the need to report is critical and essential. the people reporting are people in our communities in position of trust, who we inherently trust, who we trust our children to. aunts, uncles, coaches, rabbis, priests, counselors, people who take our children and we don't think another thought when we hand our children over to them. the reality is we focus so much on those of our children in our states who are abducted and raped by strangers, but that's the minority. the majority, this is done at the hands of people who are families now. that's why the need to report is so critical. in my state, we've had to tweak our statute. but it's not an understood statute to this day, although it's better understood. in our state, unlike yours in the commonwealth, we have a mandatory duty to report for all citizens of our state. there's about 16, 18 states

depending how you count it that have a version of that statute. it's a mandatory duty to report for all citizens if they reasonable believe a child is being abused or neglected. everyone has a duty to report, because these children cannot report for themselves. those that don't have voices, quite literally many pedophiles prey on because they will not be reported. the children have to report auncle or coach or someone they care about or intimidated by. how you deal with that, grapple with it, some states do different ways. ours was unclear whether it was criminal or civil. it was never really enforced. we chose to make it a civil penalty, $10,000 fine and $50,000 for the second violation, because we didn't

want -- you've dealt with this in your way, and i respect it, in a misdemeanor world. i wanted to figure out a way we could actually get people, as aggressive as we can, to enforce this statute. there's an organization, darkness to light, stewards of children. darkness to light, stewards of children. we partnered with them. i'll be approaching you along the way through nag about this organization. i know you've probably been in touch with them. they have probably reached out to you, general kelly. an organization that works with states, works with entities about how to educate not children but parents and law enforcers in communities about how to spot signs of neglect and how to do something about it, speak up and do something about it. we have a moment in time because of the tragedies the commonwealth of pennsylvania is going through, my state and other examples all around this table.

this is something i've become very focused on and i look forward to the opportunity of being able to maybe have an opportunity over the next year or so to bring some of my perspective and thoughts to you all about this. >> thank you, general biden. just as one final note, you may want to take a look at the policies and procedures that your schools, your universities, and for those of you that have jurisdiction over the elementary schools, that they have clear policies and procedures that they teach the administrators how to do this. many times the administrators just say i didn't know what to do. i didn't understand how to do it. that's a failing. >> can i come in for a second? i think this is a good time for those interested in having a working group through nag to look at how the policies and procedures are and how they are enforced. our state is a little different. it is mandated reporters only who have to file. i just want to put it in context a little bit.

whether you are an initial investigator or not, in one way or another will end up on your desk. if someone hasn't done what they are supposed to do you might be the one that deals with the publicity around it and fact finding, whether people reported when they should. coming off the daycare cases, i remember the days when there was this concern about the witch hunt by prosecutors that everybody was -- everybody was abused, everybody was abusing. we then devised ways in which we could have mandated reporters file reports. one caveat, if you're going to file reports you have to follow up. you have to make sure your tate has the trained folks and personnel to say, yes, this is abuse. it should go to the d.a. or police, or no it is not. it's neglect, a civil issue. i think what happened after the backlash on the daycare cases was for a long time we looked the other way on church abuses,

overzealous prosecutors. i lived through all this. in 2002 it curse to me, when that first incident occurred, that was just the beginning of priest cases reported. nobody could believe it. doesn't happen. coaches don't do this, priests don't do this. there was this huge level of denial. one thing i do think that as we look at the ways in which your states require reporting and the circumstances which they do it, we need to take into account overzealousness can be a problem in this area. it is one area in terms of identification reporting, child abuse where we don't have a big margin of error. if you overreport, you undercut your activities. if you underreport you have kids in many of these circumstances who no one will believe is exactly right. 90% or more are not amber alert cases, they are cases of people that know and say they love those kids. that's absolutely true. huge issue of everybody in terms of child sachlt i thifety.

