Greetings and welcome to this edition of Campus Conversations. I'm Dan Mogulov from the University's Office of Communications and Public Affairs. Today, I'm honored and really pleased to welcome for the very first time our relatively new UCPD Chief, Yogananda Pittman, who took office last February. Chief Pittman previously served as the Assistant Chief of the United States Capitol Police, where she had served for more than two decades. Her experience includes providing protective details for US senators and visiting dignitaries, supervising hundreds of officers, and leading security efforts for President Obama's second presidential inauguration. She served as the Interim Chief of the United States Capitol Police for six months in the aftermath of the events at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. Chief Pittman is a graduate of Morgan State University in Maryland, obtained her master's degree in public administration from Marist College in New York, and is a PhD candidate in public administration from West Chester University in Pennsylvania. We already have a number of excellent questions that you've sent in in hand. But if you'd like to pose a query for Chief Pittman as we go along, just post it to our Facebook live streaming site, and we'll do our very best to respond. Let's get started. Chief Pittman, thanks so much for being here today. Good afternoon, Dan, and thank you so much for having me. Pleasure. Just tell us a little about why public safety, why law enforcement, what drew you to that profession? Well, I will start with Dan. I did not grow up wanting to be a police officer. I didn't watch cop shows, but I did grow up the daughter and granddaughter of public servants, civil rights activists, that were very adamant in instilling in us as children, that we had a responsibility to give back to the community and to serve. I've always had a heart for service, and I've continued that. I have a brother that's a retired FBI agent. I have several members of my family that are retired from the armed services community. So I really have that in my blood and in my spirit. And stepping back, like in the big picture, how do you think about public safety and law enforcement? I mean, this has been at the top of the national agenda now for a number of years. With everything from efforts or advocacy to defund police or to bolster police, and perceptions of increasing crime, and data about increasing crime, and where do you fall out? How do you see law enforcement, public safety in general, and on a college campus in particular? Well, speaking in general terms, I understand the country's sentiment toward law enforcement. Let me start by saying I am proud and honored to wear the badge in the uniform. I'm proud to serve beside my UCPD colleagues and peers. I'm proud to serve this community. However, I also understand the challenges and the need for police reform across the board, across the country. There are things that law enforcement as a profession can do better. I think by and large, most of us serve with a compassionate heart, and we are here to do the right thing for the right reason 365 days a year. We also must acknowledge and accept accountability for our actions when things don't go as we train, when things don't go with folks leading from a place of compassion. And we have to have that transparency. We owe that to the community and the people that we serve to be transparent about our actions. But I think it's more important to hold officers accountable when there are inappropriate actions. We are blessed with an opportunity when we're serving the public. So we must answer to the public when things don't go right. In terms of your second question, what are some of the differences between a campus law enforcement community versus a municipality? There are more similarities than differences. I personally came from an open campus environment serving on Capitol Hill to an open campus environment here at Berkeley. I will also say that there are a lot of differences in terms of the type of community. By and large, the population here that we're serving are students, staff, and faculty. Our students are a different type of population. We all, just as a parent, Dan, as parents, we want our students to have a wonderful college experience. We know that sometimes boundaries will be tested, but we want them to be tested in a controlled environment. And so we want to grant grace in this community to make sure we're ensuring that they have the safest experience possible. Chief, if I remember correctly, you have two teenage sons, do I have that right? So if you're almost correct, I have one teenage son. He'll be, the youngest will be 18 in about two weeks. So happy pre-birthday to him. And then I have a 23-year-old senior college student who plays football out in Richmond, Virginia. Got it. So how do you bring, or do you bring, their lived experience, your own lived experience, to work every day? How does that impact, or does it impact the way you think about your job and your responsibilities? Yes, it really does. And I'm genuinely appreciative of this question. Being an African-American woman and a leader and law enforcement, being the mother of two African-American young men, sometimes their engagement with law enforcement has not always been positive. They see their mother as a role model, an example of what is right with law enforcement, but it also suggests that we have work to do. My sons are a constant reminder of that. Anytime I'm engaging with the community, I really see them as my family. I look at the community as that somebody's father, that somebody's mother, that somebody's child. And we may be seeing them at a time when they're not at their best, but it is still our responsibility to make sure we're serving them and their needs with respect and compassion. And we have to treat them as if, though, if that was our mother or our sons, how would we want someone to take care of them to serve them during their times of need? Yeah. Wow. There's a lot to think about there in that answer. Before we kind of delve deeper into bookly specific questions, let's change geography for a second. January 6th in the capital, a dark and historic day for this country. What was that like and how do you think about it now that you've had some chance to get both geographical distance and sort of time distance away from all that happened? How do you look back on that day and the days that followed? It was a horrific day for this country. It's a day I'll never forget. I always like to start with, I want to honor and respect those who lost their lives on that day. I started serving as the interim chief on January 8th. On my first evening on the job, I lost an officer to suicide, officer Howie Leibingood. I also lost officer Brian Sicknick and everywhere I've gone around the country and around the world at this point, I never want anyone to forget what we lost. I also don't want anyone to forget the resiliency of those that serve the United States Capitol Police. Those women and men save democracy. They literally were the last line of defense between those insurrectionists and members of the congressional community. They held fast that day. It wasn't pretty, it was brutal. I'm always pleased to see that individuals are being held accountable for their acts of violence toward law enforcement on that day. But I also am so proud to be part of the change and rerouting that ship in history and being able to turn that organization around and the amount of time that we did there, not only showed up on January 6th, they came back on January 7th with being ready to serve. And I couldn't be more proud of all of them. So you've come literally at least a long way since then, you're here on the West Coast on the Berkeley campus and we're glad to have you here. What's it been like? What's the transition been like? What surprised you for either pleasantly or unpleasantly? Cause there not a lot of places like UC Berkeley. It's been a lot of pleasant surprises. I am honored and privileged to serve here. I don't know if I should be surprised by this, but I do feel a sense of honor and pride with the overwhelmingly welcoming responses that I've received from so many along my journey with the campus community. I've had a chance Dan now to meet with so many different groups and organizations within the community and by and large, they are welcoming of a police presence. I had heard things about the Berkeley campus, about the surrounding community and its attitude, so to speak, towards law enforcement. I do understand the concerns. I know that sometimes a uniform presence can be a trigger for someone in this community. So I am working hard every day along with my colleagues to make sure that we're collaborating with the community so that we can change that narrative by our actions and by our words to say that we don't want to elicit a negative response. We really want to be called upon to serve when there's a need for safety and security within this community. And to be blunt, have you found a receptive audience for that orientation of the community and relationship and to rebuilding or to building a positive relationship with the community? Have you found any resistance within the department? Not at all. The community has really welcomed us with open arms. I've spoke to community members down at Albany Village. I've spoken with the College of Engineering. I'm scheduled to speak with the business school. I've spoken with different affinity groups and everywhere I go, Dan, by and large, the conversation is how can we get more of a police presence? We have these safety concerns and we really want to collaborate with the police. What can we do to assist? I've heard from parents with several different parent organizations that are really concerned about their young adult safety. So they want to be partners with us. And we welcome, we at UCPD welcome those partnerships and are really working with the community. But overall, we've been welcomed with open arms. So you talked about that interest in having more and about concern about crime. We're going to get into that and talk about the numbers in just a bit. Where do things stand in terms of the staffing level of UCPD? I know that the force is much smaller than it was 10, 15 years ago. But I think I also heard from you in an earlier conversation you and I had that you've got open positions that are hard to recruit. Where are you at in terms of staffing right now? Yeah, so I want to say that since I've been here, it's really been a supportive environment for UCPD to attain more staff. We've gotten funding and assistance from our stakeholders. Right now, we are at 42 sworn officers. But with that said, we also have another several other components of UCPD that assist with safety and security. That includes our special police officers who are not armed and our community service officers who are students that assist us with several safety initiatives. So while the sworn presence is small, we also have an extension of that with our non-sworn personnel. We have several vacancies. I'm proud to say we are filling those vacancies, Dan, and we are filling them quickly. We have one of the best retirement systems in the Bay Area. We are one of the most friendly and compassionate police departments. I couldn't be more proud of the women and men that I serve with. So it's just a healthy environment to work in. We care about the officer's mental health and wellness. We wanna make sure that they are armed with the best tools and resources to really complete this difficult job on a daily basis. So yes, we are hiring. We have several officers that are coming on board, but we do have more work to do. Got it. I'm gonna just a second, jump into some of the really good questions we've received from folks in the audience. But before I do, for those of you who may have joined us late, we're talking today with Chief Yogananda Pittman, who took the reins of UCPD last February. We've got a number of great questions already submitted, but if you have questions as we go along, feel free to post them to our Facebook Live site. Probably won't get to all of them, but we'll do our best. Let me jump into some of the questions we've got. Here's one. Perspective students are often very concerned about safety and are keenly aware of the high crime rate in the Bay Area. They're worried that it's not safe living and going to school here, meaning in Berkeley. What would you say to them about their concerns? I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the crime rates in the Bay Area and the surrounding community. I think we have to acknowledge that. We keep statistical data and keep a close eye on that so we can have deliberate responses to mitigate those crimes. I would say, Dan, in general terms, crime is on the rise in every major city across America. It's a concern that not only the police have, but the communities have. Crime has to be addressed as a collaboration between law enforcement and the community and our students are a part of that community. What I would also say to them is there are a number of things that we can do to work together to address those crime concerns. Things like being aware of your surroundings. So many of our young adults, myself included, not necessarily as a young adult, but we use technology on a daily basis. We're connected to our iPhones or Android phones and we could be walking with the phones in hand, headphones or earbuds and our ears looking