at this point I'd like to turn it over to Chief Milstead and to John Elison and let them talk about their experience and the impact that they've had with this project thank you sir thank you all for being here uh and I just want to talk a little bit about the work that men and women of the M Police Department were able to do with the help of uh the county attorney's office the city prosecutor's office uh Amo County adult probation juvenal probation uh we build a relationship with the neighborhood uh one of the callings of law enfor and really of government officials uh in this time is efficiency and how can you really be more efficient with those limited budgets and limited Staffing models that we're all working under uh and this model that uh we undertook uh and it was led by uh Lieutenant Jeff Thompson from the Meson Police Department uh this model showed that with relationships comes efficiency and with trust comes efficiency so when they went into the neighborhood yeah there were a lot of great numbers we we we arrested a lot of people uh we did three cleanups and removed 31 tons of uh Refuge from the area uh really eliminating blight from this neighborhood uh we did surveys with the community and if you think about having a a police department come in and and really occupy a neighborhood that has been Rife with uh with blight and uh crimes how do you how do you deal with that neighborhood well they did it through the surveys and through building relationships and we had the right people in the right places that were committed to uh this neighborhood and committed to making it a safer better place to live um they had two community events with uh that were collocated with one of the local churches um they had over a thousand residents come to those two different events uh there's about 1,75 residents in the area so this thing worked uh it works with their geographical prosecution it works out of the building of relationships um the county attorney said something that was interesting to me and it sparked thought is um when the same prosecutor the same attorney is there and they actually get to do more than just read a report and I would say you can read a book about the Grand Canyon and get a great feel for what the grand Canyon's like but until you've stood there or youve hiked down you really have no perception of truly the magnitude of it and with the prosecutor standing in the neighborhood building relationship with people getting to meet those victims of the crime uh understanding the true impact it's more than just reading that document that police report that an officer authored uh days prior uh to actually being read uh they walked the area they understood what we were up against um one of the questions that was asked for me yesterday was well can this work elsewhere uh you know the County Attorney is looking at geographical based prosecution in particular areas of the city and my answer to that is if you're committed to the idea it'll work you have to have that commitment and you really have to put the right police officers and the right Supervision in place to make this thing happen um it's a incredible success story uh Lieutenant Thompson has traveled uh this the the continent not the continent but he's been all over the country uh talking about the project and how it works and other areas now are modeling it we actually are using the same concept in four other places in Mesa uh each one of our four districts now has a a program uh just like this with this same model in place and we're working on fighting crime again with the help of all those other people we spoke about but really it's based on efficiency and commitment from the community and from the other partners in building relationships so uh thank you all for what you've done uh it doesn't happen without commitment from everyone involved