command staff busy and directing and it's a thing that I don't know but we're very thankful that they're helping to educate us on those efforts so we can support them. So it's working. I will be honest with anything, and I've talked about the jobs, I've talked about this for hiring for law enforcement. Since COVID, we have folks that like to telework or things like that. Unfortunately, ECC is not a telework site. You can't do that. There you got to be there. Heavy computers, heavy systems that you need access to. So we need to continue to look at wages for these folks. Their granted the pension is a good thing, but right now they're paid around the same area as what a target starting employee might be paid. So, yeah, that's, I mean, that's the best. We've talked with, we have talked with the county, county executive and he's concerned about it as well. And so I'll continue to, I'll continue to, this critical job. And I told our new recruits this the other week. We talk about police officers being first responders. Okay. It's these folks here that are the first responders. They're taking that call and making sure in an instant. It goes to where it needs to and gets the right attention and gets the right information to the people that are on the other end of the call. Giving directions on CPR. We have a fantastic story about her staff saving the life of a retired officer by giving his wife directions on how to do CPR. So amazing work that those first responders are doing and whatever we can do to support them, I know that the county executive supports it. I know that you support it and we'll keep advocating as you've suggested. Thank you. I mean, that's a great point that you raised. I mean, this is absolutely another one of those positions where when things go right and they mostly do, nobody's going to hear about it and nobody's going to pay attention. And then when one thing goes wrong, it's disastrous and that can make the national news. So it's extremely high stakes, extremely high stress, and it's important for us to make sure that we're doing everything we can to have the right capacity there on the line. And I think that it was a significant statistic that somebody chief maybe gave that 70% of the calls really could would be better off being directed somewhere else. Is that right? Yes, around 60% should go to somewhere else. I mean, that seems like a huge issue that we should think about strategy on because when we think about staffing to be able to take on those 60% of calls versus staffing to not. I mean, first of all, if all those calls are being directed where they really should be going, we probably need more staffing. We have a bigger staffing deficit in those other locations than we realize now. And there's a staffing deficit everywhere across County government, but including in these different public safety and crisis response areas. And so one, we need to be staffing up those other places to be able to handle those calls, but also our folks, we should not be having to have routine daily holdovers. I mean, the staffing needs would be much less here. So both of these are issues that I think would be great to really spend some time on strategy and support whatever you all need to help get that done and be talking with our I think that this is really a big part of the equation. In addition to saying yes we want to make sure that we're funding all of these positions and that we're providing the bonuses and you know having the pension plan those are all essential for us to do. We have to be competitive within within the region and we know that we have not been. We also need to have the calls being directed to the right places so that we can staff then appropriately for that. Now I do want to say, when you talk about strategy, we are looking at technology as well. Director Olly is working on PSAP to ASAP, more acronyms for you, but basically when our calls for- I see Ms. Farog writing. When our alarms come in, like calls from an alarm company comes in instead of our call takers having to deal with that, we want a computer program to deal with that to go to dispatch items like that. We also have, we also receive other thing, people don't realize calls for toes come in, tow requests come in. And so we're looking at technology to do that, but there's also those are coming into 9-1-1. Yeah, well, two, two, seven, nine, eight thousand numbers. Okay, okay. They have to be dealt. All the calls, no matter what, that come into the center, either number, have to be dealt with. Right. So we're looking at a computer program to do that. We're right now we're trying to get over the obstacle of doing stolen checks on those tags coming in. So unfortunately, we do have an auto theft problem and it's part of our protocol. We need to figure out before someone just toes a car away, is it actually stolen? Because then we have to gather evidence. We got to run the car. So director Anli is making sure that we're looking at all the technology options available to reduce that call volume. Again, 2,500 calls in a day. It's a lot of calls. If we can just chip away at calling the right place, going to 3-1-1, having a technology option to answer calls, it makes it a little bit better. Thank you. As we look at low-hanging fruit in this regard, another category of calls that I remember hearing about when I visited the ECC was those colors who are calling to