down. We wanna make sure that we are paying attention to our surroundings. When I address the student organizations and groups, I tell them to make sure when they're going out that they're able to travel in groups. There is safety and numbers. We want to ensure that they're doing that. There are a number of safety apps that they can download to their phones to include our timely warnings and warm me initiative. So if there's a vulnerable area around the campus, we want them to get that messaging almost in real time so that they can avoid those areas and continue to be safe. They can get updates about what's going on and around the campus. Lastly, I will say that damn, we can't investigate crimes unless we know something about it. Sometimes there's been a culture of drawing the line between the community and police departments where sometimes the community is hesitant about recording crime. They don't want to appear to be as a snitch or some people just have a general fear of law enforcement. And I understand that. But I do also want to offer avenues that are displayed on our website. You can report things anonymously. You don't have to come into the police station or headquarters. You don't have to stop an officer on the street. But if you see something, we really do want you to say something because we can't investigate what we don't know about. If we know about it, we can put patrols in specific areas that we know that are high targets. For example, we had our students have move-in day very recently. So we definitely beefed up security. We blocked off streets and entrances so that students could move into buildings in the safest manner possible. So while crime is on the rise, there are a number of things that UCPD is doing to make deliberate efforts to mitigate those crimes. And just to make sure that we all understand. So you talked about collaboration at the very beginning. Is that what you mean, meaning taking steps, strengthen numbers, see something, say something? Is that what you mean by collaboration with the community? Well, I would even extend it a little further than that. I think that collaboration means that student organizations, we need to work together with law enforcement. I think that the unhoused crisis that we're dealing with in the Bay Area, that we make sure that we're working with community leaders to address that population and offer resources other than just a police response. Sometimes people have challenges in the community that are not crimes, quite frankly, and they don't solicit or warrant a law enforcement response. However, it is a concern of the community. So I think that the administrators, the respective departments, the cabinet, the council of deans, we all have to collaborate and work together to come up with a holistic response for the entire community. So would I be wrong to understand from what you said that you support this notion of taking a careful look at what responsibilities we assign to law enforcement and what responsibilities might be handled better, for example, by mental health professionals. That re-examination of exactly what we ask of our law enforcement officers. Do I have that right? You are absolutely right, Dan. We are working with the president's office on a number of initiatives that require us in the University of California school system to have a tiered response. And it's exactly what you just said. When there are concerns, for example, with the unhoused, they may not be committing a crime, but they could be in areas where they're not authorized to be in. That doesn't necessarily warrant a law enforcement response. So we have other community members that can respond to them and offer them resources so that they're not traversing in areas of the campus where we want academic instruction to go on, for example. It's really interesting. We have three separate questions that all seem to be focused on a perception and perhaps a reality that there are more members of the public frequenting campus buildings. They may or may not be unhoused. And I wanna go through each of these questions because the fact that we get three questions suggests that it's a pretty significant concern for members of the campus community. So the first one is that asks, what are the campus plans for dealing with unhoused members of the community that reside in off-campus buildings leased by the university, but occupied by members of the university community? So this is about off-campus buildings. Is there any plan to deal with that or is that something you're still looking into? Yes, we do have plans and we actually respond to off-campus housing, for example, down at Albany Village approximately three weeks ago. I, along with members of RSSP, Ms. Jill Magnus and her team went down to Albany Village to offer a community safety briefing. And we are working with the towns that surround those communities. I work with law enforcement chiefs in those areas as well as community advisors to make sure we're offering the unhoused populations of resources in those areas. Dan, we have so much work to do though. The state of California really regulates how we respond. We have to offer housing and resources to anyone who's been in a specific area more than 48 hours. And we really want to be respectful of that and show compassion to the unhoused, but we also have a responsibility at the same time to offer those students that are in off-campus housing, not only safety tips and practices, but they need to feel safe. Sometimes they're young children traversing those areas. We want to make sure that we're offering them resources, whether it's infrastructure in terms of fencing or gated communities. We have a special police officer, a lot of times that's assigned to those communities so that members of the community know how to go to the special police officer and make them aware of their concerns. And UCPD also dispatches officers for law enforcement response to those areas as well. Before I go on, there's two other related questions, but for people who want additional information, where should they go? UCPD website, best source around? Yes, and thank you so much for asking. I've been working with our campus partners. Ms. Ellen Top has diligently been working on a website, so if anybody goes to berkeley.edu and puts in safety, you will see a website that's been recently updated and it has all sorts of information, anything and everything that's related to safety. Some of the services we offer in terms of our night shuttles, in terms of the community service officers offering bare walk, where they essentially will escort members of the community to their cars, to their vehicles, to their homes, wherever they're going. And it tells you how to initiate those services. So yes, they can visit us on the UCPD website. Got it, thank you. Another campus safety question. What concrete, this is slightly different than last one, maybe even more than slightly. What concrete measures can staff take to protect themselves, students and visitors from threats caused by members of the public who access our buildings but are not affiliated with the campus? What sort of training is available for staff? Should we be utilizing security cameras and or alarms? Are staffers scared? What can we do to create a safer environment? Yes, so right now the campus has what we call the active threat preparedness team.  We first and foremost want to know and want the campus staff to report to us when they have these types of concerns. Dan, I can't tell you the number of times since I've been here that I have received calls from employees and staff that have reported that they have unhoused or non-affiliates with the campus in their areas. And it has caused significant levels of concern. Our response to them, an immediate response is always to dispatch officers or special police. But in addition to that, we also have worked with our IT friends to look at our robust camera system to make sure if they're not cameras in the area, we address how much it would cost to put them there, who's gonna monitor them. I've worked really closely with all of those departments to really want to have a holistic approach. In addition to that, one more thing I'd like to mention is we have reassigned staff to specific garages, particularly during peak hours to address non-affiliates, to make sure that our employees can traverse to and from work free from crime or just the feeling overall of being unsafe. I've also worked with the residential aides or residential assistants to train and educate them on what to do if there's someone in a dorm that doesn't belong, things that we don't want them to do. A person is acting erratically or aggressive in nature when they need to call UCPD to have us come out to assist and to avoid things like tailgating. We don't want our community members holding the doors open. Many of our members of the community really have a compassionate heart and they really want to help, particularly the unhoused, but we want them to really assist and help them in a manner that is safe for the entire community. So we go out and we give briefings on those types of things all the time, Dan. So when you say tailgating, just to be clear, we're not talking about parties before the football game. We're talking about what that habit of leaving a door open for somebody you may not know. That's exactly it. We don't want them to hold the door open or prop a door open for someone they don't know because they are trying to seek shelter at that particular time. But I want to circle back on something. We got started on this last part of the discussion with the question about what can staff do? And I think you gave a really excellent broad picture. If there's a staff group out there in a particular building or in advance of a particular event that'd like to know more, is there a particular person they should reach out to at UCPD, should they start with the website? What would be your advice to somebody who says, boy, that sounds interesting. I want to know more, what should they do? They can always reach myself and as well as my colleagues at the UCPD website. We have a general mailbox there for the office of the chief that's checked regularly by my staff. They can always give us a call at<PHONE_NUMBER>. And I did just have to learn that number on the hill for 20 plus years, knowing all the numbers that's new for me. But in all seriousness, they can always reach out by phone as well. We have staff here 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We are always open and always prepared to respond to their concerns. Yeah, thank you for that. And just a second after this next question, I have another email address. I think the general mailbox for your particular office. But let's go back to another question that somebody sent in and it goes as follows, is UCPD allowed to ask anyone who looks suspicious what their business is on campus and ask anyone who does not have legitimate business to leave? Or is that considered profiling? So the short answer is yes. UCPD can engage with any member of the community that they could have a reasonable suspicion that they could articulate is why they're communicating with a person. But I think even more importantly, it's important for UCPD to engage with members of the community at all times, not just when something is going wrong. We want to be out and about in the community. We want to have an opportunity to really expand our relationships with community members. So we don't want to only engage because we think there's nefarious activity. We really want a community to see us as protectors, as servants to them.  