మహరచాట్వటానిసివరస్నినినిచటాని కారిలెదినిటిరక౰ె. అ౪నిదికనిలిటకాటా. నామరనెని నమ౿నికిమికనినికికికికిక మహరచిమనికిన౿కక౿� in their own country. I mean going to Zambia for the first time, it was shocking to me to see Chinese signboards everywhere, everything were in Chinese, how could you allow foreigners to come and establish businesses in your country and everything is in their own language. Something like this would never ever happen in China. This is why I'm saying that the Zambians are foreigners in their own country. If you live in Zambia, you can testify what I'm saying that when you go to Lusaka almost every Chinese signboard is in Chinese, you're advertising in Chinese. So how can the citizen of the country understand what they are saying, which makes you a foreigner in your own country. You know what I'm beautiful people, it's a boy Mr. Ghana baby right here in Lusaka. Like I'm moving around the city trying to get some shot but what I'm seeing, I mean this is going to be my last video if I live this country. It's kind of crazy because I feel like I'm back again in China. What? Have you ever been to China? No, we've never been to China. We've been to China, we're already in China. It's the first time. It's the first time. These people everywhere, Chinese construction everywhere. Let me ask you a question, when was your last time before China? The last time in China was around June. And today in China as well? Today I'm in China, like you see, I love the road man. That's like everywhere I see Chinese characters everywhere. But I'm in Zambia. This is unbelievable. That was 7 December during my stay in Lusaka, Zambia. Let me tell you something, I have nothing against immigration. But sometimes you just have to respect the culture, the rules and regulations of the country that you visit. How can you be travelling to somebody's country and you disrespect them by making sign boards in your own language? You feel the presence of China right after the arrival in Kenneth Kawunda International Airport. The new airport is built by China. Even if you get out of the airport, you will see Chinese sign boards. Everything is in Chinese. I've got proofs, I was there. When you drive out of the airport, that's when you see a sign board welcoming you to Lusaka, Zambia. With a Zambian flag and a Chinese flag saying that work together and win together. But my question is, are you guys really working together? That is what I want to know. I never wanted to talk about this because I realized that any time I identify a problem in an African country and I talk about it, the people living in that country attacked me. There are so many things that are happening in an African country and when I see it, I become so sad and I would love to talk about it but because of this unity among us, any time you talk about it, they will tell you that you are not from our country. Your country also has problems. So talk about your country's problem. But I just want to tell Africans that when we come together as one, a Zambian problem is my problem. I mean it feels so sad that the dominance of Chinese people in Lusaka, Zambia and at the same time, seeing that they have established their own bank that is Bank of China's Presence in what? Zambia. So which means all the money that they are making in Zambia, they are taking it straight toward China because they have their own bank. So it feels so easy to make money and deposit in the Bank of China and the money goes straight to China. Is this what we call win-win cooperation? Wake up Africans! Imagine being called a foreigner in your own country by a foreigner. Well, that's the predicament of a male Zambian national who has chosen to remain a non-mask. The man was on Saturday 10th away from a Chinese restaurant and shop called Lankins in Lusaka's Land Plakers for being black and a foreigner in his own country. The man was in the camp of his Chinese wife and now explains... If two other guys were in front of us, we went in this Chinese national team. So when my wife and I were going in there was this lady behind the counter she was shouting something, she was yelling something. So for me I just looked at her but then I couldn't understand. So I walked in again then she repeated the same phrase, the same phrase. So at this time I looked at my wife because she was looking in my direction. So I looked at my wife my wife had stopped moving. So I asked her, what did she think? So the lady said foreigners are not allowed in this shop. So I thought to myself in my mind I was like how does she know my wife is not from Zambia? Then my wife said she means you are not allowed in the shop. That's when I was confused with the foreigner. I am the foreigner in this situation. So she said then my wife asked the lady what do you mean? She said oh no the Chinese can come inside you have to wait outside, you can't come inside. The wife of the Zambian national has described the actions taken by the Chinese nationals against her husband as ridiculous. I don't think Chinese I mean racism is everywhere but in this situation it's just a little bit unusual. How can you ask how can you say that foreigners cannot come in when they are in a foreign country? It's ridiculous. I mean they are not supposed to believe like that. I asked the couple to accompany me to the said restaurant and shop so that I can independently verify the allegations against the Chinese nationals. In the shop there was only one female Chinese national at the counter and busy on her phone. We proceeded in the shop and when going out I asked the Chinese lady with the help of the Zambian national's wife for translation if I could see the owners of the shop so that I can find out about the allegations level against them. But the lady outright refused. When she refused I asked her whether it's true or not that they turn away blacks in their shop. In her response the Chinese national explained that this decision has been arrived at in view of the coronavirus but denied turning away in black person a contradiction. So basically she said that normally they allow the Zambian they will come here normally they are like the driver of the Chinese national so the Chinese national will come and buy stuff the Zambian driver will be waiting outside then they will be carrying the stuff from here to the car not to go inside but if they insist to go in they will still allow.  Simply put the Chinese are saying blacks transmit the coronavirus how painful can that be Zambia slowly turning into a Chinese colony has Zambia been secretly sold to the Chinese while citizens were still asleep could it be that our leaders know something about the Zambia China dealings which we don't know can a Zambian behave like this in China this is quite strange and strange indeed this is quite strange and strange indeed I mean this is what I've been talking about there is nothing like transparency between Africa and China relationship the things that some Chinese are doing in Africa are the things that no African dare to do in China if there is no transparency then there will never be a mutual respect between Africa and China because you and I don't know whatever is going on between the two because they would disrespect you in their various countries and whenever they come into your own country they also disrespect you I'm sorry to say this but Africans are becoming one of the most disrespected race in the entire world they respect us abroad and in our own countries too they keep on disrespecting us what have we done to deserve this this is not the first time something like this is happening in the continent I think I talked about this in 2017 where a group of Chinese were disrespecting Zambians in Zambia and uploading it on Chinese social media making fun of the people living in Zambia I wrote a letter to the ambassador to China and I never got a response and until I got a chance to visit Lusaka that is when I got to understand why I never got a response from the ambassador because they are foreigners in their various countries to your boy Mr. Gaona baby and if you really enjoyed this video don't forget to share subscribe if you are new to the channel and I'm gonna see you in the next one I am mine


We have many updates to the usability in the capture app, most of them quite small and we have many small visual updates. We have enhanced the keyboard data entry. We have made sure we have loading, where that makes sense, loading indicators. We have added a lot of messages when the lists are empty and done a lot of enhancements that we hope will make the capture app feel better and more professional without maybe you even noticing what actually changed. One of the bigger usability updates we have done is the header bar and therefore I have a separate slide for this. You can also see here that generally the header bar in the latest versions of the capture app takes less space. It looks the same as the header bar in other apps, more specifically in the data entry app. They're using the same underlying technical components. We have changed the strategy for selecting org units so that we have a pop over instead of a growing header bar when you want to select among many options like this. This will create a user interface that is more present to look at and that doesn't change as much. For example, when you want to change the org units, the rest of the page is not pushed down. We think this looks better and more professional and also gives better space for the rest of the data in the page.


