1993-11-08 Regular Meeting - Laserfiche WebLink

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e e Regular Meeting of La Porte City Council November 8, 1993 Judge J.B. Williamson "Mayor and Council, I am here to request the Council adopt or pass an ordinance establishing the position of City Marshall within the Court Department of the City of La Porte, but if I may, I know there is alot of items on the agenda, but I would like to respond for about two minutes to I think, Ms. Moss, she's gone, she raised some concerns that I think everyone has in this community and in fairness to this Mayor and Council I would want to tell her if she were here that the City of La Porte is aware of the growing crime problem with not just juveniles but everyone. Some of the things she asked what the City was doing or could do, some of the things the City has done through my Court mainly, and the police department, we have a established a Psychological Counseling and Evaluation System with juveniles who get caught up in the legal net and come to our court. That's free of charge, we have professionals from hospitals come and do evaluations not only of the juveniles, but their family members to see if they can be referred and channeled to other areas to give free or low cost counseling if there are some problems that need to be worked on. I've had established in my court for about 4 years a Voluntary Drug Screening Program; any juvenile is picked up on curfew violation or other violations, they are encouraged very strongly to volunteer for drug screening and the results are given to parents, not to the court or police department in an effort to educate the parents. We've established this year a communication net with the police department, the school district, my court and other State and County agencies sharing information about gang related activities and bringing up new ideas about how to meet those concerns each time. I've sponsored, as city judge, representing the City of La Porte, five seminars, not counting the one this Saturday, since September with school district people, teachers, educators, principals, administrators. This is our first one this Saturday with the School Board, but we've done that, and this will be our sixth one since September in an effort to try to inform the school::'district folks as far as the activities that are going on in the area and what they can do to meet those concerns. We've established a community service program through the court where juveniles who are caught up in the court system; we are now able to provide community service so they can work off their debt to the community rather than use money from the parents that may not be readily available. Those activities are supervised by members of La Porte Police Association on a voluntary basis. We've got a Gang Activity Task Force the Police Department has started that's in response in dose communication to the school district and other agencies in the County and some other things, but I would want to assure Ms. Moss that the city and this mayor and council are very much aware of the problem and that they are taking alot of steps through my court, through the police department as well as I am sure individually to come up with an answer.