We will have zero tolerance. And let me repeat that. I have zero tolerance for that. And if anyone would to ever experience that, I would want them to reach out to me directly so I could address it immediately. Got it, thanks. Before we go on, I want to provide everybody with another email address for those of you who may want to reach out. It's for the chief's office and she gave me permission to share this email address. And it is chief, C-H-I-E-F dot of, O-F dot police at Berkeley dot edu. That's chief dot of dot police at Berkeley dot edu. Gonna move on to another question that came in. Looking at UC Berkeley safety projects, can chief Pittman speak to the status of the Everbridge warning notification upgrades and active threat preparedness projects? That feels like it's a little bit in the weeds, but it also feels like it's an important question. So if you could explain to us what that is and where things stand. Absolutely. So the active threat preparedness team, we meet bi-weekly. We have a team leader and we're working on a number of initiatives that relate to safety. One of the things we've done over the past month is held a series of interviews for the office of emergency management. That director position has been open. We also meet to discuss active threat preparedness in terms of if the campus experienced an active shooter. What have we taught our community members? How we would respond? What is the response of UCPD? So in May, I believe it was May of this year, UCPD held a two day training that was all active shooter preparedness and response. We invited members of the community to come over to the campus where we were hosting the training so there was plenty of professional staff on hand to see what an officer actually goes through when they're responding to a threat of an active shooter. We are in the process of preparing the Department of Homeland Security's run hide fight training to the staff and employees here on the campus. We don't have a hard date as of yet right now, Dan, but we are working and I think that we are very close to coming to a consensus on the best way to roll that project out. And I know you asked me some more questions within that, but I've lost the second half of that. So if you could repeat it, that would help me out. So that was the status of the Everbridge warning notification upgrades. Yes, so Everbridge is a notification system here that we use to send out messaging to the community. Anytime there could be a crisis or some type of threat to the campus. And not just when I say threat, I don't just mean like active shooter. There could be a natural disaster and or a path outage that's affecting the community. And we want them to be aware if there's an evacuation site or rally point, we would give out information. In terms of the upgrades to the system, I know that it is a work in progress. I don't have all of the details Dan down in the weeds of exactly when certain parts of that system will be brought online that we can share with the community. It's been upgraded holistically, but I do know that it's a work in progress. There are bi-weekly meetings to discuss Everbridge as well. And so those are a number of things that we're working on to make sure that we can make this campus a lot safer. I have to say just this interview, so far just speaking with you and you've been here only since February, it reminds me that being at Berkeley is like drinking from the fire hose. It's sort of amazing that you've gotten your arms around. Yes, Dan, it really feels that way. By me coming from a federal law enforcement agency to a campus environment, there are lots of obstacles and hurdles and things that I had to learn. One of those major ones, is Cleary, Cleary stats and data and how we share that with the campus. Systems like Everbridge and what are my responsibilities? What is the police department's responsibilities? And that has been a learning experience. And I honestly can say I am learning each and every day. Sometimes it's a little overwhelming, but it's a process that I also enjoy as well. So a question just came in that I don't quite understand, but I'm thinking you might. It's a follow-up about Everbridge and the active threat preparedness. And the questioner seems to believe that they're at risk. That the current status of those projects is that they are at risk. Is that the case and what does that mean and what other information can you provide? And why is this important? Yes, so we've developed a threat metric, so to speak, to say where we are with each of these initiatives. So for example, the Office of Emergency Management, I mentioned previously that we conducted a series of interviews to get that position filled. We would consider that at risk until the position is actually filled. For example, another one of our projects is the Police Accountability Board. That's an initiative that came from the president's office that we would collaborate with the community. And if there's a complaint against the police department in a city, it would probably be called an Independent Advisory Board, where you have members of the community that are going to investigate and look at complaints. Well, that initiative is on track. You're right where we want to be. We're moving into the training phase and are ready pretty soon to launch those programs. So for the ones that are at risk, they haven't, I won't say they haven't been started, but they're still a timetable that could be a little further away than we'd like it to be. But that does not mean by any stretch of imagination, Dan, that we aren't working on it and it's not on our radar.  I'm not sure about that. So you mentioned the office of emergency services and that you're looking to fill a position. Does that mean that office is going to be revitalized, reestablished back online? Cause that was one of the questions we got. So yes, and I would say that the office has been online. It's had an interim director, but you do want dedicated staff in that position, particularly someone that has sub-matter expertise in dealing with natural disasters, crisis management, and it would be helpful if they have university experience while it's not necessary. I'm excited to say that the stakeholders have narrowed it down to a few all well-qualified candidates. And I'm confident that relatively soon over the next month or so, we will have someone to fill that position. And I am personally looking forward to partnering with them because their responsibility for campus this size is going to be enormous. And so I wanna make sure that we do everything we can to support them. We've really have to work together. Emergency management and UCPD will go hand in hand on how this campus responds to any natural disaster or crisis or any active threat to the campus. So in the same general subject area, another good question that's come in. And they ask, can you speak to the logic behind when the warn me notifications go out? This person says, this week there was somebody with a pickaxe threatening a couple of students, but the warn me didn't go out until at least two hours later. Had the warn me gone out as it happened, maybe other students could have helped to find or catch the perpetrator. How does the warn me system work? And can you use this particular incident as an example? Yes, so the warning system works. It's regulated by the Department of Education. It requires campuses and universities across the nation to report in a timely fashion any threat to the campus community within a specific jurisdiction. And so if it falls within certain parameters on or immediately adjacent to the campus community, that information is processed typically by a sergeant within UCPD. We work with the Cleary team to make sure that we're getting out those messages in a timely fashion. While I can't speak specifically to the timeline that the messaging went out for the individual with a pickaxe, I will say that by and large, UCPD does a phenomenal job at making sure that we're getting out information as quickly as possible. If there are concerns about the timeline, I am more than willing to discuss whatever measures that we can put in place. I think there's always room for improvement. And so I would want to collaborate with the community on how we can get messaging out quickly. Dan, one of the challenges is sometimes we also hear from members of the community that feel like the warning messages are triggers for them and they don't want to hear or see them in what we would call a timely fashion. So there's a delicate balance there. I think that we have a responsibility and a legal obligation to the Department of Education that we follow and adhere to those guidelines. But we also want to do the right thing for the right reason. And what I mean by that is sometimes there are things happening around the campus that may not fit the criteria or parameters to warrant a warning message. However, those that are affected by whatever incident and is happening and they're in that immediate area, they would still want some type of messaging. So we're working with our partners to see where that fine line is, how we could communicate by not necessarily mass messaging to 80,000 members of the community. But if it's an incident that's specific to, for example, California Hall, how can we do some targeted messaging so that folks in and around that area would be aware of what's going on and we can properly mitigate those things. So we've got more work to do with warning.  But now very often when something happens on campus, social media lights up and sometimes has accurate information before the campus does. Sometimes it's spreading inaccurate information. Sometimes it's hard to know what the heck it's doing. How do you think about that? How do you take that into account that there are all these independent sources of information exploding simultaneously every time there's an incident? It's a fine balance. I am a fan of social media. I have, as we mentioned earlier, two young people that are hooked, you know, their phones are like glued to their hands. They get a lot of their information via various social media platforms. I think for law enforcement and those in the safety community, we can leverage social media to communicate with our community, particularly students. It's a valuable way to get them accurate information. UCPD postings regularly on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. So that's one resource that they will have to receive accurate updates from the police department as well as our campus partners when things are going on in and around the community. So we have to leverage it responsibly. We also have to be mindful that at times the community may be posting things that are sensitive in nature. And so we always try to be respectful of individual family members, friends that may not have received some sensitive information. So I always try to get that word out as well that we don't want to share information before it's time. A lot of times we have to make notification to family members before we send out any mass messaging. Yep. Speaking of students, another question just came in. Are there any personal safety classes for students or is that just sort of written in online resources for them? There aren't any personal safety classes that UCPD sponsors. However, there is a tremendous amount of online safety classes that there's members of the community like the National Intelligence Resource Center, the Nick Brick in San Francisco. There are other local municipalities that offer online courses as well about best practices regarding safety. And I would encourage the community to reach out. Many of these online trainings are free of charge. All you have to do is register and sign up. And so there's a lot of information about best safety practices out there that students and faculty have access to. Do you think that, speaking of student safety, based on what you know now, do you think the concerns that parents have, that students have, that staff and faculty have, do you think they're out of proportion with what the data say about the actual degree of risk in and around campus? Or are the concerns understandable from where you sit? Are they anchored in the reality of the situation for this university and this urban environment? I think that a person's perception is their reality. I think that as a law enforcement professional, we provide safety measures and tips and techniques. We know what the best practices are, but I think there's a big difference between being safe and feeling safe. And if you don't feel safe, no matter what the numbers say, no matter what the subject matter experts say, that's just a feeling that's inside of you that we're going to have to work together to change that feeling, to change that perception. And I think all of the things here that we've had an opportunity to discuss this afternoon, Dan, are ways that we can give folks to really that feeling of being safe. I think that at times, data has to be put into context. I work closely with Abby, who's our Cleary Representative. And the numbers are quite frankly concerning. They're very concerning. And the numbers do appear to be on the rise. With that said, we've got to really adhere to what our best safety practices are and really reach out to the community. I have in my mind as a law enforcement professional, what I believe is valuable to the community in terms of safety, but it's really important for us to have a listening ear to the community. Because just because I've been in the profession, doesn't mean that I can't learn or we all can't learn. And we want to hear from them about what's important to them. And then we tweak our response and tailor our responses to make sure that we're adhering to the needs of the community and not just what we think may be best. Got it. I'm going to turn the next question into a request. Somebody was looking for an org chart at UCPD. The last one they found is from 2015. So the request here is that the org chart could be updated on the UCPD website. We will take care of that immediately. I was not here in 2015, so I know my name is not on the org chart. And we definitely want to be representative of the folks that are here in place today. Thank you. Let's go to something that there were a few questions that suggested to me that people may not everybody may completely understand the jurisdictional differences in areas between Berkeley Police Department, UCPD. We had a question about why the city of Berkeley doesn't enforce traffic violations. We had a question about why there's mass double parking on the 2,500 block of Durant Avenue. We had a question about why Berkeley doesn't have more of the parking enforcement staff be assigned to law, to crime. So if you could answer those, I think I know what the sort of the general answer is, but let me defer to you and help those people who may still be confused about who does what in town. It's so understandable, Dan. We work so closely together. UCPD, a lot of times it's just the south side or north side of a sidewalk that delineates where UCPD's jurisdiction ends and Berkeley Police Department's jurisdiction starts. But we work very closely together. You will see Berkeley police officers and about the community, whether it's on Telegraph Avenue and around the People's Construction site, just in general speaking, all around the campus. However, sometimes when community members call for a police response, if it's in Berkeley Police Department's jurisdiction, the dispatchers are well aware of those lines and they will dispatch a Berkeley City police officer. If it's something that UCPD needs to have situational awareness of, we communicate really well. And vice versa, if it's UCPD responding to something that we know could spill over or affect the surrounding communities, we make sure that we partner with them. Our PIOs often do public service announcements jointly. I speak regularly with the community representatives of the city of Berkeley to make sure that if they have initiatives that are going to directly impact the campus, then I'm sharing that information with our stakeholders. But I would close with many times there's confusion, particularly if there's something going wrong, so to speak, with who could be at fault. We are confused with Berkeley City Police and sometimes they are confused with us.  