Chaplain Dr. Victoria Phillips supports bills and seeks medical director testimony

Thank you.

Peace and blessings, Chair, and all other council members.

My name is Chaplain Dr.

Victoria Phillips.

Everyone calls me Dr.

V.

I'm the CEO and founder of Visionary and Visionary Ministries.

Just very quickly, I want to say I support Councilmember Cabon's bill.

Don't remember the number off the top of my head.

With the suggested amendments.

I also want to say strong communities make police obsolete.

So for intro 0453, I want to highlight that 68% of those incarcerated right now with known mental health concerns do not receive adequate mental health treatment.

And, of course, being one of the ones who fought many years ago for 1670s to be removed from the island, again,

as co-chair to Young Adults Task Force for DLC, I'm going to highlight they still should not ever be responsible for anyone's children or the care.

And I will take it a step further to say families, even with DOE, stop allowing your children to be a part of government systems to say you need to receive help.

That help needs to come from community resources and services.

Also, with the lock-ins, Intro 0809, I do believe an amendment needs to be added to that.

And I would highly suggest that medical directors from each facility on Rikers Island be called to these meetings.

I've said it before, they want to come, but they aren't allowed to come unless they're directly requested to come and speak their truth on the record.

And there are many of colleagues.

that spoke on several things, but I want to highlight something before I go on around PRIA and budgets.

So we still are waiting for our PRIA reports, and this is something that I'm going to keep highlighting because I put on the record, even at BOC, around officers being assaulted by officers,

and BOC can't follow up when it's staff on staff because it's not a detainee involved, but the council can.

And I say that because even recently I mentioned something at the Board of Corrections around a senior advisor that was made assistant commissioner with sexual allegations, and he is being investigated.

But the allegations that were mentioned were only one.

There's about two or three other people that came, and I want the city council to make sure that that's also followed up.

Because if we can't change things from the top on down, how are we expecting the uniform offices to actually be different?

And I'll just finish with this.

When it comes to the budget, please, can this council find out who's still on payroll while being investigated and why?

And I maybe even want to find out, are any old commissioners still on DSE's payroll?

When we talk about money and where it's going, we need to know where every dollar is being spent.

Thank you for that.

And I appreciate the recommendation in terms of inviting the staff from the particular housing units.

The medical director.

The medical director specifically.

And so when you see these hearings coming up, like if you don't mind just shooting a note, because I do like that recommendation to be able to get more in the weeds.

So thank you for that.

And thank you to the panel.

Next, I'm going to call up Jenny Stover.