Spectrum Theater Ensemble. So we have our third program for today, which is a panel discussion on Autism, Army and the Arts and is about how theater can fill an essential need for disabled populations. So without further ado, I'm going to turn this over to Dr. Tara Devine, who's the moderator for this discussion and she'll introduce the panel and take it away. Great, thanks, Chloe. We're delighted to share the space with the listeners and viewers. We've been looking forward to having this dialogue. And so I'll quickly say, I'm a developmental psychologist and a clinical therapist and across my 30 years, the two primary populations I've worked with are post trauma and what we often called neurological differences or neurodiversity. And really early in my career of those 30 years, it was clear to me that just talk therapy wasn't exactly gonna bring us all that far. So since I am have all of my life been part of, for me, in terms of the arts, the music part of arts, I quickly begin to turn to that and as another medium for my clients and their families. And so across the years, I just have these flood of faces that have benefited and I can remember for so many of them the moment when that I began to change because of their engagement in the arts. So anyway, I'll let Michael, you would like to introduce yourself and your background to our viewers. Thank you, Tara. My name is Michael John Carly for, I guess the particulars just because I wanna get to the meat of this, I would say that like most of us who work in the autism Asperger field, I of course have one of those shamelessly self-promotional author websites. It's michaeljohncarly.com. If you need the finer details, feel free to go there. But I have worked in the autism Asperger field as an executive director and a school consultant and a writer for almost 20 years. But the interesting thing, and I think the reason why, it's so much of great value to me to return back to a couple of subjects on this panel is that my existence prior to my and my elder son's diagnosis of being in the autism spectrum, my careers beforehand was, I was not only a starving playwright by night, but my stupid day job as we called them then was actually kind of cool. And it was working for a veterans organization called Veterans for Peace as their United Nations NGO representative. And for whom I did projects in Bosnia, Cuba, large one repairing water treatment facilities in Iraq. But being shaped by vets for 10 years and this particular organization had a very high percentage of combat veterans when compared to other veterans organizations. And it taught me an enormous amount about just conflict in general, both internal and external as well as giving me a really great start in learning about trauma and the machinations and how it works. And especially some insight into how our country can seem kind of spoiled in terms of what we sometimes tell our young men and young women that they're going to experience in a combat situation. And then we don't honor our promises of taking care of them when they come back. And that's always been of great disturbance to me. I'm also my loophole for them. I should mention too, because it's an issue that I've grown up with is due to having a father who was a Marine Corps helicopter pilot who was killed in Vietnam. And back then the kids of today may not remember it was a very unpopular war. And even as a small child, you grew up with the iconography of how messy it was from both the left and the right. And with that, I'll turn it over to Adam. All right, thank you. So good morning, my name's Adam Martin. I'm a special forces and civil affairs officer in the U.S. Army. I've done six overseas deployments and I've been in the Army for nearly 20 years. I have been diagnosed with PTSD during my time in the Army and often turned to the arts to help assuage my symptoms including performing and visual arts. My favorite visual art is actually a childhood throwback of building with my Legos, which mostly occurs in the middle of the night when I need to calm my nightmares. But I've also enjoyed performing arts, mostly short format live theater which unfortunately these days I can only go to YouTube for that. I have been a long supporter of the arts even if my last performance was actually a five minute lip sync montage combining the Beastie Boys and Cindy Loper in high school 20 years ago. So I'm very happy to be included in this panel because I recently saw STEs one flew over the Cuckoo's Nest and I was actually very surprised in the way that it affected me. So this powerful performance made me feel like I was actually reliving some of the abuse that I had experienced from my previous commander, not actually combat trauma, but from other members of the U.S. Army that were supposed to be my leaders. And that commander was embodied by Nurse Ratchet for anyone who wants to know I would that show. You know, having these feelings come up again during the show was actually quite surprising but afterwards it kind of allowed me to deal with this trauma in a more constructive manner and talk through things that I experienced and felt with my friends and family. You know, even if they hadn't been in the performance it kept me from being super angry when I talked about it because I could reference characters in the show and not necessarily have to talk about my own personal experiences. So knowing the important role that the arts can play in helping soldiers and others because anyone can really be affected by PTSD, my own reaction to the show emphasized the commonality between those on the neurodiversity spectrum and those suffering PTSD. Because of the strong commonality between the two communities, I feel that many of the accommodations that we can make in theaters for both those communities are very much the same. And I've been proud to be working with Spectrum Theater Ensemble to improve the accessibility to the arts for both of these diffreserving communities. Great, thanks Adam. Thanks for that rich and personal, vulnerable, authentic description of your experience and how the arts have been important in your recovery work. I wanted to quickly say to the viewers and listeners, we're gonna, Mike and I have engaged Adam's story with some questions as a way to elicit his experience and help you understand further how to help engage those that might be in these two categories of neurodiversity and or trauma, actually a number of clients who are both, with both and so, but we'd like to invite you to put your comments and questions in the chat box here. And at the last 10 or 15 minutes of this 45 minute dialogue, we think it would be richer, even more rich if you all engaged as an audience and then asking Adam or any of us questions or making comments. So thanks again, Adam. Let's see. Actually, I'd love to start. If you wouldn't mind, I'd love to start by asking Adam a question right off the bat that is not scripted. And that is, I mean, Adam, one of the things, I sometimes use my theater career as a throwaway line only because it's been so long ago, but for somebody with an autism diagnosis, I know in retrospect how enormously helpful it was to me in terms of not only motor skills issues, which if you're in the autism spectrum you have, you're just more conscious of what your body is doing, but also an element which I'm wondering if is also shared through the trauma experience, which is theory of mind. Like theory of mind is basically the idea that you can't understand what another person might be thinking because you just, if you're on the spectrum, you think that everybody is thinking the same thing as you are. And I was no exception. I had great asking devices, but when I first started in theater and the director was like, no, Michael, the character is thinking something different than you are. And I was like, excuse me? What are you, nuts? You know? How offensive, yeah. Yeah, it was a big lesson. It was a big lesson that other people could think differently. With the trauma experience, especially in the context of things like, the masking devices that trauma sometimes forces us to put on, do you find that you share some of those theory of mind issues when you think about embracing a character? Is it something that could, because I could theoretically see it as being something that's more difficult, but also as something that's really welcoming and accommodating. Well, since I don't try to act or actually participate in the theater. But I think having, being able to see other characters in the shows and really helping see that, oh, if this is in a play, then I'm not the only one dealing with this. And I think that, like with the one floor of the cuckoo's nest, that might have been one of the biggest examples is that, wow, this nurse ratchet and all her abuse and her not caring or understanding about the patients in her ward, I felt like several of the different patients. And it really helped to let me feel more comfortable sharing and not having to mask that kind of thing. And any of the problems or issues that I felt and any of the uncomfortableness. Plus, it also offers a really, a much easier way to explain to other people if you can use the example, well, I saw this in a play and people have been able to see the play and