Chair asks Powell about workload and retention; Powell says better but officers still leaving
Brooks-Powers asks Powell how workload feels different since January. Powell says the office environment is better but members are still suffering from the previous administration, officers are still leaving, and the union recently lost a whole gun unit in Queens.
read, you know, their
rights, if you will, in terms of what the next steps and stages may be for them.
So I just wanted to understand through your lens, do you feel that, and I think you kind of spoke to it saying that we should be adding that the lawyers should be present.
I thought that was a very helpful point, but if you had to, if you wanted to elaborate on that.
I think what's confusing about
about the intake interview is for every kid that family court has original jurisdiction over, those kids go through that intake process
pre-filing, which means for public defenders, the right to counsel has not yet attached.
So unless for them it's a prior client of ours or, you know,
you know, we represent them on a child protective case, we aren't necessarily involved.
So we don't know about it necessarily.
How does that impact like their protection?
So for example, when someone's arrested, it's like, you know, you get Reg and Miranda rights and you know what's being held against you if you say something crazy.
But in that instance, because the lawyer has not been assigned yet,
Is that young person now vulnerable to anything that can be held against them in the path that they get to navigate in the Department of Probation?
In the way the Family Court Act is written, the information that's obtained during that intake interview cannot be used pre-fact finding, but it can be used post-fact finding.
And so they're incorporated into the reports.
The other population that we're talking about are cases that are removed from the youth part.