If you ever have any questions that the community has questions about who is responding to us, they can always reach out to us at UCPD and request to speak with a supervisor. Those persons are well versed in who can and who is the most appropriate person to respond from a law enforcement and safety perspective to the surrounding community's needs. Thank you. We are just about out of time, believe it or not. And while we've been talking, a number of additional excellent questions have come in and we sort of anticipated this Chief before we got on today. So we really want to encourage people who have questions that we didn't have a chance to get to to use that mailbox we talked about before that's chief C-H-I-E-F dot of O-F dot police at Berkeley dot edu that email address if you don't have a pen handy is also on the UCPD website. Last question and it's admittedly going to be a softball but I'm curious all the same five years from now where do you hope we are in terms of safety on the campus in terms of the relationship between the department and the community in terms of that feeling of safety that you talked about. What's your vision and aspiration five years down the road? My vision for UCPD five years from now is that culturally we would have done a 360. I see this as an opportunity to make a real and true impact on how law enforcement is viewed in this campus community. I want the campus to really know that we are working hard every day and really want to be acknowledged by our own actions as this answering for this police department. I see those clear stats and numbers coming down because we would have developed a strategic plan and a holistic approach to how we're going to address and mitigate crimes. And then I think that five years from now we're going to see a higher number of community stakeholders that have kind of a police board presence that we're working together hand in hand with our professional and civilian staff. So it's not just a UCPD approach. It's the Berkeley approach. Pee-Pip and I want to thank you for your time. Thank you for coming to Berkeley. Thank you for your service to the country on January 6th, before and beyond that date. I think we're going to have to have you back judging not too long by the number of questions. Thanks everybody for tuning in and in chief. Thanks again. Thanks again for your time. I appreciate it. All right. Have a good day.


You mentioned before five business owner fundamentals of a life insurance agent. I'd like to get in those and share those with the audience. Sure. Sure. Yeah. So it's kind of this thing I've been helping agents in the business and specifically tell sales. I'm a tell sales guy. And we touched on it before is we are really with buying leads, we are business owners. And the great thing about our business is the cost of doing business is only the leads in a few nominal subscriptions for a CRM or whatever, right? Yeah. But agency to start viewing their agency as an actual business and most agents don't have the business education or experience. And so that's kind of what I'm kind of teaching agents. So they can kind of get another lens on some of the things that people are saying. So one of the five fundamentals that I talk about is increasing average order value. You'd go to any business school, you go to any e-commerce or any other type of business. Everybody's talking about increasing average order value. We don't use those terms in life insurance, but that's really, we replace those terms and what we, what you can do is obviously upselling, adding writers or whatever, adding other products or cross selling with Medicare, DI, critical illness, anything like that, going for the double, spout sales, child sales, all that increases order value. Something that nobody ever talks about is a down sell, like nobody's talking about down sales, right? But if you're an internet marketer, you know what I'm talking about, Cody, right? Yes, yes. Yeah. So when somebody tells you no, right?  But, you know, agents can down sell too. If someone says no, offer them an alternative product. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, after a full presentation, when someone says no, most agents give up right then and there, they might try to overcome some objections. You know, by then you should know why it's a no, you know, is it affordability, is it trust, is it the wrong product? You know, the more savvy veteran agents know that this is a time to down sell and talk about something that they might have hit on in the fact-finding process. So, you know, it's funny. It's funny you mentioned that. What I thought of and why I was actually laughing at the same time was I started at Mutual Lomel, I was 18 as an intern and I was calling, I don't, not actually on the phone book, but it, you know, it was cold calls so pretty much they were just, I hope they were scrubbed, but I was doing it for a veteran agent because I was an intern, I was learning and he would have me, the script was horrible, but it was like, hello, do you have life insurance? You know, or would you like, would you like a quote for life insurance? No. Well, are you on Medicare? No. Well, would you like a quote for an annuity? No. Well, how about disability?  I mean, but, I mean, but really though, after a full presentation and you still get a note, I mean, yeah, there's probably something wrong with your presentation that, you know, your intuition didn't take you to where the prospect wanted to go, but you can down sell and you can talk about something else that might be more interesting to them. So that's what I mean by that. Yeah, exactly, which is, which is gosh, it's, it's funny. I mean, it just is hilarious. So, so was that some of the things we were talking about was leads training sales process or were the fundamentals totally different? So, I mean, the fundamentals that what I just said was, you know, increased average order value, that's fundamental number one, you know, and it's just really getting those cross cells, those upsells, those downsells down. I mean, that's a big part of what business owners do and what you're taught in business school, what you're taught in really any internet marketing course to do that and just putting it in life insurance agent terms, you know, yeah, it's, that's really what it is for us. And, you know, it's, it's just one of the fundamentals that a lot of business owners go through. And it's just another, like I said, another way to look at these things that everybody's talking about and cross-selling on everything, you're increasing your average order value and that's how you become more profitable as a business owner. Absolutely. No, I love that. I love that. That's good. What's number two? So, I got five. I'm not sure if we'll get through all of them, but I'm down to keep going. Number two, lift conversions.  Every business owner is looking for a way to live conversions, meaning more sales per marketing dollar spent.  If you're generating your own leads online and, you know, that comes in the form of ad copy, targeting, landing page, conversion optimization, you know, I understand most agents don't do this, but it's one factor every agent generating leads is working on, you know, for agents that aren't, they're just selling. Great. The biggest thing you can do is follow a proven tele-sales process.  That's conversion. You're going to sell more of the people you talk to. You know, get more policies you write to place and force. Another thing, field underwriting, you know, don't always sell the cheapest. Sell the most convenient. A lot of people don't want the cheapest. They just want to get something done, you know? Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, that brings up a good point. So, you've, I always think of you as, you know, SellTermLife.com, Modern Life Transforming Podcast. I always think of you as like, you know, historically always selling a lot of term insurance over the phone, right? So, what would you, what would you say to someone that would say, well, should I sell fully underwritten or should I sell simplified issue? I would say present both and lean your sales process towards simplified issue. So, let them make the choice. Yeah. Good. Good. Because I used to sell, I guess I still do it once in a while, but fully underwritten term over the phone and or at least in person. And I just hated the speed and the underwriting and it drove me nuts. Yeah. It's not fun. Yeah. It's not fun unless you have a big pipeline and it takes a while and we, you know, it's a falling off point for agents who want to sell over the phone is because they always go for the cheapest, which is the fully underwritten product, which takes six to eight weeks to get approved and paid or, you know, and then they're already out of money before they get that commission.  You know, we can always cancel this and go with something cheaper later on. You know, and it's, if you position it correctly, you'll get more than half of your sales will be simplified issue. Wow. That's good. Yeah. That's really good because, yeah, coming outside looking in, I was always curious what you were doing, you know, and I didn't know that. So, that's good. Yeah. Yeah. Most of our term agents are positioning simplified issue where they can. Obviously, there's limits on coverage amounts and everything, but when they can, they're positioning a simplified issue and the market's getting, you know, better with accelerated underwriting up to a million dollars, even more in some carriers under certain conditions. It's only going to get easier convenience-wise for those term agents. Why is that?  No, I just think it's technology catching up. That's really all it is. Yeah. Good. Good. That's awesome. Well, on the technology note, any, uh, any thoughts from you on anything that is, you know, coming down the pike? You know, I super random, but yeah, I mean, I went to insure tech a couple months ago in Vegas. Yeah. It's an incredible conference. It's not really fridge. Yeah. It's not really fridge. There's 7,000 people there. It's unreal. You know, it's not really an agent conference, but, um, I don't really see any technology in the life insurance space affecting independent agents in the near future. Good. Yeah. I think, um, I think agencies and agents just need to just build better processes, build their own tech or whatnot. Um, I just don't see it. Good. I just don't see it happening. I mean, the only thing that you can say is threatening is those buy online products, you know, the ethoses of the world and the show and all them, but you just had a buddy that sold, sold one, right? Something similar. Yeah. Um, what are you referring to? Well, I don't know if we're, we're okay to talk about it. It was a, well, I guess so. You shared it in your group and online. Uh, I forget the guy's name. They, they sell, they were selling Medicare and final expense. And you know, so there was like some of their site was automated driving a lot of inbound calls and, you know, okay. Yeah. So yeah, this is, this is, um, public. So, uh, assurance, uh, assurance.com was recently acquired by Prudential for two billion guaranteed, but 3.2 billion with, um, you know, earnouts and everything that they're projecting ahead. And, um, and this guy figured a couple things out just from his specific knowledge that he gained over the past decade of selling over the phone. And he put it into tech. He, he, uh, he just has this really intuitive system. I mean, it's amazing. And, uh, I mean, a lot of people have heard of assurance. I mean, they advertise everywhere for agents and a lot of people might have a bad taste in the mouth about it. I know agents doing really well. I know agents that burned out. Um, it's just one of those things I think it's the effort you put into it. That's what anything though. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. I think it's a fine system.  You know, that was, I don't think that would affect independent agents at all. And so, no, yeah, it's, it's nothing we can use. It's nothing we can, um, nothing we should feel threatened from or anything like that. Hey, if you enjoyed this, I got another one you're going to love. It's right there. Click on it. See you in there. In honor of Halloween, we want to do Egypt's three E's today to help you make more cells consistently, constantly, and every single day. I want 2021 to be the best year you've ever had. And I'm guessing you do too. And if that's true, I'd love to hear about it in comments below.