digest it and then saying, and that's how I feel right now too. So I think that kind of character emulation and use of the characters helps with the trauma I've felt. Yeah, you refer to one of the most common challenges in the suffering of PTSD and that's the isolation, like nobody could possibly understand and maybe I'm the only person feeling like this. And so to begin to see that actually, hey, there is someone in stories have been written about these people. So sort of begins to open up that isolated entrapment that keeps us stuck. And it reminds me of a common technique that I've used is to have people write a story about someone else who has experienced what they have. And so putting it into someone else. So, yeah, it's very, very powerful, yeah. Yeah, and so I think that is very important. And we've actually in the past tried to develop programs that we can use when we go on deployments and when we're talking to at-risk populations in different countries around the world, if they need to be able to attempt to share what they're feeling, being able to write it down as a play and then it's just art and it's not real. But if somebody who's watching the play identifies and to use my example, if someone identifies and goes, huh, I think I am a lot like that nurse ratchet character. And she's the bad guy. Maybe I should stop being like that. Yeah, it sort of works for everybody involved, doesn't it? Right. So multiple recovery opportunities going on, yeah. Yeah. I'm also wondering if there's a little bit of a, I mean, you touched on I think what is probably the larger focus of this conference that we're not privy to, which is that you are able to express things through art, obviously, that you wouldn't feel as comfortable. And it's really all about the context.  Would you also maybe consider that the arts in general even if veterans don't really have the initiative either because of trauma or just feeling outside of things, would you feel as though the arts is attractive because it might be a more behaviorally permissive community to enter into? I mean, for my autism diagnosis, I think that was probably one of the reasons why I gravitated towards it was because it was okay to be weird there. Right, yes. And there's a lot to that. And but at the same point, I know that in past outreach programs where arts companies of any kind have tried to become inclusive to veterans' needs and veterans in their local areas, the programs have kind of fallen through because they just haven't really succeeded in the salesmanship of that. And I wonder if you have any ideas as to what people are doing wrong. Well, I think especially with the active duty community, people move around a lot and so they aren't necessarily there to participate except a couple of weeks or and then they get sent away to a training exercise or a deployment or even another base and not able to fully get the full effect of the theater event and the art event or even with like reservists. If reservists are coming from a state or two away, then they can show up for one weekend and have an afternoon or an evening to express themselves, but then they go back to their hometown and they don't have that avenue. So I think that's probably one of the bigger challenges is that it's a fairly transient population that we have in the military. Well, how about unactive? So it's not a logistics issue. It's really just a, do I feel comfortable? Well, I think they're like at the base in Italy where I was just stationed, the arts director there had a degree in art therapy and she was trying to help get all styles of arts from performing arts to visual arts to be able to help the soldiers. But it's also competing with drinking beer and partying and video games which have many of the same stimulus to mask the feelings and kind of hide the feelings and then you don't have to talk about it at all, right? So just getting people to want to talk about it and fighting through all the other noise and activities is probably a bigger challenge if assuming the population is stable in one location. Thank you. Yeah. Okay, so Adam, one of the things you mentioned in your first sort of descriptive story and your experience of the arts and in particular your involvement with ST is the commonality between neurodiversity and PTSD. So what do you see? Can you say a little more specifically about those commonalities? Oh, yeah. So I think I've thought about this a lot especially in preparation for the panel. And then listening to the previous group, one of the things they talked about was maintaining relationships. And I actually wrote that down in my notes because I think if people don't understand where you're coming from and sometimes it can be very difficult to actually articulate your feelings especially if you get kind of overcome by emotions. People stop listening when you just start kind of yelling and oh my God, I'm tired of this. I can't deal with you people. And then I'm like, well, we're not gonna deal with you either. So I think that is a commonality between the two communities that I think the arts can help overcome because like you said, you can be dramatic and angry and people are like, wow, that was very realistic. Way to go. Yeah, it gets applause in that arena, yeah, yeah. I wasn't actually acting, that was totally real. Yeah, so it's a place to sort of moderate that self-regulation challenge that comes both from common neurological differences as well as PTSD. Adam, can I ask you a question actually too? I mean, because in my travels, I find that there can be wildly differentiating opinions on what neurodiversity constitutes, especially in terms of what diagnoses are allowed into the club of that which constitutes neurodiversity. And I would say that we're sort of coming out of a period where you had a certain element of folks that kind of were preferring to cherry pick a little bit so that it was just the brilliant aspies as opposed to people who might be diagnosed with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, conditions that really could use a good PR affirm behind them to combat stigma that, I mean, I remember what it was like 20 years ago to have autism or Asperger's in the stigma about that. And that was awful compared to today, but in those diagnoses, it's almost 10 times worse. And they're starting to take ownership of these words that they themselves, these communities. And I think that the broader, the majority of us now understand that of course they have to be a part of the neurodiversity angle, but do you still feel or do you get a sense that, is PTSD to, even if it's just 2% of the neurodiversity population, do you feel as though PTSD is still maybe an unwelcome member of the club of neurodiversity in certain circles? I've never experienced that in the neurodiversity community, but what you made me think about was that, like whenever I tell people I have PTSD, they assume, oh man, special forces, God, that must have been rough. Oh, I can't imagine what you experienced. Like, well, yes, I did experience what you see in movies, but for me, that was a very positive experience because I had a great team. We worked well together. We were able to accomplish our mission. You know, despite, yeah, there was some nasty stuff, but we trained and we were ready for that. But like the majority of, well, all of my PTSD comes from things that have happened back home, away from the battlefield. You know, the main part being, the way my previous commander treated me and part of that was just believing that I couldn't have some other trauma that didn't occur on the battlefield. And so it's also really strange and even I fall, I myself fall into my own, that own stereotype is like, hey, look, I didn't have these combat traumas.  Yeah, if we can, connecting these, circling back a little bit in connection to this, we were speaking earlier about just the arena for expression was actually just a medium for healing. You know, like, whereas some of the expressions would not be so welcome in some, you know, social, regular social interchanges, but on stage or in theater, it could be welcome and an outlet to do that. And then additionally, what could you say, Adam, and maybe you too, Michael, because, you know, when you entered theater, you know, as the person who was experiencing, you know, on the spectrum that this sense of belonging and the reason I bring up this idea about belonging, I know from as director of therapeutic services, director of clinical services, a person who's, most of my career been developing programs that fundamentally the basis of everything we did people had to feel like they could belong. Whatever program, whatever arena, whatever art medium, there had to be a sense of belonging that was offered, a sense of community. And so I wonder if actually both of you could comment on that piece. I guess I'd like to tie in your question with maybe, you know, another question for Adam. I mean, for me, it was two parts, you know, of the theater. You know, there was one part which was obviously the acceptance being in a community that didn't mind if I was a little weird. But the other part was performing. And, you know, the performing part is just kind of a separate piece that is something that if you have even moderate