talk to somebody, like that's really the reality here. So they're the repeat callers, and they can be hard to get off the phone with them. They may need to eventually dispatch someone to go check and make sure that everything's okay. And, you know, significant amount of time being spent on relatively few people who are not actually experiencing and emergency. The better place for those folks might well be 988 every mind who can sit and chat with them and that's part of what they do. And here in Montgomery County we are trying to kind of market that a little bit differently than the way it's been marketed statewide which is as you know a suicide response line and you know mental health crisis we want this you know to be able to be a talk line and we want to then staff it appropriately to do that but it makes the marketing tricky because it's not the same as the statewide marketing which is funded by the state and so on which says you know call this if you are you know experiencing thoughts of suicide etc. we also would like people who are calling nine-on-one operators to chat to call 988 instead. Are there part of how we can do that is with transferring callers who call 911, transferring them over to 988? And I know that that was something that was not happening before. I mean we didn't have 988 before obviously. So this is a new protocol that would need to come into practice. Is that something that's happening now? Yes, it's happening. We transfer the calls to every minor 988 and or the crisis center. That's great. And then what else can we do from a marketing perspective at the county level? I mean, I was looking at our graphic, the help is in within reach graphic, which I know is being it's so good. It's being used as a model by other places. And when I've looked at that before, I saw, oh, listening support under 98. Yeah, that's perfect. But then I just noticed that it's health crisis listening support, and I wonder if it would make sense to tweak the wording there to make it clear that it's not just for crises. It's just, it's also just for listening support in general. Is that something that would make sense to update? So we also work with HHS and recently there was a meeting the integrated call centers where we discussed that and came up with the infographic and that it could be something we could take back to them. Great. Great vision. And then the non-emergency line for the alternative to 911 as a non-emergency line, is that something that we should be spelling out on the same graphic? We're getting to a lot of phone numbers, I realize. But it depends because that's where I know there's legislation talking about a statewide 311 system So I that's where we paused on that just in case the 311 state-wide system comes into play got it The other low hanging fruit maybe this one is not that low hanging because it comes with a budget tag and we've We've talked about it and it hasn't happened But I do think as has been brought up that the animal services Not being there 24 seven. I mean that, it's an issue for our call takers. It's an issue for the public understanding who they should call when, and then it's also an issue for the officers and the folks making those, you know, for the issues on the ground, we would all rather have an animal services person going to address the animal services issue. And I think often an officer on the ground who has to prioritize the calls that are coming in, that's not necessarily going to be the first priority. And now you've got the public saying, well, why don't we have an officer here? Well, they're dealing with a life or death situation down the road. And so I do think that as we discuss the that as a budget line that we need to make sure that it's very much understood amongst the full council and that it's it's talked about on the executive side as well that when we talk about animal services and funding those positions, we are talking about a very direct impact on our our 911 responders and on our officers and capacity on the ground. We need to be looking at ways where we can chip away chunks of that 60% and that's a chunk of that 60% and funding that obviously would also allow us to provide better services for those calls. And then the last one that I'll touch on again is that fax tone. Because that's something that I've gotten. I'm one of the people who's gotten calls about that. And people are really confused. And as everyone has acknowledged, then they're hanging up. And they're calling me. And in some of these cases, and saying, 9-1-1 is broken. And then they're in a panic. And I'm like, it's actually not broken. Just hang on. And so if there was something in the notification that's in the message that said, there's a sound coming up. Stick with us that specifically, because they would hear that they said, I mean, I actually was told by one constituent, like it said, don't hang up, but it's broken. So I got hang up and find somebody else to call. Yeah, we're going to, unfortunately, direct dronly got to call from me. Like, we want to do something to, again, I can't describe it anymore, then own it up. I will tell you as a police officer getting on the scene of a critical incident, sometimes I need to raise my voice and assert myself in a certain way so that I get people's attention because again They're in a traumatic episode. They're a lot of stress. They got all kinds of chemicals