Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Scott Vordiez in the studio with us for a few minutes.
We've got someone who served on Omaha's City Council and
comes in here as a concerned citizen. Grab that microphone,
concerned citizen pulled a little closer to your face. This
is Colleen Brennan here. Colleen, welcome back.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Glad to be here today. Scott, how are you today?
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Wonderful? You've actually been going to County commission meetings in
Douglas County.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Well, I've been watching them. Okay, I've been watching them.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Gonna say that I'd rather see Deadpool and Wolverine. But
some people go to the County commission meetings and that's fine.
We've talked over the years and of various capacities with
various leaders on this program about the case for juvenile justice,
mental health facilities and that which seems to be run
by the Douglas County Commission. And since we're here in
(00:49):
the last couple of weeks of summer before the tykes
go back to school, and it seems like every week
we hear about more arrests that goes through the juvenile
justice different and channels, and then a lot of them
end up in an unlocked facility because we can't lock
up these youth who are charged with in some cases
gun crimes, grand theft, auto, things like that, and they
(01:14):
end up in these halfway houses and then they just leave.
They've decide to leave, and then the police are like, hey,
if you see these guys, like, well, are they a
threat to the community or not. So there have been
this conversation over the years. We need to have a
bigger juvenile justice facility, we need to have a smaller one.
Where are we at with all this right now?
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Well, you know, the citizens of Douglas County need to
be paying attention right now for a couple of reasons.
First of all, the County Commission is ready to drop
another thirty million dollars on a brand new mental health facility.
They are not coordinating with a state or surrounding counties.
They are not coordinating with un MC or CHI. Now.
(01:54):
I don't disagree that we need to be spending money
on mental health. I don't think anybody disagrees on that,
but we don't need to be building a brand new facility.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Does any of this have to do with this Poverty
Elimination Action Plan Act last year? The Nebraska legislature passed
this act, and now the communities have to try and
figure out why people are in poverty and what we
can do about it. And so the city of Omaha
is talking with You and O the Center for Justice
(02:23):
Research this week, and we're going to spend a bunch
of money to try and figure out why people who
get out of prison with no money are suddenly in
a position of poverty.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
I can't really speak to that, Scott. I don't know
if that's why they're looking into mental health at this time.
That might be part of the issue.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
That's part of this conversation there. Let me read some
of these quotes for you here, because this all ties in.
The director of You and O's Nebraska Center for Justice
Research says the biggest challenge is is probably housing, says
Ryan Spahn. He said, is that we need to produce
a five year plan and report on the city's efforts
(03:05):
to eliminate poverty. Says, these people largely come out of jail.
They may just have fifty dollars and the shirt on
their backs. Food insecurity is becoming a much larger problem.
Housing insecurity is becoming a much larger problem. I look
at this and say, robbing all of your family and
friends so they won't take you in is becoming a
much larger problem. Selling grandma's wedding ring to buy crack
(03:28):
when you're supposed to be watching the kids is becoming
a much larger problem. So how much money are we
going to spend to deal with these issues that they're
not dealing with? Now? What are we going to do?
Start paying people to not be poor so we can
say we eliminated poverty without going to the root issue.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Well, I don't think the root issue is going to
be building another building. I don't think that is going
to solve any problems. I think we need to probably
look into services and so forth. But my case in
point against building a new mental health facility is that
we just finished building a twenty seven million dollar juvenile
justice center over on seventeenth in Farnham. You've seen it.
(04:10):
It's a gorgeous building.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
It's a smaller building.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
It's a small building.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Yeah, when we're overflowing in the current juvenile justice center,
decided to make a smaller one because somehow in the
future these kids will, rather than be out committing crimes,
they'll be playing Xbox and you're playing the new NCAA football.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Game right right. There's a game room in it, there's
a basketball court, there's artwork up on the walls. The
outside of it is it's a mirrored glass building. I
drive by it every day on the way to work.
It's gorgeous. And to their credit, both Mike Boyle and
Jim Cavanaugh did everything they could to stop it. But
our friend Maryann Borgson and her friends, they just wouldn't listen,
(04:52):
and it really just got rimmed right down our throats.
And here we are.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
I don't get it. Maryann Borgson runs for office every
four years as a conservative Republican type.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Well, that's it, and she claims to be.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Yeah, and then I hear people within the local Republican
party say that she doesn't act that way as a
county commissioner.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
She doesn't. In fact, she brags about being on the
board of NACO. I think she was the president of NACO,
which is the National Association of Commissioners. Now they're a
leftist organization. They believe in criminal justice reform, they believe
in open borders and ridiculous spending. So I would not
(05:31):
say that is in line with conservative values.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Well, she's been one of those who said we don't
need the current juvenile justice facility, even though it has
room for this many beds, and we're eclipsing that by
about twenty people a night, which now means that people
have to go into these unlocked halfway homes. And some
of these are rather dangerous individuals who happen to be
at the age where we're not talking about kids. These
(05:55):
aren't seven year olds. These a seventeen year olds.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Right, and they're committee crimes like rand theft, murder, rape.
