Social Justice Committee Frustrated with Slow Progress on Implementation of CRESS and Youth Empowerment Center

Report on the Meeting of the Community Safety and Social Justice Committee (CSSJC), September 11, 2024

The meeting was held over Zoom and was recorded.

Present

Debora Ferreira (co-chair), Allegra Clark, (co-chair), Everald Henry,  Lisette Paredes

Staff: Camille Theriaque (CRESS Director and staff liaison), Pamela Nolan Young (DEI Director)

Six members of the public attended.

The committee still has three unfilled seats. At their August meeting, Debora Ferreira indicated that the Town Manager planned to interview for and fill these positions in late September.  Ferreira indicated that the town has received two applications to serve on the committee and those applicants will be interviewed soon. She said that applications remain open and encouraged people to apply. She also noted that one opening is reserved for a youth appointment and encouraged people to reach out to connections that they might have in the Amherst schools.

While the meeting started with a quorum, Paredes left the meeting early, leaving the committee without a quorum for the third time in its last four meetings. The meeting continued after Paredes’ departure, although the committee was no longer able to take official actions.

The meeting focused primarily on new efforts by the town to begin the process of creating a Youth Empowerment Center (YEC) and on ongoing concerns about CRESS. The YEC discussion stressed the Town’s Manager’s unwillingness to share information with the CSSJC about the town’s efforts to create a YEC. The CRESS discussion continued to raise concerns about staffing levels at CRESS and about whether the CRESS mission has changed from what was originally imagined. These issues had dominated the committee’s August meeting, and the committee members continued to express frustration at being left out of the loop on these issues, in spite of being the body tasked with monitoring the  recommendations that are in place and ensuring the other recommendations are completed.

Public Comment
Pat Ononibaku  pointed out that today (9/11) marks the anniversary of the death of Dee Shabazz. She asked for and was granted a moment of silence to honor the memory of Shabazz who was a past co-chair of the CSSJC.

Current CSSJC co-chair Debora Ferreira reminded those present that Shabazz fought for the voiceless, for diversity, equity, and inclusion, and for non-marginalization, and that she made considerable contributions to those causes. Ferreira concluded, “She inspires me to continue this work. The best way to honor her memory is to make sure that all of those recommendations that the Community Safety Working Group (CSWG) came up with are put into effect.” (Shabazz’ consulting group, 7Gen, advised the CSWG and helped them to formulate their final recommendations to the town (see also here) concerning the promotion of public safety, equity and justice). Those recommendations included the creation of a resident responder department (CRESS), the creation of a BIPOC Youth Empowerment Center (YEC), and the creation of a Resident Oversight Board (ROB) to field and investigate complaints about the Amherst Police Department.

Reports
CRESS director Camille Theriaque reported that this month CRESS fielded 219 calls, none of which came from dispatch. The most common source of calls (37) was from a previous engagement and 27 originated with a town department. The department recorded 185 engagements with residents in the previous month.  Read the report here for a full breakdown of the calls.

Theriaque reported, in response to questioning from the committee, that CRESS still had only four responders, but that the department was in the final stages of setting up interviews for new responders sometime next month.

Ferriera pressed Theriaque, as she had at the previous CSSJC meeting, to explain the slow pace of bringing CRESS up to speed to be a fully functioning alternative to the police as was originally recommended by the CSWG. She voiced concern that CRESS is still not receiving calls from dispatch, and is still engaged in what some regard as “busy work” (e.g. lunchroom support at the high school) when the original vision was to have CRESS responding to most non-violent situations including noise complaints. She said that she was looking for confirmation that CRESS is not being transformed into a social service agency, but remains a resident response service that offers an alternative to the police. She voiced frustration that CRESS only has four active responders.

Theriaque responded that she is working actively with dispatch to develop the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) that must be in place in order for CRESS to take calls from dispatch. She noted that the new director of dispatch is eager to collaborate with CRESS. She reported that some SOP’s were in place when she was hired as director four months ago, but there are several that need to be developed and each one is complex and detailed. She said that developing these protocols is a lot more complex than anyone imagined, that there are not established SOP’s that can just be taken “off the shelf” from other programs and put in place – that these must be developed from scratch. She said as far as noise complaints go, she didn’t see much of an opening for CRESS to be responding to them as Mass General Law specifies that two police officers be dispatched to noise complaints. She pointed out that CRESS is in the process of finalizing interviews for new responders next month and that onboarding takes a lot of time it is important to do this correctly.  She also mentioned that she wants to get clinicians on board to go out on calls with the responders which is a departure from the original non-clinical model embraced for CRESS.