dumping in their body And they're not listening to the words that are being said like you've reached 9-1-1 Please hold So we're gonna look at that. It's a communication thing I think within the week will have an updated one and we're going to seek feedback on that As we go forward and that is reference the tones that will be on there. We're going to over emphasize all of it That's great. That's great. Yeah, I mean I think if I'm calling 911 for an emergency the last thing I want to hear is a soothing Elev elevator voice. Oh, actually, I did have one more thing. Sorry, apologies, colleagues. When somebody calls, I mean, our call takers now are so used to receiving multiple calls about the same incident as we discussed here. Many, many multiples potentially to calls about the same incident. And they have to be able to move through those quickly for the sake of expedience and everybody's safety on the ground and to get to the result that we need. But what happens when you have someone who, you know, God forbid is committing multiple crimes is maybe attacking multiple people. And so, callers may be, maybe, and we had a situation like this where there was some confusion around that in my district as well. Callers may be calling in and saying, I've got, you know, this incident, there was some confusion around that in my district as well. Colors may be calling in and saying, I've got this incident, there was a stabbing happening here. And then another person says there's a stabbing happening here. Maybe it's even in the same building. You know, we're on the same block, but there could be different victims there. How do call takers, what do they do to sus out, whether that is a call about the same incident, or whether we might have a mass, whether we might have multiple victims and somebody who, who multiple victims who need to be responded to. Right, and that's where we need to triage each cause if it's the same new call rather. It's not necessarily associated to one or the other. Whether it be a collision, whether it be a stabbing shooting, you have to treat it as if it's that first call that we've ever received because you don't know who has what and who is a victim of something. Additionally to that, so part of our other functions that we're that we're working to enhance are real time well. Our Violent Crime Information Center, which may have a name change, I'm told in the future. But one of the things that we have attached to that as well as our drones as first responder program, which is now all across the county, is the opportunity to use live 911. And that gives us a unique opportunity where our folks that are manning either the drones or our real-time crime center, they can plug into a 911 call. So in the example that you again we're building this capacity and this is where we want to get to. But when we get that call, we have other law enforcement professionals that can now plug into that call. And not only while they're collecting data, well our call takers are collecting data, they can listen to it, but they can also continue to listen as you hear an incident unfold, and they can use their law enforcement experience to assess what's going on and identify that, okay, this is a, you know, knock on wood a stabbing spree like we had down in the week, right? And can relay that information instantaneously because they have a radio with them to officers on the road. So we're building that capacity. I know that, Ms. Farag mentioned that there. And that's where that becomes an opportunity in our service for critical incidents. Thank you. I just remember one other category of calls that I remember that I remember you telling me about. I think it was you that we have parents who call in, especially at the start of the school year, and say, my kid doesn't want to go to school and they're calling 911 for this And so that's another category of call where I'm like, okay Well, what can we do to help folks to not call 911 for that purpose? And I wonder if MCPS could be putting out messaging maybe at the start of the school year To just notify parents if you're having difficulty with your kids And this or that measure here the resources that are appropriate to call and here are resources that are not appropriate to call. And I wonder if that could help alleviate the load. Yes, we're going to speak with, in fact, I'm going to see Assistant Chief McBain after this. And I'll make sure that we double up that request. And now that we have Chief Jones, the Marcus Jones. Yes. Citizens of Jones. We call it Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones. Now that we have Mr. Jones with MCPS, we'll make sure that that message gets through. Great, absolutely. And if there's anything that we can do on the council side to convey to MCPS or the board, just let us know. Thank you. We're gonna wrap up here in a second, but we approve the Council approved funding for the external staffing study. What is the status of that? So the staffing study we're putting into play for our ISB and field services bureau, and we appreciate the amount, but the staffing studies cost a great amount of money as I've testified before. So it's going to handle those opportunities. I think I saw in the packet where it mentioned applying to ECC. We're not quite at the right place for a staffing study at ECC quite yet and we may not even need to deal with it. Put funding towards doing