. >> we have next miss joe robinson who is the director of the community behavioral health. thank you for joining us tonight. >> thank you, commissioners. i am jill robinson. i am the director of public health and the community behavioral health services. i want to speak from my prior position, which was for over 25 years, the director for jail psychiatric services. i have experience from seeing the population that went to the jail. this service, training of officers, is extremely important. to let you know, last year, jail psychiatric services saw over r5,000 individuals -- saw over 5,000 individuals that had some type of mental health issue when they entered the jail. the community mental health services saw over 25,000. so you can see -- yeah, i see you shaking your head. so 5,000 is a lot. and your officers are the ones that have an ipt action with -- have an interaction with those individuals. i have met many of your officers. through the training we have had previously, they are very good individuals, and many of them have passion for this. many of them volunteered to

i'm with the department of public health community behavioral health services, on behalf of joe robinson, and i would like to say that the department of public health is very enthusiastic and very excited about the idea and the proposal to implement the memphis model and working with our colleagues in the police department and police commission to ensure that we are able to create a very robust, very -- a program that is very responsive to the needs of what is oftentimes a very vulnerable population, and as someone who attended the police commission last week, i have to say that it was probably one of the best commission meetings i have ever attended. not just in the police commission, but across various city departments. the department of public health is committed to dedicating a senior staff member to this effort has decisionmaking authority, will be able to meet with the police commission and chief with regards to a search for a cit coordinator. we are happy to be part of the process. we want to be able to work closely with the police department. many aspects of our relationship are