Ferreira wanted to know why things are taking so long. She said, “There just seems to be a lot of delay and we’re just trying to understand why. It seems like we are going backwards rather than forward. It’s been four years since we started this.”

DEI Director Pamela Young said that the new leadership started with a lot to do “because the previous leadership didn’t set things up.”

Theriaque said, “We are creating a firm base and are working to make sure that we are moving forward from a firm base so we don’t have to start all over again. We ARE moving forward.  I understand the frustration of the BIPOC community.” She commended Police Chief Gabe Ting on his willingness to collaborate with CRESS.

Everald Henry said, “Before the CRESS leadership transition we were led to believe that we were a lot closer (to implementing CRESS as an alternative to police) than we are now.“ 

Theriaque said, “ Things were put into place before we had a solid base for them.  Like the SOP’s. These were not written or put into place.”

Ferreira said, “This is frustrating for the community. It looks like we’re moving in the opposite direction from what we intended. We don’t really know what’s happening with CRESS. We need more information.”

Youth Empowerment Center
The frustration with being left out of the loop and the slow progress in moving social justice programs forward continued in the discussion of the town’s plan to create a Youth Empowerment Center (YEP).  

At the previous meeting of the CSSJC, committee members expressed frustration that the town was moving forward with the creation of youth programming and a YEC but had declined to share information about those efforts with the CSSJC. In spite of several town officials attesting to a YEC committee’s existence and to their attendance at its first meeting, Town Manager Paul Bockleman insisted in an email exchange with the CSSJC that no such committee exists. 

At the August meeting, Theriaque confirmed that the YEC initiative is now being led by the town Finance Director and the Recreation Commission. Ferreira asked if a committee had been appointed to do this work. Theriaque responded that the Town Manager decided over a year ago that there would be a Task Force on Youth Empowerment, and that it would not be under DEI. Young reported that she is no longer in the loop concerning youth. empowerment. Theriaque added that the coordinating group is “not actually an official task force but an unnamed group of people, including people from the Recreation Commission, who have been brought together by the Town Manager to organize this initiative.” This group has thus far met once and they have hired the Donahue Institute to do a feasibility study. Theriaque reported that she and Assistant DEI director Philip Avila will serve as town liaisons to this group. She did not share who the other members of the group are or which constituencies will be represented or whether a committee charge had been adopted. CSSJC members said this was the first they had learned of these efforts.

Theriaque reported that since it had been four years since the 7 Gen Collective, under the direction of the late Dee Shabazz, had conducted a feasibility study for a Youth Empowerment Center,  the committee felt that the information was out-of-date and that a new feasibility study was needed. She said that is why the town had contracted with the Donahue Institute to conduct the new study. She reported that at their first meeting, the group suggested engaging young people at the upcoming block party on September 19 to help ensure a diverse outreach effort.   

Ferreira again objected to being left out of the loop and said that Town Hall has failed to share information with the committee, town staff have failed to use CSSJC as a resource in developing programming for BIPOC people, and the town has failed to include CSSJC in the planning process. 

In an email exchange with Bockelman dated August 30, 2024, Bockelman insisted that no committee had been created and that no decisions had been made concerning how the town would conduct a needs assessment for the YEC but asserted that the 7Gen report would be insufficient to fulfill that need. 

But at the September CSSJC meeting, Young affirmed again that a committee had been created and that they had met to begin discussions about a YEC, but that her office was not part of that process and no longer had any connection with youth programs.She did not acknowledge Avila’s claim that he would serve as a liaison to the committee. 

The Indy filed a public records request on August 16, 2024 asking for the agenda for that initial meeting, an attendance list, and minutes, but received a response from the Town Clerk saying that there is no committee and hence no information to share.

Committee members reiterated their complaints that CSSJC should be playing an active role in the creation of and oversight of these initiatives and that CSSJC had an obligation to ensure that the initiatives are fulfilling their original social justice mandate. But instead they are being frozen out. Ferreira said she was perplexed as to why the Town Manager is insisting that there is no committee when several officials have attested to its existence. She also said that CSSJC needs to know why DEI has removed youth work from its charge.  “What has happened and why has not been made clear to us,” she said.