a staffing study. I will say what happens there, our fire rescue partners have a unique thing. They have national standards that says, you know, for this equipment, you need this many people in this radius, you need this. And there are some of that with the national models that we have that says, how many people you need. The first thing we need to do is put in these technology, the technology opportunities that we're looking at, we need to see about getting people to call other numbers, and then see what our call volume looks like there, and then it's less difficult to determine how many people you need to address those calls. Certainly we need more people, but I think with professionals like Director Onley, she can point us in the right direction and get us there. And I do want to reiterate one thing we've talked about the, and I've told Director Anli before, we still have those 25 positions. And because the County Executive Dr. Stoddard as he testified, we still have those positions. And we're going to do everything we can to get to hire them so that we will fund them again. And get to that number, get to that number where we want to be, which was recommended, and get due away with consolidated dispatch. And then once we get there, then we're really going to look at, and we're going to come back, we're going to keep asking for more people to get to the right spot, so that we keep that number, that 911 answer number. We'd love to get back to the four seconds we were. It might not be quite possible because when we were at four seconds, we were running back to our house to use the copper line to call in, but we're striving to get back there. All right, so as a time frame, when will we know when we need to study? I Would expect the way things are going right now. We're going to look at some point in fiscal year 26 And and we can certainly talk more with Miss frog and talk more with with you and and get another update from Director Omley. But again, I do wanna say that, and I sent an update on the workload analysis that 160,000 authorized was for about where we are that. The good news is we're in a very good place because we found the county has a contract and with a company that just did a workload analysis down in DC. So we're engaged in fact part of my work this week is to finish off the scope of work on that item. Ms. Frug, did you want to comment on that? I did. When I recommended the staffing study, I had envisioned that it would be the entire department because you are facing an enhanced pension multiplier for sworn staff in January slash February that could lead to a bigger exodus of sworn officers. And I thought a staffing plan of the entire department would permit the police department to understand what give it a menu of options of how to redeploy staff. If you have an immediate mass exodus of sworn staff, I did think the ECC was important. The 160 is on me. If that is too low, that is 100% on me based on my research. It would be helpful if the police department could come back also possibly with an estimate of the entire department. If it's not including the ECC, if it could come up with a detailed plan of how it's going to approach dealing with these different moving pieces. The Public Safety Committee is going to have a staffing update for the police department in early December and I can't remember the date. But part of what I was going to ask there is if we're not going to have the staffing study in time for potential loss of employees in February, what are your contingency plans to redeploy people out on patrol to meet the needs? And it would be interesting to understand, too, if that's going to have, if a bigger shortage is going to have of sworn officers is going to have any kind of impact on ECC call takers and dispatchers, too. Because you're going to have longer response times, that type of thing, what kind of flack will they be taking at the ECC and is there some sort of need to plan for that piece too. So I will get in contact with the department. It would be, again, it would be helpful to understand what the whole department would cost in terms of a staffing study and also what their contingency plans are that you can discuss in December later in December. And before warned, that's going to be a major part of your discussion in December. So a couple of things. I do have an estimate on because I know what DC ultimately should have paid. And I also, so we can give that number. But I'm also very confident in the planning that we have already. We have answers to the things that Ms. Farag just mentioned. We're happy to share them and put them into a consolidated effort. We're happy to discuss them in advance. We have been preparing. We do have contingency plans. A lot of our effort has been guided towards hoping that and hope is not a great thing. I hate I don't like using that word. But it's okay. It's not in this case. Yeah, but we're planning for those contingencies. We have a menu of what we're going to look at doing. But what we want to do is focus on hiring and getting people into our academies and retaining employees so that we don't get to that crisis in the spring. I appreciate that. And I know both of my committee members want to comment about the mobile integrated health program that we do and that helps people for the 9-1-1 rather the frequent flyers that we get? I can briefly speak on it. So quite often