Happy Thursday everybody. Hopefully everybody's excited for the long weekend. I know I am, but I don't know what the hell's going on today. It is actually disgusting and crappy. There's not much going on in the market. We just had a nice pop in this NRSN. Other than that, I'm not really seeing a whole lot of anything going on. Other than going short, I mean, listen. Looking forward to have a 10 o'clock event that's going on today. So see how that works out regarding about some of the things. But other than that, I think people already checked out. It is absolutely gorgeous here today, here in New York. It's about 80 degrees. No humidity, not a cloud in the sky. I was already offered to go out and enjoy the weekend already going fishing. My brother called me up, hey, you want to go on the boat? I can't go out now. Maybe tomorrow or something, whatever. But I could see people already checking out and are already leaving due to the weather and all that good stuff. But listen, I don't know if it's going to be like Juneteenth when it's a new holiday came around. And we had a really good Friday. But I think that we might get some action in there. Audio should be working. Everybody hear me OK? Can everybody hear me loud and clear? OK, good. It must be them. All right. So anyway, regarding about what happened yesterday, just talk about the afternoon on trading and what happened going over. But let me tell you, Carnival Cruise Line got crushed. It was a great trade going into yesterday. You could see how the stock literally went down to 9.50 all the way down here to about 8.70. Now, you know what was really, really cool about this trade? For some of you that were who attended my aunts, the phase three, there was some really beautiful iceberg orders on here. And we learned something very valuable that when you see those iceberg orders get executed, you could see how it just changes the dynamics of the stock. And that's obviously where you want to be focused on buying it. But when you look at support resistance levels and you know support resistance levels cannot be built unless those buyers and sellers out there is a clear example of how that totally goes against it. It could totally just change the direction of the stock. And it really kind of helped right here run $9 and went all the way up to about 9.10. But finally that buyer that was done for like 80,000 there right around 9, dropped all the way down here to 8.70. There was a lot of buyers out there in 8.70. A lot of buyers. But, and you know what, just to show you really quick, I want to bring something up. Where is she? Where'd she go? Oh, here it is. I want to show you a PowerPoint that I did yesterday. And it was pretty cool right here. I just want to bring this up to kind of show what I'm talking about. Where are we? Was it this one? No, it was this one right here. Okay, so this basically was CCL. Let me just show you this really quick because I'm going to be talking about this today. In my, we're doing another free event. We do a boot camp and do one at 10 a.m. You're all more welcome to join if you like to. But right here you can see how the stock literally dropped all the way down and it came right around 8.70. Look at all these buyers. 141,000, 137,000, 52,000.  So you did have a little somewhat of an action but it was a 30 cents. It was not a lot of money. It wasn't really, you know, it wasn't that great of a winner. Yes, it was a Nichols and Dimes day. And there were a couple other ones.  AMC was pretty decent.  Ran from 30, would have run from 1320 and ran all the way going into the close, not to close, about till 330, to about right around 1390. If it started coming back down, it kind of died.  I mean, you only need one to make a day's pay and that's really where it comes down to it. Now what's going on this morning? Listen, I didn't see that much going on in pre-market. That's perfectly normal. We talked about this yesterday in phase three. There's times when you have to sit on your hands. We learned something very valuable yesterday that when we got a little cocky and we were trying to make something out of nothing, what happened out of nothing, we made it worse and we put ourselves in a hole and you could see that it just takes one, you know, most of the action happens certain times, but then all of a sudden things start reversing on us. And we got into one trade that we had to make it back and it was like a lot of work and you don't wanna be in that situation. Not every day's a trading day and not every day you're gonna make money. There's days you gotta know when you gotta take it easy and yesterday was one of those days. Now is today one of those days? Pre-market biggest percentage gainer right now, REVB. What is the buyout?  We had this NRSN, look at that really nice pop right there just right at, you know, program trading right at 830. What is she doing? She's coming back down now, NRSN.  Where are you going pre-market and nowhere? So you can't be, you know, always think that you see these stocks gapped up that they're going anywhere. They're not really trending.  I mean, these stocks, you know, would always would be on my B or C list. Am I really that desperate throw-on on an A list? I mean, unless we're going short, you know, and today it looks like that day, you know?  Here on the gainers, biggest percentage gainer on New York ASPM. We traded the stock in the past, by the way. This was a fun stock. Went from, went from like $20 to about $60, came all the way down, getting really crushed right now. But she's up. I mean, the stock got really beat up from yesterday. You could see that, you know, the stock's been down. I don't know, it's got good volatility, you know? I mean, five million shares traded, decent spread. Rev on the move. Oh, maybe Rev is starting to make it a comeback. Oh, there we go. We did well with Rev. All right, Revlon. We have Revlon's on the move. We traded Revlon, the bankruptcy at a dollar ran to $10. Is that awesome? Revlon looks like, well, OK, you know what? We got a game changer. We got a game changer. So we got a little program trading that kicked in right there. Aspeb, we traded that stock in the past, too. That one did pretty decent. 4 and 1 half percent, maybe not really what we're looking for. Yeah, that's about it. Restoration hardware. Wow, that's not taking a major hit. Major hit. And if you ever go shopping at restaurant, restoration hardware, and even have been there before, there's one beautiful store here in New York. I went in there and my God, it's like for like the super rich. I mean, beautiful stuff. But my God, how expensive it is. Chris said, very expensive, right? Well, that stock did really well. Look at this stock. Back in, you know, during the crash, it was at $73. Thing went into $700. My God, and now look at that $200. It's still a deal.  You're not up the 700% that you were, but wow, restaurant hardware's not doing too well either. Down 20 bucks.  Look at my red list. You got Amazon that's down. You got Merc that's down. You got Twitter down. My God, what the hell happened to Bitcoin? Holy, markets down 350. Major issue on Bitcoin. Bitcoin broke 19,000, you know? And listen, still up huge, but it's down about more than half. It was the high, 66,000. It's down to, it was 40,000, God. So, you know, whatever. I like coin. You can still trade it, you know, but it's had a major support. If it breaks this 40, ooh, it doesn't look too good, but it's very volatile, nice stock, but to trade. But I don't like it's like making high, making lower lows. Imagine the stock was at 400 when I'm public. Now it's down to 40 bucks. Talking about, you think Bitcoin's that bad? This is even worse, percentage wise. All right, so listen, we're gonna work focus on shorting. We're gonna focus on, months ago Warren Buffett said that too, Ron.  So, but we'll see how things work out. We know there's always things open up in the market. Don't forget, I have an event that's going on at 10 o'clock. So, some of you were happy to join it. We did send out some quizzes. Hopefully some of you have taken it. During the cyber group room, listen, there's nothing out there. Just turn your hands. Don't get yourself in a situation. Actually, if you feel like you wanna do something, don't trade that many shares of it. Just be very, very, be very courteous. Be very careful what you trade.   So, and sometimes, you know, you don't have to trade, don't trade. So good luck today, everyone. Happy trading. If I don't see you going into this, going into tomorrow, enjoy your long weekend. In the meantime, happy trading everybody. And for everybody here on YouTube Facebook Live, we'll see you back here at 10 a.m. And we'll see you back here at 2.30. Thanks, everybody. Happy trading.