success at, it's going to make you feel better about who you are as a person, no matter who you are. And, you know, it's a great, great thrill. But I also remember I'm a sucker for oral history. I'm a sponge for stories. I always have been and one of the great things about working for a veterans organization for 10 years was just, you know, every week, I'd hear a fantastic story that somebody told. And it was an organization of people from, you know, World War II in Vietnam mostly, but you had some very interesting guys actually from the Spanish Civil War. They told the best stories, but I won't get distracted on that. I'd bring this up, though, because one, you know, this was a while ago when I worked for them. And, you know, one thing that you realized very quickly about the Vietnam generation was that part of their struggles had to do with the fact that they were coming home to, again, a population that really did not understand what they had gone through. And so not only did they need, you know, the healing capacity, they needed an understanding audience which they did not have in this country. And you started to really quickly learn that, let's say if you were French at around the same time of the Vietnam War and the French army had sent you, you know, whether it was Algeria or whatever, you know, might've been going on that the French army might've sent you to. And then you came home to your World War II era parents who had lived through World War II under occupation had seen things themselves. You had a much more understanding, you know, atmosphere with which to come home to than we had.  Well, I think through all the movies and other things, I think you can see a whole lot worse in some movies than most of us ever see in combat, especially it gets up close and the CGI and makeup artists are really good these days. But the, what you made me think about was when I first came back, I guess in 2007 from one of my tours, I went out to a bar and was telling stories about, oh, we did this and this. And I was kind of proud of the things that we had accomplished. But then I realized after a few minutes, everyone else at the table was just staring at me. Yeah, see, that's what I'm thinking, yeah. That's where I was going with this, yeah, exactly. But I think that's one thing our community, the United States has done well is trying to articulate that. And it might just be the circles that I run in that are very veteran friendly and most people have been in the service of in some kind or another, even if they hadn't didn't do any combat deployments, they still understand a little better. So I remember going out in New York City several years ago and people saying, wow, you're the first soldier I've ever met. I was like, what? I've already been, yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, especially like in 2004, but that was amazing.  Right. Yeah. Yeah. But. I think there's an employment statistic that can explain a little bit about that. Right. But yeah, I can totally see that that would seem a little weird. Yeah. Yeah. What would you say, Adam, to individuals that are either in leadership of the arts right now or considering hosting some opportunities that are intentionally inclusive of individuals in neurodiversity and or PTSD? What would you say to them about considerations as they're beginning to try to host such an inclusive medium? I would think that people would need to be ready for a little stronger language and stronger reactions than they might get from other portions of the population. I'll share another story. I went to a therapist back in, I don't know, 2010 and I was expressing my frustration as I felt that I needed to at that time and I scared that lady a lot and she told me never come back. Oh, dude, I'm so sorry. I am so sorry. Oh my God. It was tragic. Right. But if she hadn't been trained or prepared because her normal population was not the veteran population but if people are gonna want to work with that veteran population, then they gotta be ready that people are gonna get upset about things and it's not personal and we're not dangerous. Yeah, it's just a different rhythm and the cognitive regulation, emotional regulation, behavioral regulations, just like it's the wiring is what it is because of what it's lived through. And you were showing up at the therapy for like, okay, well, I'm available to do something different with this wiring but you didn't meet someone who could host that. So I guess what you're saying is like, for people to be versed in the needs and experiences if they're going to host these areas so that indeed is inclusive and continues to be inviting rather than another place of loss or disconnect which can be re-traumatizing actually. Yes, yeah, I mean, I think that same can be said for any population or any situation that especially if you're inviting people to come into it like you wouldn't have a party and invite people from AA and just have a full open bar you would be considerate of those people if you're gonna invite them in and just have a nice time talking. Maybe some nice news sparkling water or food, interesting food that people can have and use as the social lubricant and talk about, oh, where did this come from? So I don't think that is exclusive to the PTSD community. Yeah, right, right. Hey, you guys, if this is an okay place to interject this, there's a great question in the chat box and we have just a little over 10 minutes. So does it look okay with you guys for me to? Yeah, of course. And Tara, I think you should answer it too. This is more a ballpark than ours, you know. I think, you know, we're a village here and yeah, we each have something, interactive value creation as I call it. So question for the group, is it known what happens to the human body and brain when they are experiencing art? And does something happen when experiencing that surge of recognizing your own life being reflected back to you that Adam talked about? Do we know why this helps? So this is a question from Beth Blickers, her name. Thank you, Beth, it's a fantastic question. I would even just say why it's a fantastic question because we're always asking about how trauma works. And here we are, we're being asked about artworks and kind of, you know, a really cool, you know, addition to the conversation that I didn't expect. So Beth, thank you, but Tara's gonna answer it and I'm not, you know, yes. Well, we actually, you'd be surprised how we could collectively answer this, but there's actually a name for it in the field. It's called NeuroAesthetics. Oh yeah, I knew that. Yeah, it was so funny. Yeah, there's, Washington posted a great sequence and you can pull it up. I think it's a couple of years old. It's called, This Is Your Brain on Art. And I recommend, you know, taking a look at it, but actually art engages multiple parts of your brain that oftentimes in, whether it's neurodiversity or in post-trauma, they're sort of frozen or they're flattened out or interrupted and trapped, if you will. Doesn't mean that it's a forever broken thing. It just means our brains are wired to, I think it's a fantastic design. It has a natural wiring to protect itself.  We get sort of contracted with trauma and because it just keeps coming to mind for me. One of the reasons I was hired at the Monarch Institute for Neurological Differences as Director of Therapeutic Services is because my research in publishing was on fostering resilience despite cumulative adversity. And so when I went to interview there, so I'm not sure why my recruiter sent me here because I'm not an expert at the time. I was not an expert on neurodiversity. I was an expert on fostering resilience despite adversity and especially with regard to trauma. And so the hirer said to me, we think neurodiversity can be very traumatic because it's a world that says, you're living in a world that's not map or express, you know, information in the same way that you do and you get up every day and sort of with the same intentions to connect or be and you keep running into a wall and bouncing off and running into a wall and bouncing off. So in neuro-aesthetics, you find an arena like art, visual art, musical art, theater art. It begins to invite you and this is why like back to the topic that Adam was addressing earlier about, people who are hosting this, someone in the group has to be prepared for what this is about. Because you've got to live in the holding of those things.  