we have high users is what we call now. We've tried to... Your term is much nicer than mine. Yeah. And what we realize is kind of similar to the ECC discussion where it's not always the appropriate place to call 901 to fix your problem. It's not always the appropriate place for us to respond in a heavy apparatus or transport unit to take care of your situation. There are other ways that we can do that. Integrated health is one of those areas where we can identify those high users that it is a question sometimes between a doctor's appointment. And sometimes the perception is if I go on an emergency response vehicle, I'll get seen into the facility much quicker and that is not just like the triaging calls and everything we do, which triage calls in the hospital setting as well. So that mechanism is to divert the impact on our response to maintain the emergency need that exists. And if there's not an emergency need or we're not the primary agency or only agency that handles that, let's look at other alternatives to do that without spending 500 to 600,000 for transport unit times two people times three shifts. So that's kind of the model I'm just giving a kind of a primary but since you've asked you this question I want to really highlight what's been said but in a different way. ECC is a primary mission. It's a primary mission. Fire and rescue law enforcement cannot do their mission if ECC is not elevated to being a primary mission. If it's not elevated to having the infrastructure, the support, the wages and benefit packages that law enforcement and fire rescue service have. We're going to constantly have challenges. And in the packet, you see 43 people from Fire and Rescue are staffing the ECC with the same level of benefit packages and contracts that are frontline personnel and fire rescue are receiving. So when you talk about why we're coming over the budget, that budget is impacted based on the contract that those 43 people are working at least on the fire rescue side. And why is that important? Well, where you look at the ECC speaks multiple languages. I'm not talking about, they speak law enforcement language. They speak fire language. They speak emergency medical services language. Then they have to speak 3-1-1 language, etc., etc. So it's important to understand those things and it's not easy to translate going from a law enforcement to fire and rescue and vice versa. So it's very complex and complicated. The good news is there's training and that's why the training may take so long so that they can provide those people that can translate. But it's a different discipline and different things that you have to continue with. So again, I urge that we really make sure that the ECC is a primary mission and all the necessary support to make those things happen, happen, just like law enforcement and fire, we ask the question all the time to us. How many calls do you respond to? We respond to every last call. But if we don't get the call or the call is not dispatched appropriately, we're impacting our system. So I must leave with that. Make sure that we're supporting the ECC as a primary mission or we'll be in the news like other people and around the country. The good news is we're not. Well, and to your point, I'm going to turn to my committee members here, but to your point, we want to be a part of the solution here. We need to hear what we need to do so that we can come up with a better solution. We're better than most in our area. But the person that's facing that terrible crisis, they don't care that we're better than most. They care about the crisis they're facing. Councilmember Luke. Thank you. And my question really, sort of dovetails with what Councilmember Katz was just talking about. There was an article in the Baltimore banner on Friday, and I don't know if any of you saw it, but it was about folks who were chronically using 9-1-1 for inappropriate reasons, right? And they clearly had mental health challenges, but they'd been told, they'd been given assistance, and they just sort of wouldn't follow through with whatever was offered. And I know every mind is not here. Every mind is our 988 receiving entity designated for the county. And it is beyond just a few are feeling suicidal. That is 988 is to be used for broader things. However, we do have a significant challenge, not just us other counties. And the news article was about Baltimore County. I want to make that clear. It was not about a Montgomery County situation. But this is a primary interest for me, which is how are we doing a better job of getting those folks to care or compliance. And at a certain point, if they're not willing to engage in any way what other choices are left, right? Because if they are significantly utilizing resources or utilizing resources you're not supposed to and I know there is a charge for misuse of 911. I don't know that we've ever had people charged with that here in Montgomery County, and that's obviously not the desired outcome, right? And I know we don't have the assisted outpatient treatment program up and running yet, but that that is a tool per se to future, perhaps get folks who've been unwilling with other more, you know, voluntary means to get treatment in order to get that treatment. So we're not doing those things, right? Can you speak to sort of how significant a burden the high users are and whether or not we as a jurisdiction