Welcome back. This is our 22nd show in a series of shows entitled Rehabilitation Coming Soon, where we have been discussing the mass incarceration practices of the United States and the effect of those practices on the state of Hawaii. My name is Aaron Wills. I am a William S. Richardson Law School graduate and a research consultant for Abigail Quantum-Nicola Research Center, and I'm also a paralegal for retired Judge Mike Pounds for communication practice. Over the past four months, we have heard from numerous professionals in the community who are willing to discuss the criminal justice system and see the problem of mass incarceration from different perspectives. Today we'd like to hear the perspective from retired attorney Bob Merce. About five years ago, Bob Merce started representing terminally ill inmates seeking compassionate release. And last year, Bob helped organize a working group from the Department of Public Safety, the judiciary and the legislature that traveled to Norway to learn about their prison system in Norway. So, welcome, Bob, to the show, and thank you for coming on. Glad to be here. Thank you. All right, Bob. Well, we're going to jump right into our discussion. We have a lot to talk about today, and so I think, you know, usually when we talk about jails and we talk about prisons, you know, people get kind of confused because they kind of think that's the same word. Right. You know, they're like, oh, that's the same thing, right? But there's a big difference between jails and prisons. There sure is. Okay, so we're going to ask the expert here. Can you explain to us what is the difference between a jail and a prison and kind of explain maybe like it was one more expensive or kind of, you know, along the money lines of which one's going to cost the state more money to run? Okay, there is a huge difference. And even though people, as you say, often use the terms interchangeably, and actually I find myself slipping sometimes and not speaking very precisely, but they are very different. And here is the main difference. A jail is a very unique entity. Jails were typically designed years and years and years ago to hold people who had been arrested and could not be released because they either were a flight risk or were too dangerous to release. And initially those were the only two categories of people who were in the jails, but over time it expanded and we didn't let a lot of people out. So basically the jails hold people who have been arrested but have not gone to trial but have been arrested and are being held either because they can't make bail or because the court has determined that they're not entitled to bail. And that, those people, we call them pretrial detainees, comprise a large number of the people who are in our jail here in Hawaii. We also have people who are in the jail because they have been sentenced to one year or less of incarceration. So we have those people who committed misdemeanors, low-level offenses. If your sentence is less than a year, they don't put you in prison. You serve your time in jail. And so you have those low-level offenders along with the pretrial detainees.  And so we have some of those people as well. And you have people who are being held because they're on technical violations for violating probation or parole. So would it be technically right to say that, you know, a jail is more for short terms then? Absolutely, short term, one year or less.  But if you are let out of jail on bail on a low-level offense, you go to trial, your sentence to 30 days, you would serve that in the jail because it's, again, short term. Prisoners are all serving one year or more up to life. Okay, so if you do have, like, a three-year sentence and you would be going to prison to serve that. Absolutely, yes. Okay. So you have to think differently about the two facilities. Right. One is very transient, that's the jail. Right.  So they're going back and forth between the jail and your population.  Right. So anywhere from a couple of hours to a year. Right. Very transient. And, you know, there are statistical outliers. We've talked about this in other shows where there are those people who can't afford bail and it affects their representation from public defender standpoint and because they have to stay in the entire time. So there could be some people who actually have to stay there longer than a year, maybe waiting trial, having continuations and stuff like that. Which is a big problem for everybody. Right. Because as you say, those people who are pretrial detainees who cannot make bail and have to stay in, sometimes that can be a very long time. Yes. Especially if it's a big, a high charge homicide. And let's say you have a public defender. You may have to hire expert witnesses, do forensic examinations. It can be, you know, you can wait a long time to get to trial and we have to pay for those people to be in jail all that time. It becomes very expensive.  I don't think he said disaster level, but he said it was. Crisis level. Crisis level. He said that the OCCC, the current situation that it's in right now, giving, you know, the infrastructure and the overcrowding, it's at the crisis level. What are some of the things that are going wrong at OCCC right now? Okay. Well, OCCC is, I agree it's in a state of crisis. Okay. But I would say the whole, the same thing about all of our prisons is in a state of crisis. Right. But for OCCC, it's just, it's overcrowded. Right. Which is, you know, probably violating the constitutional rights of many of the people who are in there. It's old, it's decrepit, it is falling apart. If you go there, I took a tour recently with some members of the House Public Safety Committee and the Director of Public Safety took us into one area which he calls the Thunderdome. I mean, it's just this mass of men, you know, and the noise level is incredible and they're all just sort of wandering around in these cages. And, you know, it really is a complete, it's a horrible situation and there's over a thousand people there all crowded together, sometimes sleeping three in a cell and when they sleep three in a cell, the cells are only not built for three people. So one of them is going to be, you know, it's going to end up with his head right at the base of the toilet. I mean, it's a horrible, horrible situation. So, I mean, there's no question that the jail is a mess because we've ignored it for a couple generations. And, you know, I know a lot of the references made to this Thunderdome thing. You know, I have a friend that works in there and the reference of Thunderdome comes from the Mad Max movie. I don't know if you've ever seen, a lot of people haven't seen this movie. But the Thunderdome actually, and another reason why they use that term because that's where all the fights happen. And that's where all the discipline and that's where all the guards come in and if something's going to happen, it happens right there in that area. And it's not people like me who are using the term, I got it from the director of the Department of Public Safety. That's what they consider the place to be. And, you know, to their credit, they recognize that this whole situation is not appropriate. That's why they're willing to use those kind of terms to try to make the point to the rest of us that we've got to do something about that jail. But the something is a big question. Yes, so what are we going to do? Well, let's talk a little bit about our Hawaii prison population. What currently, how many prisoners do we have? What's the current statistics on that? Okay, in our prison population now, remember these are one year or more people. And most of them, you know, are not one year. Most of them are two, three, five, 10, 20 life. Right. So these are pretty long-term people. We have five, right. I'm part of a task force that the legislature set up during the last session to look into ways to improve our correctional system. And the task force said, you know, we really need to get on the same page with regard to statistics. So I had the good fortune to sit down with the statistician in the public safety and to go over some of the statistics. And so we have it now, I think, a very reliable set of statistics that we can all share and all use together. And the number for our prisoners at the present time is 5,806 on the day that I got the print out. Now that number fluctuates because people are coming in the prison every day and they're leaving every day. So but it's, you know, it's a little bit lower than it has been in the past. Historically, we've used the number 6,000 because it's hovered around 6,000 for many years. It's tapered off a little bit to about 5,800 now, which is good. But you know, here's the problem, I think. You look at the number of 5,800 prisoners and it means nothing to anybody. So how do we assess that number? How do we make sense of it? How do we breathe some life into it and try to understand it? I think one way is to compare it to the prison population of somewhere else. And I think I did some research on that and the country that I found that was closest to having the same number of prisoners as Hawaii is Sweden. The difference between us and them is that we have roughly the same number of prisoners, but they have over five times the population that we do. Nine million people in Sweden. Yes, we have 5,800. Sweden has 5,200, so they have a couple hundred less prisoners than we do, but their prison population is smaller than ours, but we have six times as many people as they do. They have a population of about 9.8 million people. We have 1.4 million people. So that tells you something right off the bat. And there's a lot of studies on the reason why. And again, this is the United States mass incarceration practices. You go down to three strike laws, mandatory minimums. All of these type of laws that are on the books that have contributed to why our incarceration rate is so high and why we are compared. I mean, if you look at it, we might be one of the smallest states and we have, what, 400 or three to 400 more prisoners than a Sweden, a country of 90 million. Yeah, I mean, that should be a statistic that would motivate, I would hope, the people of Hawaii to say, what's wrong? We got something wrong, but let's take the next step, not just say we have something wrong, let's do something about it. Because that is a terrible statistic and a shameful statistic in my view. Another way of looking at that 5,800 though is that that is today and it's a snapshot in time that captures where we are at the moment. But it wasn't always that way. If we look back in time from 1997 to the present time, Hawaii's prison population has increased 1,359 percent. And 1977 was not that long ago. Back in 1997, we had 398 prisoners in our total prison population, 398. And now we have 5,800. That's an increase of, let's say, 1,359 percent. And if you look at it in terms of incarceration rate, it's an increase of 887 percent. So again, we hit a point in time right around 1997, 1980, where we decided we're going to put more people in prison, we're going to keep them longer. And this is what has happened. It's just ballooned out of, you know, it's just irrational at this point. That is very interesting and it's unfortunate that we have reached these levels, especially, I mean, you have to talk about an increase like that. That's just astronomical to have a 1,359 percent increase in your prison population for one state. Yeah, for one state. Well, when we come back, we will continue talking and we'll kind of move it into the native Hawaiian prison population. And we'll continue to talk with Bob Merse. My name is Aaron Wills, and this is Rehabilitation Coming Soon. Aloha. My name is John Wahee, and I actually had a small part to do with what's happening today, served actually in public office. But if you don't already know that, here's a chance to learn more about what's happening in our state by joining me for a talk story with John Wahee every other Monday. Thank you, and I look forward to your seeing us in the future. Aloha, I'm Kaui Lucas, host of Hawaii Is My Mainland every Friday here on Think Tech Hawaii. I also have a blog of the same name at kauilukas.com where you can see all of my past shows. Join me this Friday and every Friday at 3 p.m. Aloha. Welcome back. I'm Aaron Wills. This is Rehabilitation Coming Soon, and we are sitting here with our guest, Bob Merse. Well, Bob, let's just talk a little bit about Hawaii's incarceration rate. What do you know about the incarceration rate and where are we at as far as Hawaii? Well, incarceration rate, to explain it first, is we talked about our prison population compared to Sweden, but Sweden's got six times as many people as we do, and so that makes comparisons with other jurisdictions very difficult, because we don't have the same number of prisoners as they do. We don't have the same number of population. But what social scientists do is they develop something called the incarceration rate where they divide the prison population by the general population multiplied by 100,000, and that tells you how many prisoners we have in our society per 100,000 people in the general population. So if you make that calculation for Hawaii, we have about 405 prisoners for every 100,000... Oh, I forgot to turn my phone off. I apologize. No problem. We have 405 prisoners per 100,000 population. So we incarcerate 405 per 100,000, and we can compare that number very easily with other jurisdictions. And for example, France, our number is 405 in Hawaii. France, they incarcerate just 99 people per 100,000. Belgium, 98 people per 100,000 compared to our 405. Austria, 97. Switzerland, 84. Germany, 76. Norway, 70. And Sweden, just 53 people per 100,000 compared to our 405 per 100,000.  