Page 39 - Sonoma County Gazette December 2017

Our Two Chiefs
I want to thank our community groups, the Fire Department, Sheriff’s Department, CHP, the selection commiee, and the full Homeless Task Force. It has been voted and recommended that the Patrick McCaffrey Foundation receive $300,000 for building tiny houses, buying land, having an outreach team, and transporting folks as needed - thus saving vital services for locals living between Sea Ranch and Forestville.
Chief Weaver have already started or planned: increasing the ranks of the Reserve Police O cer Bureau and rebuilding the Explorer Post and Adult Volunteer programs.
By Marcy Cooper
“It Takes a Village”
Veterans Village, Inc. a division of the Patrick McCaffrey Foundation
With great appreciation for his professional service and dedication, our community wishes the very best to retiring Police Chief Je Weaver.
Here is a short synopsis of one part that will be provided; next month I will write regardng tiny houses and land trusts.
As a Council Member, I have always
been very proud of Chief Weaver and even bragged about him. To locals, I have often explained that they could call or email our Chief directly and he would answer. A lot
of people were astounded to learn about his accessibility and responsiveness, thinking,
I guess, that there must be many insulating layers between the Chief and the public. Not so, for Je and Sebastopol.
We are proposing a multi-dimensional approach to help displaced Lower Russian River residents and unsheltered get assistance to achieve nancial, work force services, employment, and housing stability.
To Countywide colleagues, I’ve recited my favorite story about Chief Weaver. During the Occupy Movement, the Council held ve special meetings to discuss our community’s situation at The Plaza. One of these evenings, Chief Weaver received three standing ovations from the assembled public – not what we expected in the midst of historic national con ict.
Housing-first based programs like ours can’t be effective without the housing. Given low county-wide vacancy rates, high numbers of cost-burdened renters and homeowners, and significant loss of housing of the recent fires,
we see an acute immediate and on-going need to create additional affordable housing resources for our target population. Our Remaking Home Program will train able and willing program participants for part and full time jobs building new mobile and fixed foundation SRO housing, which will be made permanently affordable (30% of income) by establishing a limited equity housing co-op.
Now enter our new Chief James Conner, “My highest priorities are ensuring the safety of our community and providing the best service possible to our City and Department members.” Chief Conner will continue projects that he and
Care Team: Our Care Team is committed to transforming the lives of individuals experiencing homelessness, chemical dependency, and mental
/ physical disabilities through comprehensive street outreach that restores dignity and partners with them to reach their housing and life goals. We do this by meeting people where they are in order to build participant-centered relationships and by establishing creative community partnerships that eliminate barriers to services.
Our Care Team, modeled on a similar program successfully implemented in Marin County and the city of Santa Rosa, will reach out to displaced families and individuals, assessing their situation, and literally driving them to get the care and other resources they need, with emphasis on placement in existing housing resources.
“We’ve been blessed with some awesome volunteers, but that’s a double-edged sword. Really great volunteers frequently end up being someone else’s really great employee,” he explains, continuing, “So we nd ourselves with a dwindled volunteer force and need what sports teams refer to as a ‘rebuilding season.’”
Care Team, would provide the following lines of services:
Chief Conner will know how to train and mentor others, having worked closely with Chief Weaver for the last eight years managing the Police Department together. “I feel fortunate to have been able to learn from him as he considered issues and made decisions.“
emergent institutions.
• Operate Monday through Friday 24 hours / day and responds to requests
While the two Chiefs have been friends for over two decades and colleagues for much of that time, James is not sure how
• The goals are to, within two hours, respond and determine if the individual can be cleared for transport and provide warm-handoff to and/or from urgent/emergent facilities.
similar, or di erent from Je , he will be. They share the commitment to serve this community and this Department, but, candidly, James remarks, Je “is far more ‘polished’ than I am.”
• Provide targeted search and outreach of system-wide high users of urgent and emergent services and other high-risk homeless individuals as identified by 211 (citizens) and health care coordinators.
“I have very much enjoyed being a part of the Sebastopol community, and a part of the City family. It’s nice to be appreciated by the community for the service that we try hard to provide and it’s nice to work with people who are really dedicated to provide excellent service to the community.”
• Perform wellness checks and attempts to engage individuals into services and other resources as identified by community care plans.
With almost 22 years of experience interacting with the Sebastopol community, he’s convinced that nearly all of the folks are well-intentioned and caring people, even some of the non-law-abiding people he’s encountered. “For the most part, they’re good people who made bad decisions and ended up facing the consequences of those decisions.”
The Care Team will operate one street Outreach team whose goals are to engage, assess, and combat homelessness for individuals living on the lower Russian River. Our Outreach staff works to build trust with those experiencing homelessness first by helping to meet some of their basic needs with our partner agencies, this includes shelter, food, clothing, showers, laundry, hospitals, transportation, identification, etc.). We will partner with each individual to access housing, employment, medical care, mental health care, licensed chemical dependency treatment, and other services.
He knows Sonoma County well – he’s almost a native, moving to Santa
Rosa from his birthplace Alabama upon his father’s retirement from the Army, when he was about a year and a half old. A 1983 graduate of Piner High School, he enlisted in the Air Force and served as a military policeman for six years. The next six years he worked as an executive in nance, returning to law enforcement, here at the SPD, in early 1996.
The Care Team uses a participant-centered “whatever it takes” approach, and employs comprehensive wrap-around services to meet participant needs. The program promotes sobriety and strength-based recovery philosophies through its daily functioning, and utilizes acuity-based, data-driven, and outcomes- oriented processes to meet its goals. The program also assesses medical and behavioral crises, and refers clients to emergency care as appropriate.
On a personal note, our new Chief recently celebrated his thirtieth wedding anniversary with “his beautiful bride, Franny.” They have ve adult children, nine grandchildren, and expect number ten next spring.
Marcy Cooper, MSW, Veterans Village, Inc.. 707.290.7775, veteransvillage.org, veteransemploymentcommitteesf.org
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Identifying himself as a Cajun, James’s favorite saying has always been, “Laissez les bons temps rouler.” Let’s hope for our good future together.
• Street/ Encampment Outreach
• Engagement and warm-handoffs from the street to (or between) urgent/
from 211, Care Coordinators, Police, Fire, and Urgent/Emergent facilities such as hospitals for street outreach/intervention and transports- with our own van.