Q&A
Discussion on specialized units within CCHR
2:00:59
·
174 sec
Council Member Williams inquires about CCHR's plans to create specialized units within the Law Enforcement Bureau (LEB). CCHR representatives discuss their approach to organizational structure and responsiveness to changing needs.
- CCHR aims to be effective and responsive, considering how to best structure the agency
- The agency values nimbleness to address emerging issues, such as recent increases in immigration status inquiries
- Knowledge transfer between different areas (e.g., employment and housing fair chance work) is highlighted as beneficial
Nantasha M. Williams
2:00:59
Does CCHR intend to create units like this moving forward with more specialization?
2:01:08
I know you and I have had a ton of conversations about the, maybe, misperceptions around, like, a source of income unit within LEB and how it's not really, like, a real unit.
2:01:20
It's just, you know, maybe, like, one attorney or a few attorneys, but that all attorneys may deal with source of income.
2:01:26
So, you know, I know this is something that this council has raised before where we make assumptions that you have your LED unit, delineated in very specific ways based off of, like, focus area.
2:01:38
So have you thought about that?
2:01:41
Do you have any plans, or intend to, in the future, to create specialized units within LEB?
JoAnn Kamuf Ward
2:01:50
So I'll start just by saying, I think one of the reasons that there is this specific new unit identified in this preliminary draft early version fiscal impact statement is because it's different in kind than any of the work that we've done to date.
2:02:09
I think we want to be an effective and responsive agency, so we're always thinking about how can we ourselves to be most effective.
2:02:19
I think within the law enforcement bureau, creating units is is a different question than the one of creating a unit to do something that we don't have staff currently to do.
2:02:29
But I'll, let you answer the I think
Katherine Carroll
2:02:34
as, Deputy Commissioner Kim Afford mentioned earlier, we do really want to be able to be nimble and be responsive to things as they change in the city.
2:02:43
For example, you know, we've already started seeing more an uptick in inquiries related to immigration status and citizenship status since the federal election.
2:02:53
And that, obviously, for the last 4 years, had not been the case.
2:02:57
So our ability currently to pivot and make space for doing of, pre complaint interventions in that work and being really responsive to that community that we anticipate and already are seeing as being targeted, makes our work, I think, more effective because we can be responsive to things more quickly than when there might be a legislative solution to to reaching those pieces.
JoAnn Kamuf Ward
2:03:19
And and I'm just thinking about this in the context of context of fair chance.
2:03:23
So we have done employment fair chance work for a significant amount of time.
2:03:28
That puts us in a really good position when it comes to implementing fair chance housing because we have a lot of knowledge about what that what that looks like.
2:03:35
And, again, it's employment and housing, so you're not necessarily gonna think, oh, this is an area, where where, there's going to be a huge benefit to having folks that are that are able to work in both areas, but I think that knowledge transfer is also super important.