You know, it's coming out of it in the beginning but it's like any old faucet or whatever it's been locked up for a long time. What comes out at the beginning can be a little funky or whatever you call it. So it is called neuro-aesthetics and it's an intention of unlocking multiple parts of the brain, your frontal lobes, which is, you know, behavioral, emotional and then connected to your limbic system which is your fight or flight and then the movement parts of your body and all of those together as we know, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And so whichever medium of the arts, you know, visual music or theater, it all has a part of unlocking those. So but I recommend that reading. This is your brain on art to bear. Thank you, thank you. I would love to add to that also that, you know, we use art as a means of expression where we don't feel comfortable expressing in other particular mediums or in more socially less unique situations. And it's especially, you know, it's tied in to the trauma angle not just because it's direct opposite also, but because it's such a solve for trauma and why it's such an important topic in this realm of neurodiversity is because people with multiple or whatever, you know, not apparent disabilities are always going to be more cognizant of trauma in their lives than people who are neurotypical. We're the population of people that will have more unreported incidents of traumatic abuse. We're the population of people that are gonna have more incidents, not just of unreported, but of unrecognized traumatic incidents because we just don't have the wherewithal or the social confidence to, you know, even sometimes even own up to the fact that something really horrible happened to us.   Yeah, thanks, Michael. That's very helpful to think about. We have our official five minute warning here, audience and team. And so I think we were given that about one minute ago.  I'll go first and I'll just say, Adam, you know, I apologize because I thought you had acted in a couple of things in your past. It's in his future. It's in his future. There we go, because I really would love to see, not even so much as a therapeutic device, but because I also believe that veterans suffering from any kind of trauma or just veterans in general, would make fantastic performers because of that need to express and because of that need to be eloquent. I remember from my theater days, we used to cast people that were so used to being comedians in really dramatic roles because somewhere inside we just knew there was a lot of pent up stuff that could come exploding out. I think of Chloris Leachman's performance in the last picture show as a perfect example, this woman who'd been a comedian all her life and then gets one dramatic role and then just blows up the screen. And any ideas that you have about, whether you're superiors in the army are more open to integrating theater programs for people that are already in the service as well as out of the service, but also just in getting veterans more involved in their theater communities, not only for the therapeutic value of it because I think audiences will appreciate them as well. I mean, there's all kinds of different ways. The easy start is to go with the VA. They usually have a pretty good tap on the veterans in the area, but also other veterans organizations like the VFW or Team RWB. There's so many out there and there's probably even more that are just in every local community that aren't nationwide. That would be more than happy to, I think if they discover that theater is a good venue to help their population and most people are willing to give it a shot if they know it's there. Thank you. Yeah, great. Let's see, I think that Clay has asked me to turn things back over to him. I just want to say to Adam and Michael, it's been my pleasure to share this space with you and I look for more opportunity to do it in other places and spaces. So thanks, Clay, for the opportunity. Thank you so much, Tara. And thank you, Adam and Michael, so much. This was an incredible conversation. Yeah, so it is 2.43 right now. At 2.50, we're gonna have a special segment called Meet an STE Member where we're going to play a video that one of our founding members, Dan Boyle, has prepared and then we would love, if you have any questions for Dan about being a member of STE or anything you want to know about STE or being an artist on the spectrum, we would love for you to put it on our Facebook feed and Dan will be here to answer any questions you have after the video. But thank you guys again so much, Tara, Adam and Michael. So we'll take a five minute break and then come back with a video at 2.50. Thank you, Clay. Thanks, Clay.


Good morning everyone thank you for your patience really appreciate it as you know we're gonna be providing an update today on the incident that happened in downtown yesterday the stabbing we will have Mayor Ken Sim followed by Chief Adam Palmer here we'll start with Mayor Ken Sim he'll be saying a few remarks followed by Chief Palmer and then we'll open it up for question period okay so I'd now like to call up Mayor Sim. Alright good afternoon everyone thank you for being here today and before I get started I would like to acknowledge that we are hosting today's press conference on the unseated territories of the Musqueam the Squamish and the Swilletooth First Nations and I do want to thank them for their generosity and their hospitality and the love and care they show this land that we get to live or can play on now over the past few days we've seen a series of troubling incidents and so to the victims of the recent incidents I just want to let you know that our hearts and our thoughts are with you and to the people of Vancouver I also want to let you know on behalf of council and myself that we understand your anxiety and your concern know that the VPD will not rest until the perpetrators of all these incidents are off the street and to be very clear every person who calls Vancouver home visits our city or who simply wants to enjoy our public safe spaces deserves to feel safe and secure whether you're enjoying a park walking down the street or grabbing a cup of coffee at one of our cafes the safety of Vancouverites and tourists and visitors is non-negotiable I do want to stress that despite the gravity of a couple of the recent incidents in our city I'm relieved thanks to the the swift response of the VPD and our emergency services there were no fatalities when there easily could have been some and as I said public safety is non-negotiable and that's why we've made historic investments into the Vancouver Police Department including the addition of 100 new police officers that's led to safer schools increased officer presence across the city and quicker response times we've begun and we will continue to expand the mental health units that work hand-in-hand with VPD on the streets and in the command centre triage and calls now even with the significant number of proactive actions taken it's important that we acknowledge the gaps in our public safety approach that continue or a lot of these gaps are at a non-minicipal level and my office our councillors we've been in close contact with Minister of Foreign's worth and the Premier's office and let me just tell you they share our commitment to enhancing public safety the reality is though that Vancouver continues to grapple with a mental health crisis that requires an all hands-on approach including the federal government because this is something that we can't just simply arrest our way out of and I do want to acknowledge that the Premier and the Attorney General have been pushing the federal government to change the criminal code to address what we're facing not only in Vancouver but in the region and in the province now we owe it to all Vancouverites and yes to the VPD officers and other officers throughout the region and the province who put their lives on the line every single day to keep us safe we need to give them effective tools to address the challenges that we face today the reality is people are falling through cracks in the system and I say this respectfully there are people on the streets that should be in treatment they should be in recovery in recovery and in some cases they should be in jail and I want to leave you with this more can be done and more has to be done but thanks to the incredible efforts of our VPD Vancouver despite our challenges is still a very safe city stranger attacks are down and there are more officers on our streets than ever before and I want to thank everyone he's been working on these cases and the thousands of officers throughout the region you go about their duties every single day with little or no fanfare and they keep our streets safe so we can live the lives that we do and so with that I just like to say thank you for your service and I'm now going to pass it over to the Chief to make some comments thank you Mayor Sim good afternoon everybody so there's three things I'm going to update you on today three completely unrelated issues happening in the city the first one of course is going to be the incident that happened yesterday in the downtown core of the city which actually encapsulates about five separate incidents that all resulted in the arrest of this person that will be one thing I'm going to talk to you about separately I'm going to talk to you about another incident that occurred at Clark and Hastings around the same time but another part of the city not related whatsoever to the incident in the downtown core and then thirdly I'm going to give you a bit of an update on the Stanley Park sexual assault investigation so my comments will be somewhat lengthy as I cover all of those off today I am here to provide you with an update on the frightening series of unprovoked attacks that occurred yesterday morning in the downtown core they were very public incidents that have attracted a lot of media and public attention it was around noon it was a Wednesday afternoon downtown Vancouver and as you can imagine lots of people