have had to ever in the past five years let's say utilize the misuse of 911 statute. Yes we have and that misuse of 911 and I wouldn't say necessarily it was a high user that was suffering from mental illness It was just somebody that was calling I think there were two cases within the past five years. Okay. For Montgomery County Okay, and yes, I should I should say there are other reasons why that might maybe applied But you know in in for me, I'm trying to look at particularly the population with acute behavioral health needs or Alzheimer's dementia, et cetera, that may impair their decision making when they're making that call in the first place and not necessarily be as amenable to what they are advised on scene once a first responder arrives because of those impairments. So thank you. I was going to say just one additional piece on that. We're expanding our capability with our crisis intervention team or behavioral assessment unit. And real chronic cases would be sent to that unit to look at and do a soft touch to talk about with that person. Number one, the impacts they're having on our system. But number two, here's where you can get some help. So we're we really do like the work that that unit is doing. The police officers involved there because they are able to influence and redirect on occasion. And yes, and I appreciate the work that they're doing and I do think that we have an opportunity the forms that were attached at the back end of that SIM report that the state just did for Montgomery County were templates to use that could be adapted for Montgomery County to use so that you're getting consent from the individuals to help again get them over to where they need to be for that help because you're not able as a law enforcement to send you know health information or to transmit that you this will would that on scene. It is used by other jurisdictions in the state. And so that could be a valuable tool for our CIT team to use, again, for those folks to help have better connection to services in a more immediate fashion. Thank you, Council Member Meade. Thanks, circling back to the staffing study conversation. We have a new director of behavior, health and crisis services also. And I know that director Martin is looking at how we can make improvements and where we should make changes on the rest of our crisis response space and looking at. That certainly is going to have staffing impacts as well. And I know that she was looking at contracting with another expert to come in and tell us, give us more ideas about how we can make some of those changes as well. But as we think about what's our ideal layout for who should be responding to what types of calls and what the staffing implications are for that, I think that's a really relevant variable here as well to kind of figure out what that timeline looks like for where we'll get clear recommendations for what that space could and should look like in Montgomery County. And obviously, so anyway, I'm just noting that I think that's a really relevant piece. And so if we did the staffing study, I don't know how much then so it would make to do the staffing study without ECC, because we would want to make sure that that's included in the look that's being made at the wider crisis response space, or if we should be waiting on the entire staffing study so that we can include those additional potential other non-profit partners or, you know, I'm not sure how, what would make sense, but just noting that I think that that's a variable that we have to make sure that we're looking at. Go ahead. Council member Katz, if you would indulge me for once, I think you were getting ready to wrap up. If you would, yes, but go ahead. If you would indulge me for once, I think you were getting ready to wrap up if you would. Yes, but go ahead. If you would indulge me. Consider yourself indulged. I do want to recognize because I don't think you're going to get the chance to see Director Onley again. Director Onley is retiring after decades of service to this kind. At least when you hear this, I'm sorry that you're speaking. Yeah, go ahead. So it really is when you talk about a significant profound loss for us. What she knows, she has forgotten more about emergency communications than any of us in here will know. And I just wanted to make sure I brought that to your attention that we're going to lose another exceptional employee, but she's going ready to go on to start her next chapter in her life and we're excited for her, but I wanted to recognize her in front. Well, thank you. And thank you. You deserve a round of applause. So the audience is the minute from the beginning here, but thank you for all that you have done. And I know you know where Montgomery County is in need so if you can continue to be of great the greatest of assistance that you have been we would sincerely appreciate it but good luck in your future. When does this happen? December 1st. Oh, thank you. Wow. Thank you for working on this. And they want to sad note. I talked her into a little bit of a runway. Thank you. Well, thankfully we're ending when it's sad now. I talked her into a little bit of a runway. Yeah, thankfully. She's going to help us hire the next director, which has huge, huge shoes to fill. Thank you very much. We're adjourned. Wow, that's big news. Wow, congratulations. I mean, that's we will miss it. you you you you