We're not talking about kids that are smoking weed after school.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
There are some kids in there who I don't know
if there's some of those in these unsupervised, not unsupervised,
but unlocked halfway houses who are in for murder, but
because of their age, you know, thirteen years old, they
can't be incarcerated, right, So what do we do to
fix all these problems?
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Well, you know, we need to probably look to people
like our people in leadership. You know, Aaron Hansen has
some great ideas about how we can deal with juvenile justice.
I trust our leaders, but the county commissioners that's not
their job. It's not their job to make those decisions.
(06:45):
It's their job to ruin facilities, their administrators, So for
them to sort of back engineer these social reform policies,
I think that's that's just wrong.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
You have a lot of pieces of paper in front
of you.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
I do. I wanted to point out the Chin report.
I've gotten to that giant This is a giant report.
This is what they made the decision about the juvenile
justice center that we have today. This is where they
got all their information. They based their decision. They mirrored
it on the city of Chicago. It's the most crime
(07:22):
ridden city in the United States. Now, Omaha, our crime
has generally gone down, with the exception of juvenile crime,
which has skyrocketed. So our facility has about sixty three beds.
That's about the third of the size that we actually
need for our population. And to build a new facility
(07:45):
with only sixty three beds, why would they do that.
That's that's way too small.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
The average of over eighty several times over the last
couple of years, right.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
And our population is growing, So you you they should
have built something that had that could at least have
that could at least be usable today. But you also
have to consider that there's growth, you have to have
more than enough to support the needs of the community.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
I appreciate them being optimistic that there aren't going to
be that many juveniles committing crimes that necessitate they need
to be supervised somewhere, but that's not been the trend,
especially when you know the push now in schools is
is you can't do anything with these kids acting up
in class causing problems. Yes, if they get in a fight,
they might be out of that school, but then they
(08:31):
go down the other one across town and it becomes
that teacher's problem becomes that school's problem, and they send
their problem kids over to the other one. We look
at issues related to poverty in our community and we say, well,
we need to do something to eliminate poverty, and they
talk about how kids are actually some of the biggest
rising demographic of those who are living in poverty. When
(08:54):
the schools are offering food, there's all sorts of other
programs that offer food. If your kids are eating is
because you've got a parent not feeding kids, not getting
the kid the resources that are abundantly available. And as
long as we make excuses for this is criminal behavior,
we're going to have more of it, not less of it.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Correct, So there need to be programs in place to
help kids.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
But that is that there are programs in place to
help kids.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
But that's the responsibility of our sheriff, that is the
responsibility of our legislatures. That's not the responsibility of the
county Commission.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Well, thank you very much for keeping an eye on this.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Scott Voyes, Mornings nine to eleven, our News Radio eleven
ten KFAB
Scott Vordiez in the studio with us for a few minutes.
We've got someone who served on Omaha's City Council and
comes in here as a concerned citizen. Grab that microphone,
concerned citizen pulled a little closer to your face. This
is Colleen Brennan here. Colleen, welcome back.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Glad to be here today. Scott, how are you today?
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Wonderful? You've actually been going to County commission meetings in
Douglas County.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Well, I've been watching them. Okay, I've been watching them.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Gonna say that I'd rather see Deadpool and Wolverine. But
some people go to the County commission meetings and that's fine.
We've talked over the years and of various capacities with
various leaders on this program about the case for juvenile justice,
mental health facilities and that which seems to be run
by the Douglas County Commission. And since we're here in
(00:49):
the last couple of weeks of summer before the tykes
go back to school, and it seems like every week
we hear about more arrests that goes through the juvenile
justice different and channels, and then a lot of them
end up in an unlocked facility because we can't lock
up these youth who are charged with in some cases
gun crimes, grand theft, auto, things like that, and they
(01:14):
end up in these halfway houses and then they just leave.
They've decide to leave, and then the police are like, hey,
if you see these guys, like, well, are they a
threat to the community or not. So there have been
this conversation over the years. We need to have a
bigger juvenile justice facility, we need to have a smaller one.
Where are we at with all this right now?
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Well, you know, the citizens of Douglas County need to
be paying attention right now for a couple of reasons.
First of all, the County Commission is ready to drop
another thirty million dollars on a brand new mental health facility.
They are not coordinating with a state or surrounding counties.
They are not coordinating with un MC or CHI. Now.