You know, and I just wanted to point out, you know, the statistic here reads that if Hawaii were a country, it would rank in the top 20 incarcerators in the world. We would. And that's true. But I also want to, you know, just make it very well-aware. This is a United States problem. And if you were to look at all the other states, they would rank above every other country as well. It would just be the states are the highest incarcerators in the world. I haven't been able to find what I consider to be really, really reliable statistics comparing the state of Hawaii to other states. But the statistics that I have seen all show that we do really well compared to other states. It's just that we do so badly compared to other countries and states like Louisiana are totally off the bell-shaped curve. Oh, yeah. They incarcerate more people than anybody in the world. And so when you go to Louisiana, think of it. I mean, this is the place. This is the highest incarceration rate of any jurisdiction in the entire world. Yeah. And that's why it's alarming, you know. And that's why when Hawaii itself, the state itself, is the top 20 incarcerator in the world if taken alone and we left out the other 49 states. You include them in the United States. The bigger picture it shows that state after state after state over incarcerating. And call yourself the aloha state if you want, but look at the reality. I mean, we could become the aloha state, but I have reservations about whether we should be calling ourselves that until we do something about the situation because it definitely says that we are not taking care of our people very well.  And I think that, you know, I've written a paper about this, about the over-incarceration of Native Hawaiians. You know, it has, there's been a task force on it led by Judge Brajak, who was on the show. And we've talked about this numerous times. So just can you explain, like, where we're at with the Native Hawaiian prison population in Hawaii? Well, unfortunately, Aaron, we're at the same place we've always been, and that is indeed the problem. As you say, in 2012, well, in 2010, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs had a big study that showed that Hawaiians were overrepresented in the criminal justice system at every stage of the criminal justice system. Right. And we set up a task, the legislature set up a task force to say what can we do about the problems, and the task force made a report, and basically, as far as I know, and as far as I've been able to tell, nobody's ever accepted a single one of the 38 or 40 recommendations that they have made, and that was not the first study. In the introduction to Judge Broderick's study, he says that Alaliki and others have done studies in the 90s and in the 80s and have come to the same conclusions and said we're over, Hawaiians are overrepresented, we need to do something about it, and it's been a whole generation or two that we haven't addressed that situation. So, today... You know, I was just going to say, what makes us a little bit more upsetting is that Judge Broderick and Oha spent all this money on this task force, and these guys did a really good job. They did. They went to work on this. They did. They came up with 38 recommendations. And one thing that Judge Broderick didn't want to talk about on air, but I'm free to say, because it's public knowledge. Pretty much zero of those recommendations have been implemented. Right. Absolutely zero. So, I'm wondering, I mean, is anybody listening? Why are these reports being done? I mean, you have professionals from the top of the curve. You're talking Judge Broderick was leading the Native Hawaiian task force on this.  No one's listening. And no one's listening for decades and decades as these reports have come in and have consistently always said the same thing. You've got to do something about this, but we haven't. And so, in answer to your original question, the numbers are just the same now as they have been since, as far as I can remember, back in the 70s, when we only had 300 people in our criminal justice system, 34 percent, I mean, 38 percent of Hawai'i's prison population is Hawaiian or part Hawaiian. This has unchanged over decades. Hawai'i's in part Hawai'i's continue to be significantly overrepresented in the prison population. They are about, as I say, 38.4 percent of the prison population, only 26 percent of the general population. So that, again, should shame us into doing something about that situation because Hawai'i's indigenous people are incarcerated at a grossly higher rate than others. But we haven't done it. And when they kind of delve into this sticksity even further, you kind of see an overrepresentation of certain areas of where Hawai'i's are from, such as maybe Waianae. Waimanalo. Waimanalo, absolutely. Kalihi. Yes. When I came to Hawai'i in 1969, I worked for the poverty program. And we all knew that it was Kalihi and Waianae. And those are the programs that had progressive neighborhoods and all the programs. And those didn't really change the situation that much. But since those days in the 70s, we have essentially ignored the problem. But yeah, you're right. They come from Npapakalea. Yeah, Npapakalea. That's right. Okay, so let's talk about severity of offense. I think this is kind of interesting because as we all know, I mean, marijuana is starting to make the change now to be recreational. I think about five or six years will probably make the change. But we have a lot of people in jail for marijuana. Right. And so depending on severity of offense, if you're in jail for marijuana or if you're in jail for murder, what does statistics say about severity of offense for Hawai'i offenders? And here's the thing that we need to do. This is a stunning statistic. And the one I think that is the most important one that came to light from this sort of overview that we did, that only about one-quarter of the total jail and prison population combined, doesn't matter whether you're talking in jail or prison, one-quarter are charged with a class A or B felony or serving time for an A or B felony. Those are the high felonies. These are the serious crimes, the armed robberies, rapes and murders. Only one-fourth of the total jail and prison population are either accused or serving time for those. Three-quarters are in for a class C or lower felony, and class C felony can be something as much as just having a drug residue and a pipe. And so the question comes, again, this 5,800, let's just take the prison population, of this 5,800, three-quarters of them are accused and convicted and serving time for really low-level offenses. So do we really need to have all these big prisons? Do we really need to have all these people in the mainland? Do we really need to spend the million dollars, millions and millions of dollars for people who are committed misdemeanors? I mean, you could be arrested for a class C felony.  I go away for, you know, over a year. Not because I stole, was going to steal something, but because I touched you. That can be a class C felony. You know, and I, Warden Patterson, you know, he came on the show and he kind of addressed this. This is more of a structural issue, I think, than anything else because what we have is a cookie-cutter system. Because of the 25% that we would consider what we'd say high-risk, okay? That 25%, we have to treat everybody like that. And so we have to make the prison systems in order to keep those 25% in line. And so he was saying, for example, you have murder, you know, a person who's done multiple murders. Well, you have to build a prison system to make sure that he's in his cell and everybody's safe. The unfortunate problem is that the other 75% who aren't like these people have to suffer because they have to do the same system. It's just a cookie-cutter system. And so I think that's the biggest problem, is that we don't have a separate system to deal with low-level offenders and put them in a different place than people we consider extremely high-risk murderers, and we mix them in together. It makes no sense. It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't. And other jurisdictions are starting to move away. And as we think about designing a jail or a new prison because they're talking about a new prison for Maui, we need to think about these things. And we need to design prisons that really reflect what we in the community want. I'll give you a very quick example. I was just reading about a new jail that they built in Denver. And as they were looking through their statistics, they said, jeez, we got a significant number of people who are coming in here. And they're charged with low-level offenses. They basically make a phone call to the relatives who come down and bail them out. They're in here, you know, five, six hours at most, maybe eight hours occasionally.  We can, you know, so what they did was when they designed their jail, they knew they were going to have this high level of people who could bail out. So they made it, the ground floor where you come in is like an airport waiting room. It has seats, it has televisions, it has a coffee machine. They got a couple of cells for, you know, somebody and maybe a problem.  You get bailed out within eight hours and you never end up in the housing unit of the jail and they never have to, you know, we don't have to go through all these problems. So we just have to think this through and we have to look at what other places are doing some really, really great things. Well, you know, I couldn't agree with you more on everything you've said on the show and on previous shows we've had you on, Bob. So thank you for taking the time. Are we out of time already? Yeah, we're out of time already. So I just wanted to, you know, share it with everybody. Thank you. You know, as far as overcrowding is concerned, the data shows that five of Hawaii's nine correctional centers are overcapacity and three of the five are 150% or more overcapacity. So it's a huge problem and it has to be addressed. So thank you for watching the show. Join us next week for another show of Rehabilitation coming soon as we continue our discussion of the criminal justice system and the effect of mass incarceration on the state of Hawaii. My name is Aaron Wills and this is Bob Merse. Stay tuned. Coming up next is Sustainable Hawaii with Kirsten Turner.