i think it would be a great time to step back and look at what they require. talking about the issue, how do we deal with other disciplines that have a responsibility for identifying child sexual abuse and physical abuse, two very different cases actually. >> okay. general? speak up. >> sorry. in guam we have two major military bases. one of the issues we've been seeing especially over the last couple of months is child abuse cases happening on base and not real good communication with providers on the base. what we're currently doing is reaching out to them and getting commands aware of their obligation as citizens on the island. those of you with large military communities don't forget those bases. you need to get to the commands

and talk to them about this issue, because this stuff can happen, and it can stay hidden and remain hidden. you need to do that. that's one of the things we've been doing as far as getting out in the community. we include them because they want to become part of the community, so we include them and get them involved. >> okay. thank you. all right. we're going to now move to our next topic. general coakley. >> all right. changing topics a little bit, we've talked about veterans before and i wanted to address it again today. general biden, i may ask you to weigh in because i know you have some thoughts about this also. this is an issue as it seems to me as attorneys general you have a range of opportunities to think about how your office can be involved. particularly working for the federal government. this is an area where i think it's a question of figuring what are the needs, what can you do

as an attorney general's office and how can you partner with federal and other resources in your state for the men and women who live in your state. obviously the ones most visible we think about are those returning from middle eastern conflicts. you still have world war ii korean war veterans, vietnam war veterans. i just want to give you a couple of things we started to do in our state and hear from other states about what you've been able to do or issues you've had around it. because i think one of the things that's happened in our office is we've drawn from different parts of our office, consumer protection, our criminal bureau, people in the office who are just interested in the issue because they have veterans in their families. it's been a real moral booster in our office to have this veterans initiative in our office but also working with our lieutenant governor and working with other folks in the community around these issues. convening power, we called together really is the type of

hearing. experts around the field on three topics. one was mental health and suicide prevention. we heard from experts about the issues relating to veterans and services available. we know that one out of three veterans returning from iraq, afghanistan, suffer from some form of posttraumatic stress. we know the levels of suicide for veterans and returning servicemen and women is extremely high. this affects your communities so what can you do about it? we heard from experts around the criminal justice system, what can the courts do and what should they be doing around ways to better identify victims, screen them, look for other ways that criminally charging and other dispositions if that is appropriate. and so i am interested, i know some of your states have done things around that area. the third, i think, is really a

business issue about skills and reentry into the workforce. how can you pull in businesses in your community to hire people well trained but they may have resumes that may not read like the public sector understands what their skills and competency are. under that convened authority we are preparing a report on that. we're going to go with the lieutenant governor to the criminal justice system and businesses around what we can do better for men and women in our communities who have gone overseas, taken time and energy. some have come back with physical injuries. many more come back with mental health and other issues that i think it's our responsibility to respond to. i would like if others are interested with some of these topics to continue on a working group going forward. i think we have that opportunity even if it's just a question of setting up a wicki so everybody

knows what we do in best practices. general biden, i don't know if you have observations, i know we've talked about this before. >> what you're doing on this issue, other colleagues are, john kroger comes to mind and others, who i don't see yet. >> is john here? >> has done great stuff. we've attacked the issues from the same perspective you have specifically on the mental health side in the form of a conversation court, state court, which i can't take credit for, led by superior judge or court took it on himself to lead the way on a classic diversion corps for veterans. you can see like diversion courts many times worthwhile but hard work standing up. my bet it will bear fruit for both the veteran and the system.

i'm hopeful build a report more on that at a later time. that's where we've been focusing our energies. >> that is statewide? >> we tried in one county but now expanded to our most populace county on the big state i'm from. so we're almost statewide. we can be statewide quickly but not yet. >> anyone have experience, pluses, minuses, because we run into issues. as well intentioned, the devil is in the detail. >> home of fort scarson air force academy, veterans bases has a veterans court pilot program. i think the jury is still out in all of its effectiveness. what the folks tell me, the tremendous benefit is, it's caused all the prosecutors, all the public defenders, all the judges to become much more

sophisticated about combat related stress issues and all that. the general education level of the bench and bar has been raised. they see regardless of how the whole veterans court experiment comes out, that's been a big plus. >> that's helpful on mental health issues. interestingly we have one police department that took it upon itself 10 years ago in cases where it's substance abuse mental illness when the police gets called they have a full time social worker they bring. that's helped them move into the area of veterans understanding mental health issues and recognizing that. those are ways we can do better for people who end up in the criminal justice system and save money, get a result that way. anyone else with experience with

veterans courts? i know you have. >> we have one in spokane worked extremely well. they are looking to expand in other states as well. diverted a number of veterans who got mixed up with the law, mental health counseling, substance abuse counseling and so forth. the judges involved in it believe in it 100%. idaho, i don't think lawrence is here now, but idaho i believe has a successful veterans court model. idaho does? yes. right. former attorney general of idaho is on the federal court of appeals, a federal appellate court. >> for veterans -- their status is veterans that get treated. >> veterans benefits. >> veterans benefits.

