Morano questions DOP on high-risk caseloads and insufficient supervision

Thank you.

I'm going to yield.

I have more questions, but I'm going to allow my colleagues to ask their questions, starting with Councilmember Marano, followed by Councilmember Ressler.

Thank you very much, Chair.

Commissioner, thank you for your testimony, and thank you for your four decades of service to the city and to the Department of Probation.

Appreciate it very much.

I was particularly interested in your testimony because you said your department's organizational strategy can be summarized in two words, what works.

And that's a great philosophy for all of us in city government.

And I think my concern is whether we're actually measuring what works, particularly when it comes to public safety.

There was one thing in your testimony that really jumped out at me.

You said that under the previous...

system, your officers had a mixed bag of caseloads, which resulted in people exhibiting lower risk behavior, receiving too much intervention, and people exhibiting high risk behavior, receiving not enough.

Obviously, I think we'd all recognize that's backwards.

And I appreciate the department's admission on that.

So are you telling us that individuals your own department considered high risk weren't receiving the level of supervision they should be receiving?

I'm going to say that they were receiving supervision, but one of the things that concerns me is making sure that they are really getting the interventions that they needed.

I think that when you have a mixed bag of cases, you pick a lane and you stay in it.

You're not giving the right amount of dosage to the people, and that really concerned me.

Do we know how long that was happening, the insufficient amount of dosage, let's say?

And more importantly, do we know whether anyone committed a serious violent crime while receiving less supervision than the department's own risk assessment called for?

In terms of the mixed bag, I think it's been about three years.