around out and about on the streets on a nice day these attacks have understandably led to much discussion about crime and safety in our community and I want to acknowledge the concern and fear that some people may have I also want to commend the brave actions of the Vancouver police officers who were on scene very quickly after the 911 calls these officers provided aid and comfort to the injured victim and also placed themselves in significant danger to arrest an armed suspect investigators from our major crime section have worked for the past 24 hours to collect evidence to piece together the suspects movements prior to his arrest yesterday our investigative team has also learned more about the background of the person that we have arrested what we're learning is concerning and I'm going to tell you about it now I would also like to acknowledge that I am joined today by Deputy Chief Howard Chow who is in charge of our operations division his officers were the officers on scene that dealt with the suspect on location and Deputy Chief Fiona Wilson who is in charge of our investigation division and her major crime detectives have conduct of the investigation so to give you an overview of the main incident I want to talk about today so yesterday Wednesday March 20th 11 53 a.m. Vancouver police officers responded to several 911 calls reporting that a person had been stabbed near the intersection of smith and Canby streets and that a man was chasing people around with a knife multiple officers responded immediately and located the victim a 61 year old man who had been stabbed and was seriously injured as officers tended to the victim other officers flooded the area searched for and located the suspect and took him into custody the arrest was made within minutes of the 911 call a taser was deployed on the suspect during the arrest the victim has received treatment in hospital and we hope that he will recover fully from his physical injuries however the emotional trauma will likely remain for a long time I just want to reiterate that the victim and the suspect in this case are total strangers they have no prior relationship with one another and that my thoughts are with the victim and his family the suspect in this case is a 46 year old man who is known to police and appears to have mental health challenges though he has a history with police we have not had significant dealings with him here in Vancouver we believe he has previously previously spent time in Surrey and Delta after returning to Canada from Thailand in 2022 where he spent time in custody overseas for multiple offenses including breaking into a bank causing damage inside of that premises and overstaying his tourist visa six days ago on March 15th the suspect was released from Fraser Regional Correctional Center on probation after serving a jail sentence for uttering threats against his own family members and also against prominent federal politicians the suspect failed to report to his probation officer yesterday morning in Surrey which is where he is reporting again outside the city of Vancouver and these incidents began to occur yesterday in downtown Vancouver while he was absent from reporting to his probation officer in Surrey now there are a number of secondary incidents connected to this so I'm going to put a little bit of a timeline together for you and sort of map out how this played out in the morning though our investigation is ongoing we now believe that the same man is responsible for five separate violent and unprovoked incidents that unfolded in downtown Vancouver throughout the morning yesterday the first assault occurred at 8 40 a.m when a man was attacked by a stranger while walking near Seymour and West Cordova streets minutes later a 911 caller reported that a man had entered a coffee shop near harbour centre there was a disturbance causing a glass window to be broken and making customers fear for their safety the third incident occurred at about 11 25 a.m a man was walking near main and prior streets and was chased by a stranger who lunged at him with a knife and was yelling at him the victim managed to run away from the attacker and then the main incident as I mentioned at 11 53 our officers took custody of the suspect on Canby street shortly after he was arrested we learned that the suspect was involved in an additional assault which is still under investigation so far at this point Kent Meads M E A D E S 46 years of age has now been charged with assault with a weapon assault uttering threats he is in custody and I expect that more charges will be laid as the investigation unfolds these are extremely serious crimes and nobody should downplay the impact that they have on our community everybody should feel safe when they go to a coffee shop or they head out for a walk on their lunch break in downtown Vancouver and the actions of this one man yesterday have left many in community questioning their sense of safety in our city incidents like the one that happened yesterday are disturbing but I can assure you that despite these challenges Vancouver is a safe city as we've emerged from COVID-19 and normal life has returned we've seen the frequency of unprovoked strange results declined by about 77 percent the Vancouver crime severity index which many of you know is a weighted measure that compares the severity of all criminal incidents occurring in major cities and communities across Canada and in Vancouver that is actually decreased by 16.1 percent over the last five years whereas in Canada overall it has gone up and increased we've also seen a decrease in 2024 on the number of serious assaults occurring in our city support from Vancouver coastal health has resulted in improved and more efficient treatment for people with serious mental health issues many of whom previously had fallen through the cracks suffered and came into more frequent contact with the police throughout the pandemic mayor sims commitment and the city council's commitment to properly fund the Vancouver police department including the addition of 100 new officers and mental health professionals has given us more tools to combat crime and address important public safety issues including more patrol officers in the front lines our metro units which are additional nimble resources we can deploy throughout the city additional officers to supplement our mental health unit and also additional officers in our major crime section and while we're never going to completely eliminate violent crime our rapid response and immediate arrest of the suspect following yesterday's stabbing shows the effectiveness and efficiency of a properly staffed police department but we do still have ongoing concerns about people with at the serious end of the spectrum with mental health issues in our community that could be a risk to public safety and also ongoing discussions about bail reform one thing i do want to say on this particular incident that i just mentioned in the sub incidents that that accompany this this major investigation is that we are looking for additional witnesses any additional victims we think it's possible that other people may have encountered this fellow and perhaps our victims of crime or any bystanders or dash cam video anything that anybody may have that they saw they witnessed they filmed on their phone we need you to please call<PHONE_NUMBER> that's<PHONE_NUMBER> before we take questions i do want to give you an update on the two other incidents that i mentioned that have occurred in vancouver this week and have resulted in you know further media inquiries and discussions the stanley park stranger attack sexual assault investigation we are still gathering evidence and working towards the identification of the person responsible for what we believe was a sexually motivated stranger attack on a woman in stanley park on the morning of monday march the 18th we continue to have increased police presence in and around stanley park um bicycle foot patrols vehicles and our mounted unit on horseback we have specialized sex crimes investigators forensic experts and crime analysts assigned full time who are reviewing the facts and working with police from other jurisdictions to help identify this suspect there is still much that we can't say due to the sensitive nature of this investigation but i can tell you that the suspect is described as a black or dark skin male in his 20s about five foot seven wearing a dark tuc a running jacket dark pants and is described as clean shaven i know that there were some people some media inquirers were made about the arrest of a suspect i will tell you that um a person was taken in for questioning who is a known sex offender however that has not led to um any evidence to show that he was the person responsible for this incident so this is a very active investigation and we still need to identify the suspect in this serious file again with this file similar to the previous one but there is a different phone number to call we need witnesses anybody with video or anybody that may have any information to please call a vpd investigators at<PHONE_NUMBER> that<PHONE_NUMBER> the final incident the third incident i want to update you on which is completely unrelated to the previous ones i've spoken about