the other thing that we've seen, even though state law requires service organizations, a lot cut back on it because they can't afford it. a lot not unlike child abuse reporting, mechanisms in place, are veterans officers able to find resources. along the lines of the topic here, make sure you work with your congressman or senator about the resources available to states for veterans and veterans families. there are families from world war ii, korea, who are not aware of resources that may be available to them. this is something i think with a little bit of resource from your office you can highlight and call attention to. anybody else working on this topic or who has ideas or questions, things we can do at the state level? george. >> my office participates in conjunction with department of

veterans affairs on a very successful program. i think it's in its third or fourth year directed at homeless veterans where we do one-stop shopping. it's attended by hundreds and hundreds of veterans each year where tents are set up, everything from the court system brings in judges to deal with cases so guys can get records cleared off to legal services to housing specialists, whole range of things of it's been successful. >> that's what the federal government -- your veterans services at federal level. >> state level principle driver. >> john? >> let me just plant a seed. we're using $5 million of our hard dollars from the mortgage settlement to match some federal funds for veterans temporary housing for homeless veterans. we did it through the governor's

office and have apparently been able to play upon some matching federal funds to really very effectively use $5 million of the settlement to do that. >> obviously when you learn the number of veterans who serve the country, come back and are without jobs and homeless, it's pretty sad. we could be doing more than we are. that's a good use. a.g. kroger is not here. he's done a lot of work around the idea of making sure no one is for closed on in violation of the federal law. he's been doing that at the state level also. i just throw these ideas out to you. you can do a little or a lot if you have folks in your office interested in it, it's a good way to get your office front and center. anybody else? questions, comments? >> an important aspect to it, where you get great success, veteran to veteran mentoring.

you'll be surprised at the number of vets out there who want to help, all who have been through it themselves. the substance abuse, homelessness, have come through it and want to help fellow veterans. it's important. they have a relationship we can't have with them. they have been through it together. that leads to great success. in buffalo, part of their veterans court, it's part of the big issue it. we've had a lot of long island vets come forward and be more than willing to do veteran to veteran mentoring. >> how do you marshall that, get those folks trained and lined up to do it, through your office? >> we're working very closely. our district court got a $5 million federal grant for a pilot program. we're doing it in one of our large counties, delaware is. we're feeling our way through. we took a ride through buffalo, chief judge of veterans group,

veterans groups, local state veterans groups, we looked at the model and now trying to implement that same model. the important aspect of veteran to veteran part is really leave them independent of that. let them talk freely among themselves because they help guide through substance abuse counseling or whatever hurdles are affecting them. >> i agree with that. oftentimes it's have i to get that, outside of the court system, how do they get those services. i know there are older veterans who say they don't need help, don't want it. >> through local veterans agencies. >> that's a huge resource. all you need to do to start is find out what's available in your state, who is doing what and try to connect those dots. anybody else? veterans? going once. all right. so we're onto our next topic. >> okay. our next topic is social media

policies. many of you may or may not be on facebook. many of you may or may not be on twitter. yahoo! yelp, lots of social med yas out there. we have a lot of bad examples of bad uses of social media that has come back to haunt people, starting with anthony weiner. moving on, i saw an issue where there was a report in the paper last week where a couple were murdered -- i forget which state they were murdered because the woman had defriended somebody on facebook. and the husband of the person who had been defriended took great offense and went and killed them. so there's all kinds of things out there. we obviously have twitter being used by flash mobs. they do it in san francisco when they have protests. the occupy.

they have been doing it. mi mistrials in civil and criminal cases people going online to find out what's on facebook and what's on twitter. in kansas, we know there's an incident where a teen disparaged the governor and there was a lot of brouhaha about that. this is only going to increase and get greater. the issues that come up, many times come up, what are the potential liabilities that come with the use of social media. what was the responsible way to handle this. what are good policies and procedures to have. what are the political implications of all this and how are you going to use it deftly rather than ineptly. we e-mailed out to everyone three social media policies for your perusal that you would have gotten an e-mail on.

