SULLIVAN'S SALVOS
June 17, 2021
Sullivan’s Salvos 6/22/21
In this edition:
*Doug Lindner
*Public Health Award
*Black Lives Matter – Dispatch
*Dems Hall of Fame Event
*Did You Know?
*Doug Lindner
After 24 years and 3 million words, Doug Lindner is leaving the North Liberty Leader and Solon Economist. I sincerely hope people in those two communities know how lucky they have been to have Doug working at their papers! The Leader and Economist are FANTASTIC papers! They are as good as any small-town papers I have ever seen, and much of the credit rests with Doug.
I have had several arguments with Press Citizen Editors over the years, each one telling me that it was impossible to cover the City Council, School Board, and Board of Supervisors. They would assure me that they understood the news business, and I did not. And what I wanted was impossible. Each time I would say, “Well, you had better take a look at Solon, Iowa, where Doug Lindner does all those things and does them well!”
While I consider Doug a friend, that never stopped him from asking a pointed question or taking issue with something the County was doing. And that is how it should be! Thanks, Doug, for making Johnson County a better place to live for all these years!
*Public Health Award
Johnson County Public Health was honored with the 2021 Bronze Innovative Practice Award by the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO). The award celebrates local health departments for developing innovative programs to meet the needs of their community during the COVID- 19 pandemic. Johnson County was one of 20 local health department programs to receive NACCHO’s Bronze Innovative Practice Award.
The innovative practice was the integration and implementation of the department’s use of an online survey tool to assist with COVID-19 disease investigations and contact tracing. The ability to securely complete portions of the disease investigation through this online interaction increased the speed at which case investigations could be completed and thus, providing time to address large volumes of cases and prioritize cases to investigate.
“We are proud to receive NACCHO’s Bronze Innovative Practice Award. The award is evidence of our commitment to developing responsive and innovative public health programs that improve the health of our community,” said Sam Jarvis, Community Health Manager.
Congratulations Johnson County Public Health!
*Black Lives Matter – Dispatch
I wrote the following in 2014, then repeated it last year after the murder of George Floyd. I believe it is still timely, so I am running it again today.
In the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, I thought it might be worth resurrecting an idea I had back in 2014.
I was working with LaTasha DeLoach. You may know LaTasha as the Director of the Iowa City/Johnson County Senior Center. You may recall that she was a member of the ICCSD Board of Directors (elected 2015). You may know her as a founder of G World. Well, at the time, she worked for Johnson County Social Services. And one of her duties at Johnson County was serving as the Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC) Coordinator for Johnson County. Several counties (Johnson being one) were under a federal consent decree to do something about the disproportionate numbers of people of color in the juvenile justice system. It was a long slog of building trust, creating data sets that did not exist previously, and slowly adopting policies. But over LaTasha’s time at Johnson County, we made measurable progress toward our DMC goals. We did not fix everything, mind you. But we made measurable progress.
I was impressed by her work, but the consent decree was limited. I wanted to do something about DMC in our adult systems. While LaTasha could not work on adult issues per her grant, she volunteered to help me dig into our DMC issues. This was magnificent, because she is possessed of knowledge and skills I simply do not have.
We knew DMC was bad in our adult system. It still is. So we began looking at where disparities come from. As it turned out, we found a common theme. Officers and command staff from every law enforcement agency in Johnson County had some variation of the same response: “We go where we are told.” The single biggest problem we had in dispatch was what we can now call the “Amy Cooper” problem.
You remember Amy Cooper? She is the white woman who threatened a black man that she would call the cops and falsely accuse him. In fairness, most of the calls in Johnson County were not as egregious as Amy Cooper. But the calls were things like, “A black man is loitering outside my house.” “Black kids appear to be up to no good.” “I don’t like the looks of this guy.”
It is not hard to see how this creates more DMC. If cops are always being called on you, you are going to have ramifications. Maybe you are just a bit intoxicated. Maybe you have a small amount of weed. Maybe you missed a court date. Maybe you owe the courts some money. Maybe you simply push back against what you rightfully view as harassment. There are a million things that can turn an otherwise-innocuous stop into charges and/or an arrest. An arrest that frankly, didn’t need to happen.
Once dispatch orders a car to check a situation out, the cops are on their way. It is already too late. So we began looking at dispatch.
In Johnson County, law enforcement is dispatched by the Joint Emergency Communications Center (JECC). JECC runs out of a building behind Chatham Oaks on ground that was part of the Historic County Poor Farm. JECC is overseen by a 7-person board that includes the Sheriff, the Emergency Management Director, a County Supervisor, two Iowa City representatives, a rep from Coralville, and a rep from North Liberty. That group hires a Director (Tom Jones), who then hires staff.
LaTasha and I met with Tom. He shared some of the challenges of doing dispatch. Yes, the dispatchers could start asking more questions, but every extra question takes valuable time. And dispatch is all about quick responses. It was also interesting to hear Tom say that JECC sometimes got racist complaints. Callers sometimes said things like, “There is a (N-word) in my neighborhood.” He estimated that there might be a dozen or more 911 calls every year that were explicitly racist. Granted, that is a very small percentage of the thousands of calls they receive. But I still found it shocking.
So, what to do? LaTasha and I presented to the JECC Board, and requested that they come up with some type of response. I was thinking along the lines of the way in which fire departments deal with false alarms. You get one free, and after that, you are charged a fee for wasting public resources. Perhaps we could have law enforcement officers follow back up with people who made sketchy complaints. Explain to them that they were wasting public resources, and warn them that if they did so again, they would be getting a ticket for interference with official acts, filing a false report, or some other charge.
Understand, JECC does not have the staff to do this kind of follow up. It would need to be law enforcement or whatever follows law enforcement as we know it. And I am certain this will be resisted; no one wants yet another task to do, especially one that will be unpleasant. But I really think this is critical.
I asked that the JECC Board, individual cities, and County consider this policy. It went nowhere. I think the time for an “Amy Cooper” law might be right now. I am going to send this to the various entities involved in JECC. What are your thoughts?
*Dems Hall of Fame Event
The Johnson County Democratic Party is holding our Annual Hall of Fame Awards on Friday, July 9 at 7pm at Brown Deer in Coralville. 2021 marks the 11th consecutive year that the Johnson County Democratic Party has held a separate Hall of Fame event.
Please join us for coffee, desserts, and plenty of old war stories! A cash bar will be available.
The Hall of Fame inductees for 2021 are: David and Marion Coleman, Dave Leshtz, and the late Mel Stahmer. We hope you can join us in recognizing this remarkable group!
Tickets are available for a $25 suggested donation. People who cannot afford that amount should still feel welcome, but please call 354-7199 so we can get a count. Sponsorships are available at the following levels:
$100 includes two tickets
$250 includes 4 tickets
$500 includes a whole table (8 tickets)
We hope that this will be an in-person event, and we are planning for there to be both in-person and Zoom options for attendance. Obviously, we will continue to monitor the COVID virus as we continue to plan the event.
*DID YOU KNOW? JECC takes approximately 150,000 calls per year.
Anyone interested in learning more about County government should take a look at the County website-
"Sullivan’s Salvos" is sent once per week to any interested party. It will give a brief update on issues of interest to Johnson County residents.
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---Rod
posted by Rod Sullivan @ 3:48 PM
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