occurred yesterday at clark and hasting street in east vancouver this occurred at the intersection of clark and hastings on the northwest corner and i want to mention this one because um there is some video that's out there some dash cam video that a citizen has provided to some media outlets so i know that some of the media have it it is out on social media as well to me it's what i would call a bit of a bone chilling video um showing um some of the real stressors and challenging and dangerous situations that our officers face every day in this city so yesterday march 20th at around 11 30 in the morning so this was about 23 minutes before the call that happened in the downtown core totally unrelated but the timing was right around the same time multiple people called 911 reporting that a man was waving a knife around near the corner of clark and hastings in east van vpd officers responded when they arrived at the scene a man stepped out onto the street with a knife in his hand approached the officers aggressively and refused commands to drop the knife multiple rounds from a less lethal beanbag shotgun were deployed to stop the suspect as well as a taser none of the officers were injured the suspect was taken to hospital for precaution due to being struck with multiple beanbag rounds by police abul fazi amini that's a b o l f a z i surname is a m i n i 36 years of age has been charged with weapons and assault offenses and he is currently in custody those are my comments and myself and the mayor are happy to take questions yeah well i i can um get the chief to uh elaborate in greater detail but i just want to be very clear uh we can talk about how crime like vancouver is a safer city and it's getting safer and let's acknowledge it doesn't really mean much for people that are victims of crime so i just want to get that out there right now we're you know empathetically we understand what people go through in the fear that it can cause in some circles look we're a big city that's just the reality and uh vancouver is growing by the day and these are big city challenges and so um there will be incidents like this now and in the future and it's uh it's been a big focus of our administration um you know to make a significant investment in the tools that we can invest in as the city and so what what did we do well we made a commitment uh to properly funding the vancouver police department for the first time in 15 years we you know made a push to hire 100 new police officers body worn cameras school liaison officer program um and making the investments in approving budgets so the vpd can work on a lot of proactive uh initiatives that uh you know you don't see behind um like uh in the public but like all the hard work that they uh you know the training they go through um to de-escalate and deal with situations before they become situations or you look at look look at what happened at lord being high school when there was a report of someone walking around with a gun that's a super hot situation um and as a parent i i'd be totally terrified if my kids were out that school and our officers our members at vpd did it did an amazing job reacting to that situation um and everyone was safe and so uh all they gotta say is look we're a big city there will be challenges but when you look at the macro data um there are a lot of cases where you know when you look at the data you know uh you know it is becoming a safer city yeah well thank you i would just like to add a little bit of uh context and perspective on that so it's a good question and i think it's a you know a natural question that you would ask um it is important to note though as i mentioned when we're looking at crime overall the the data is very clear that over the last five years the crime severity and index in vancouver has reduced by 16.1 percent whereas the crime severity index in canada over that same period has gone up by 6.1 percent and also when we're talking about violent crime violent serious violent crimes and assaults year to date in 2024 it's actually down 14 percent across the city it's important to remember though that every day in vancouver vpd officers are responding to about 700 calls for service so even while we're here doing this press conference there's going to be you know a dozen two dozen calls coming in like it's just continuous it never stops like officers are going all over the city lights and siren responding to calls and that's life in a big city it's not you know not not a small town and we are the regional core for the whole you know metro vancouver area so there will be more draw into the big city as to your question about why you wouldn't see more officers down at smith and beady the reason is because there's no need to that was a particular incident that happened in that area that's not a bad area and the suspect that was responsible for that is now in custody in jail so there's not a need to put a whole bunch of officers in an area where there's no you know further crime threat right in that neighborhood chief when you talk to the residents in the area yes i mean these numbers and stats it just blows over them they do does innocent people going about their business yes the numbers are down but we're still talking about roughly two stranger attacks a day on people that is my phone i apologize um two stranger attacks on people a day innocent members of the public they want to know why is a suspect with the kind of history he has why is he out on the street if he poses a risk to the public yeah those are good questions so here's my response for me number one you're right it is concerning for the public and the general public does not no crime stats they don't pay attention to them like why would you it's not in your normal course of you know activity going about your day people just know how they feel when they walk down the street or when they hear you know a major incident happening in communities so i understand that it's concerning and these incidents are concerning for us the number you're right we still have around two a day so it's a lot it's not what we want to have but we have reduced it significantly we've cut it by more than half because we have done projects and put extra resources into it and because we're intelligence led and we're going after people we know that are chronic offenders people that we know have a propensity to do that kind of crime so that is something that we do that's part of our job and that we're responsible for but as to your issue about you know different people walking around in community that may have mental health issues people that maybe have committed crimes and the route some of that stuff you have to realize is not the sole responsibility of the police so you know holding somebody in custody that is up to crown council and the judicial system to hold somebody in custody we recommend people to be held in custody all the time but there's many incidents where people are released and that is out of our hands even though we would like to see them in custody for example this fellow that we just arrested Mr Meads we have made a strong case for him to be remanded in custody and we expect that he will be but ultimately that decision is not the decision of the police just like if somebody is picked up for severe mental health issues and you know i just want to be clear that i don't want to villainize people that have mental health issues because 20 percent of canadians will have mental health issues in their life and there will be people in this room among us that have had mental health issues in their life that will never have any interactions with the police whatsoever and there's a segment of the population that you know we want to see get help and that are in a tough place and we want them to get help from mental health professionals but there's also a segment at the extreme end which are the ones that we will quite often deal with that are scary people and should be probably institutionalized either in some kind of a psychiatric facility or a prison and society should be protected from them so we're dealing with that small group at the high end of the scale but where's the gap there then we understand what your role is as police right you're you're making the arrests but then there's this grand canyon sized gap between the arrest what happens in court you're back out on the street new offenses occur right while innocent people are getting hurt seriously injured yeah well i think the gap comes you know a lot of the stuff we just talked about so bail reform is an issue all across canada and i'll say it's actually an issue that comes up north american wide amongst police services and you know different prosecutorial services and government in all provinces there has been some movement on that by the province of bc to improve that so we are working with them we do bring the concerns to the province that is their area of responsibility and we have seen some positive action there and the mental health side as well like sometimes people are released that we feel should be held in custody or require additional help and again i wanted to just be clear it's really people at the extreme end of the scale it's not the vast majority of people that maybe suffer from mental