too large to hand out. we've prepared a draft policy for the state of hawaii that we worked with our friend adam conner from facebook on. had a number of people. we also included the policy from the great state of washington which has been in the forefront of this and from the great state of massachusetts, which has also been in the forefront of this. many times the issues are what is the purpose, what are you trying to do with your communications, how are you going to do it in an ethical manner. one big thorny areas that come up, what are you going to do with public comments, especially negative public comments if they come onto your website. if you don't have a policy and procedure already in place about taking down public comments, you could have a problem. so with those an issue who gets to speak on behalf of your agency, who is authorized, how are you going to do this, what about copy right protection,

what about disclaimers and things like that. so let me turn to general mckenna and perhaps you could share with us the experience of washington in some of these areas and what are the best practices you folks have come up with. >> first of all, you have to have a policy that you put in place. and for us, the basic -- you guys want to turn this on back there? >> there it is. good. >> the first thing we had to do was to come up with a usage policy. this isn't all that different in kind from the policy all of us had to develop for e-mail. the first and cardinal rule of social media use is the same for e-mail or the use of any other public resources, which is no personal use.

so we have a fairly short policy distributed to you. it's a little under two pages long. basically it says, look, you can't use this for personal use. we want to you sign an agreement if you do decide to use social media for office use, and we want you to understand that there's no expectation of privacy in your use of internet resources. if you do use them, you need to remember the owners of those sites commonly monitor usage activity and we in the office reserve the right to monitor usage of any employee of the office as appropriate. we do that periodically to see how people are using social media just as we check to see how they are accessing the internet in general. as i said, we have a policy, or i should say an agreement people are expected to sign if they want to use social media or social networking. it's called office of attorney general's network use agreement.

it basically says staff can use social media as a tool for approved services only, which includes professional networking, they are allowed to do. if someone in the office wants to be on linked in for professional purposes, we allow them to do that. we want them otherwise to use social networking for other official -- other purposes that furthered the mission of the attorney general's office. but again we clarify in the policy or emphasize in the policy use of social media for personal purposes is not admitted and no de minimus exception. if i go once a day to update my status, that would be okay. we have a brightline rule. no de minimus use whatsoever. our state governor's office as a whole also put ou out a document

called guidelines and best practices published by the office of the governor in coordination with a number of state agencies. this was provided to you as well. this is a more elaborate exposition of state policy on the use of social media, clause topics such as how and when to use social media sites, advises agencies to create agencies specific social media policy, create a process for handling internal request to set up social usage media. we also in that document lay out privacy rules and limits around acceptable use. so i encourage you to use that, take a look at that at your leaisur leisure. the other point island make about media, we needed to work with the social media companies, because if you look at their

standard end user license agreement it contains provision that is didn't make us comfortable as government. we effectively negotiated through our office with all the states special provisions arnold terms for the states. john, if you want to comment on that, you're welcome to. we can make those available to any of you interested in seeing them. needless to say we're a little different in government and we didn't think one size fit all from social media companies like facebook worked for us, so we basically got changes negotiated successfully with those companies. they weren't entirely happy to do it but to their credit they did so. bottom line, beyond all of the usual legal considerations and policy considerations, social media present an array of extremely useful tools for all of us in services, especially attorney general's office, we make heavy use of social media particularly in consumer

resources center. for example, we tweet about -- we tweet consumer alerts when there's a new scam we've become aware of. we push out public press releases over twitter and through facebook. we have several thousand people who signed up to follow attorney general's office on facebook, because i'm sure most of you have done it as well. several thousand who follow us on twitter as well. we see these tools as another way to achieve our mission of public, and alerting them issues of concern, sometimes antitrust and in general about the work of our office. we think they are terrific tools. we think they lower the cost of communication with the public and make us more accessible to the public, which, of course, is always a goal. again, if we can be of advice to anyone, i would encourage you to let us know. we'd be glad to act as a resource for you. dave. >> any other comments, folks,

general conway? >> thank you, general lui, i appreciate the opportunity to say a few things. first of all, let me thank my colleagues. about a year and a half ago we had an issue arise in the commonwealth of kentucky as relates to topics. it's a board. we co-authored a letter 46 signed onto. they were asked to remove an objectable post they were asking for a $9.99 review for to get the name back. they didn't pay much attention when i contacted them but when 40 others signed a letter they were removed. there are policies and procedures in place which we continue to monitor. i made the point in conjunction with co-chair at our meeting in san antonio when we talked about a lot of the internet safety issues that we have a cyber crimes unit i