Ευχαριστώ και καλώς ήρθατε back!  It's a machine that I have been wanting to try out for a long time and I finally got my hands into it. Since I am a professional crafter, I do lots and lots of die cutting and my hand already hurts, so I thought it would be a good transition. So today I'm going to do the unboxing and show you how it works. I will also point out the pros and cons of using such a machine and maybe this video is going to be helpful for you to decide if this is a machine for you or not. First let's take a look on what you get on the box. So here are the two cutting plates. These are quite big. They are 9x12.5 which means that they fit both letter size as well as A4 European size.  This is the magnetic seam. Again it is the exact same size as the cutting plates. In previous versions it used to be black. Now it comes with a grid on both sides and it also gives you lots of measurements on popular sizes which I find really convenient. Now the fun part about this magnetic plate is that you can place your dies on top and they are going to stay put they are not going to move on you. You can see here how nicely it grabs the dies and it's easy to remove them. Now I'm going to keep the labels on top of all those different seams that I pick out of the box so you can see them all together on the right side of my screen. Now the milky one is the plastic seam which is really important for making the sandwiches to cut out your thin dies and I will be using all of them and show you the sandwiches later on. This is the metal cutting plate this is really important when you are trying to cut out very intricate dies. Usually when you buy a die cutting machine you need to get those metal seams separately however with this machine you get everything you need all together in one box. So this is the embossing mat it's wrapper and very flexible and it is used when you want to emboss with the dies. There are some dies that do cut out as well as embossing. So all together you get six different plates to create different sandwiches depending on what you want to do in the machine. Two cutting plates your plastic seam, your magnetic seam the metal cutting plate and the rubber embossing mat. Now with the two cutting plates you will need replacements at some point since they get warped and get lots of markings from die cutting however with the rest of the seams you will not need to replace them as long as you are careful and you don't die cut them by mistake. There is also a handy little leaflet that you want to keep I am not a big fan of user manuals but this is really helpful it has just the illustrations that you need for different sandwiches you want to do for embossing and die cutting and although this leaflet looks big and complicated trust me the rest of the pages are on different languages but all that you need is just in four pages.  This is a 3D embossing folder I am going to take it out of the package so you can see the design it is called Ornate Lace and I will be using it in this video later on so you can see how it embosses and creates a beautiful design really three dimensional Now you will also get four different dies sets and that includes different butterflies, hexagons and look at those floral frames and the floral borders I absolutely love how intricate those are so we can put the machine into test later on so I am going to put those aside and of course in the box you will get the cable I got two cables inside my machine it has the European version which I am going to use but there is also the UK version inside as well So depending on which part of the world you are make sure to order the correct one Now I am going to put everything aside clean up my entire area and bring in the machine So here it is out of the box I just love that it is white love the clean and simple look on it it has three buttons on the top and the logo and here is the slot where you fit your sandwiches Now the machine is no joke it's really heavy that's about 7 kilos of weight or about 15 pounds there are handles on each side that you can use if you want to move the machine around but let's be honest here I wouldn't recommend to use this on the go if you are going to crops and stuff this is a machine that you need to have on your desktop and it's not going to move from there On top of your Gemini you will get three buttons one is the turn on and off there is the post one and the third one is the reverse which I find really handy especially if you want to run your dies a couple of times to make sure that everything is cut out perfectly and it also brings the plates right in front of you again so it's really convenient Now I plugged in my machine and let's see how it works Now the main power switch is located at the back turn it on and just leave it as it is and then I will use the front button to turn my machine on and off again So this is the turn on and you can see how it lights up all the buttons now I know that my machine is ready to use and now let's play a little bit this is the first time I'm going to try this machine and make a sandwich so I decided to start with the easiest one which is using the embossing folder I'm going to put the machine on the side so you can see it and I'm not speeding up the video at all you will be able to see how long it takes for the whole plate to go through the machine and back and also I'm leaving the sound on so you can see how noisy it is and again this is an honest review and at the end I will sum up the pros and cons to help you decide if you want to get it Now I'm going to create my sandwich there I'm just placing a piece of cardstock inside the folder and then all I have to do is to use the two clear cutting plates I'm going to fit those through the machine and it grabs them automatically you can probably hear some sounds which are completely normal and here comes my plate on the other side and I absolutely love the fact that I don't have to use a handle this is the number one selling point for me when it comes to Gemini and check this out I was so amazed when I saw but this is absolutely amazing look at the depth of this embossed paper absolutely stunning I kept looking at it from and back I couldn't believe how amazing and dimensional this is so in any case to conclude for doing embossing with embossing folders the sandwich is super easy and you can see the results just use the two cutting plates top and bottom now I'm going to move on and do some die cutting I will use the clear cutting plate then the milky plastic sheen and then on top the magnetic sheen so now I have three different plates one on top of the other ok I'm going to place them down and I'm going to bring in some of the dies that were included in the box I will try and use some that are quite open space and easy to cut out such as those hexagons but I'm also going to bring in a very intricate butterfly as well as a few flowers and some foliage just to see how the machine is going to perform again I'm moving slowly I'm not speeding up the process at all as you see the video and I'm leaving all the sounds on so you can have the real experience so this is where I had the feeling that this is going to cut out the hexagons but the rest of the dies since they are quite intricate they would need to use the metal sheen however I'm going to give it a try and see how this is going to work I'm going to fit the sandwich and you can hear all the cracks now I'm going to pose it and rewind so it's going to bring the plate on my side again plus this way I give it another chance for cutting those intricate dies and we will see together what's the result of course it cut out the hexagons beautifully I was expecting that and now this is a completely new plate and you can see that I get intentions and do not get mad about this or frustrated this is something that happens with every cutting plate it also has warped a little bit which means that on the next cut you place it in a different direction and I'm going to show it to you later on so just don't get frustrated by getting all those marks on your cutting plates now you can see that I cut out this thick cardstock beautifully and what really surprised me is that the rest of the dies did cut out beautifully those intricate designs and to tell you the truth I wasn't expecting that however I did give the machine a chance and ran it through twice I don't know if it was going to cut out the butterflies and the rest with one passing the fun part is that I avoided using the metal seam which is fine by me so I'm going to give it one more go this time I will use one of the most intricate designs that were included in this box this time again I'm going to try it out and cut it without using the metal seam which is intended for intricate designs I just want to give it a go and see what happens so I'm going to remove all these dies I'm going to place on top the most intricate that I found and again I'm using the same sandwich so underneath my die there are three shims the clear cutting plate the milky plastic shim and the magnetic shim then the die the paper on top and look how I used my plate previously now I'm going to flip it this way it's going to help the warping and it's going to keep my plate in a good condition every time you use it just make sure that you pass it through in a different direction and I'm going to run it through my gemini so I run that just once and let's see what happens and I have the feeling that this cut out beautifully and that's the truth all I have to do is to just pop out all those little bits and pieces with my pick tool so to tell you the truth this was a huge huge surprise since it does cut out with the normal sandwich without even using the metal shim however I guess that if you have lots and lots of dies loaded on your plate then you probably need to use that shim but always give it a try without it before going ahead and using the metal shim this is going to help your cutting plate stay in a good condition for a longer time since you don't add too much pressure on them now to conclude this is the perfect die cutting machine for me especially because it is electronic and it doesn't have a handle so if your arm hurts from die cutting or if you have a special health condition that doesn't allow you to turn it then this is a machine for you I also love the fact that it has a big platform that fits an A4 or a letter size which means that you can do die cut lots of die cutting with one passing another plus is that it cuts like a dream and you saw the demo here today but even if something doesn't cut out then you have all the shims that you need included in the box so you don't have to buy any extras to make different sandwiches and also it includes a magnetic shim so the dies are not going to move on you now things to consider before you buy this machine keep in mind that this is a heavy machine it's about 7 kilos 15 pounds so it is not portable then again it is quite noisy and you were able to hear the cracking and the sound that it does it's not that noisy but still there is some noise you will also need to replace the cutting plates at some point but that's probably a disadvantage of all die cutting machines out there where they are electronic or not and finally you cannot run through your big scissors dies you can run through any other warfare thin die that you have but not the big ones now the gemini that you saw me use today is the original one so the 1 by 12 and a half plate size but there are two more versions the gemini junior which is a 6 by 9 and the gemini go which is 3 by 6 and it is portable because it's very small and it is lightweight feel free to pose your screen here so you can see all the stats depending on your needs you can go smaller which means that you save on cost the machine is not as heavy but you get a smaller cutting plate i hope this video was helpful and informative if you have any questions let me know down below and if you like my product reviews let me know which other product you would like me to review thank you all so much for joining me today and i'll see you all next time