health issues and i do also want to say that vancouver coastal health have been amazing partners and i don't want to point any fingers at them because they've been amazing to work with and we've got so many partnership cars and great programs in place that we've actually for the cohorts of people that do have common interactions with police and health care we've got so many proactive programs in place now that for those individuals identified we've reduced police calls for service with those cohorts by over 50 percent and hospital visits by over 60 percent so it does work but there's going to be people that will come into vancouver like this fellow yesterday for example in the downtown core that we don't have a lot of history on he spent time overseas he is a canadian he's a bc guy spent time overseas got into some trouble there came back to the metro vancouver area but he was living out in the suburbs he wasn't somebody we would normally interact with in vancouver so that creates challenges when you've got a huge region of over three million people and we've got a police service here for 725,000 people but having the huge influx of people from all over the region so he wasn't high on our radar because we normally don't deal with them it's more in the suburbs they're dealing with them yeah what did you learn so far about what was going through the interaction that you have and i've also posted near sim hard to ignore that so what i will say about the fellow at clarkin hastings that person does not have um any kind of dealings with the police of any significance he's not somebody that is he's definitely not somebody on our radar at all very few dealings you know at all with police anywhere so he's not somebody that's on our radar more um you know peripheral type stuff however there are some mental health issues at play not in vancouver but in another jurisdiction in metro vancouver with that fellow yes keep on uh was means uh on any substances at the time of his arrest yesterday i don't know that i don't um also notice that uh during the arrest i saw his hands were yeah that's the standard technique we do to preserve evidence so when somebody's handcuffed obviously for their safety and the public safety um when we arrest the person there may be evidence on their hands such as blood dna evidence so we put that on there to preserve that evidence so our forensic investigators can obtain that evidence before like he washes his hands or anything like that and i one percent sure what's your specific ask of the federal government you mentioned that you're looking for support what is your specific ask well yeah like um as the chief mentioned you know bail reform there there's a revolving door of you know call it catch or release there there are things that you know we we provide tools to the vancouver police department and they work incredibly hard um to make our streets safe and then you know people are released into the streets and so that's challenging and i think we have to acknowledge that if that's uh if that situation persists we're really wasting a lot of time here um and we'll continue to have more of these incidents and to answer your question um yeah we still have some work to do on hiring the mental health workers but uh and i do want to share two examples one uh i was actually uh on a car 87 88 ride along about four months ago um and we provided resources to that and i can tell you the the mental health nurse working with two police officers how they de-escalated the situation and got someone who's experienced a mental health uh crisis um directed proactively to our health care system um it was quite amazing and secondly while we haven't hit the number of the hiring numbers yet let's talk about effectiveness we do have a person in the command center triage and calls and i forget the number i think um a chief you would probably have them but we've rerouted a lot of calls that shouldn't be which would have been um you know police calls let's say and maybe not the right response and we've triaged them to you know a better uh you know outcome so to speak but adam it's our chief don't want to add anything to that yeah sure so like in that continuum of services that we have for people that are you know dealing with mental health issues in community there are so many things we have in place right now and i know that it's always a topic of discussion about how police interact with people that are suffering from mental health but the continuum now of you know the mode teams which don't involve police which are out there dealing with people in community without any police and then we have the partnership teams that do reactive response to calls and the partnership teams that do proactive response to help people before they come into contact with police or the or the um health care system so we've got those in place we've got information sharing agreements with health care so that we can share data to make sure we're going after the right people to assist them we've got um in calls like this when these are coming into our e-comm center and then also to our operational command center we have a psych nurse now that's working there that is looking at all the calls coming in these are experienced mental health professionals that can make a determination and there's about Howard what is it about eight calls a day that are being diverted something like that in that neighborhood they look at many more than that but about eight per day that they divert out of about the 700 calls that we receive that say no you know this is one where you don't need to send the police we can send you know alternate means of response or an alternate way of dealing with it but these two calls that I just mentioned to you really highlight that there are going to be some calls where mental health is a play both the one of the downtown core and the one of Clark and Hastings that you absolutely need police to respond to because these are violent dangerous people out on the street and you cannot send a psychiatric nurse or a social work with a clipboard to deal with somebody that's waving around a knife and that requires a police response so it's having the right solution to the situation that you're dealing with and we have that continuum of service now in Vancouver Park was given a green light more than a year ago that they say that the city or the park board has come back and rejected it with green months notice what are your what's your response to these calls yeah we have to do work on making Vancouver a fun city and that's really a park board question they have jurisdiction you know it was park board that approved it and it's park board that has to ask themselves the questions why why did they approve it whether other jurisdictions that you know you know weren't consulted so that's really up to park board to answer that question I do think there are pockets a lot of pockets of fun and there are a lot of pockets of culture but yeah let's hit that one head on there's work to be done and so you know we'll do at city council we'll do everything in our control to promote you know fun in the city be it you know what we do with the responsible consumption of alcohol in certain areas getting permits faster you know and supporting live events wherever you can amongst other things Chief I had a question sure you mentioned in the case yeah so I'm not a mental health professional I'm not a doctor but based on what we observed yesterday and based on feedback I'm hearing from our officers they did respond that there appears to be mental health issues at play so I can't give you like a clinical diagnosis but that's the sense that people are getting from dealing with this man so he did serve time at Fraser Regional Correctional Center was released on the 15th and was going into a period of probation but as far as you know why released and timing and what he was in for I think you'll have to follow up with corrections on that thank you


Numbers 1 to 9 are grouped in threes so that the smaller two numbers add to the largest number. Each number is to be used once and every number is to be used so let's try one and five yes you six and that those three are used two and three plus four to be seven so those being used and now if we're two plus eight which is not equal to nine but is close so that one doesn't work maybe another way will I really needed the one to go with the eight to make nine maybe the nine's the hardest to make so that's four plus five gives me nine now what else can I use I've used four five nine two plus six equals eight two and six and eight have which leaves me one plus three which does not make sense see if you can fair better can you find those three groups of three numbers


This study examined the admission process of six veterans' affairs, VA, nursing homes and found that there was a lack of communication between prescribers and non-prescribers regarding goals of care. The authors proposed that the long-term care, LTC, note and order template could be completed alongside other routine assessment processes. This would increase the likelihood that the template is completed in a timely manner, potentially alleviating the perceived time burden, and helping with the provision of veteran-centered care.