(01:54):
I don't disagree that we need to be spending money
on mental health. I don't think anybody disagrees on that,
but we don't need to be building a brand new facility.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Does any of this have to do with this Poverty
Elimination Action Plan Act last year? The Nebraska legislature passed
this act, and now the communities have to try and
figure out why people are in poverty and what we
can do about it. And so the city of Omaha
is talking with You and O the Center for Justice
(02:23):
Research this week, and we're going to spend a bunch
of money to try and figure out why people who
get out of prison with no money are suddenly in
a position of poverty.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
I can't really speak to that, Scott. I don't know
if that's why they're looking into mental health at this time.
That might be part of the issue.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
That's part of this conversation there. Let me read some
of these quotes for you here, because this all ties in.
The director of You and O's Nebraska Center for Justice
Research says the biggest challenge is is probably housing, says
Ryan Spahn. He said, is that we need to produce
a five year plan and report on the city's efforts
(03:05):
to eliminate poverty. Says, these people largely come out of jail.
They may just have fifty dollars and the shirt on
their backs. Food insecurity is becoming a much larger problem.
Housing insecurity is becoming a much larger problem. I look
at this and say, robbing all of your family and
friends so they won't take you in is becoming a
much larger problem. Selling grandma's wedding ring to buy crack
(03:28):
when you're supposed to be watching the kids is becoming
a much larger problem. So how much money are we
going to spend to deal with these issues that they're
not dealing with? Now? What are we going to do?
Start paying people to not be poor so we can
say we eliminated poverty without going to the root issue.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Well, I don't think the root issue is going to
be building another building. I don't think that is going
to solve any problems. I think we need to probably
look into services and so forth. But my case in
point against building a new mental health facility is that
we just finished building a twenty seven million dollar juvenile
justice center over on seventeenth in Farnham. You've seen it.
(04:10):
It's a gorgeous building.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
It's a smaller building.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
It's a small building.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Yeah, when we're overflowing in the current juvenile justice center,
decided to make a smaller one because somehow in the
future these kids will, rather than be out committing crimes,
they'll be playing Xbox and you're playing the new NCAA football.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Game right right. There's a game room in it, there's
a basketball court, there's artwork up on the walls. The
outside of it is it's a mirrored glass building. I
drive by it every day on the way to work.
It's gorgeous. And to their credit, both Mike Boyle and
Jim Cavanaugh did everything they could to stop it. But
our friend Maryann Borgson and her friends, they just wouldn't listen,
(04:52):
and it really just got rimmed right down our throats.
And here we are.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
I don't get it. Maryann Borgson runs for office every
four years as a conservative Republican type.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Well, that's it, and she claims to be.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Yeah, and then I hear people within the local Republican
party say that she doesn't act that way as a
county commissioner.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
She doesn't. In fact, she brags about being on the
board of NACO. I think she was the president of NACO,
which is the National Association of Commissioners. Now they're a
leftist organization. They believe in criminal justice reform, they believe
in open borders and ridiculous spending. So I would not
(05:31):
say that is in line with conservative values.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Well, she's been one of those who said we don't
need the current juvenile justice facility, even though it has
room for this many beds, and we're eclipsing that by
about twenty people a night, which now means that people
have to go into these unlocked halfway homes. And some
of these are rather dangerous individuals who happen to be
at the age where we're not talking about kids. These
(05:55):
aren't seven year olds. These a seventeen year olds.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Right, and they're committee crimes like rand theft, murder, rape.
We're not talking about kids that are smoking weed after school.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
There are some kids in there who I don't know
if there's some of those in these unsupervised, not unsupervised,
but unlocked halfway houses who are in for murder, but
because of their age, you know, thirteen years old, they
can't be incarcerated, right, So what do we do to
fix all these problems?
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Well, you know, we need to probably look to people
like our people in leadership. You know, Aaron Hansen has
some great ideas about how we can deal with juvenile justice.
I trust our leaders, but the county commissioners that's not
their job. It's not their job to make those decisions.
(06:45):
It's their job to ruin facilities, their administrators, So for
them to sort of back engineer these social reform policies,
I think that's that's just wrong.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
You have a lot of pieces of paper in front
of you.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
I do. I wanted to point out the Chin report.
I've gotten to that giant This is a giant report.
This is what they made the decision about the juvenile
justice center that we have today. This is where they
got all their information. They based their decision. They mirrored
it on the city of Chicago. It's the most crime
(07:22):
ridden city in the United States. Now, Omaha, our crime
has generally gone down, with the exception of juvenile crime,
which has skyrocketed. So our facility has about sixty three beds.
That's about the third of the size that we actually
need for our population. And to build a new facility
(07:45):
with only sixty three beds, why would they do that.
That's that's way too small.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
The average of over eighty several times over the last
couple of years, right.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
And our population is growing, So you you they should
have built something that had that could at least have
that could at least be usable today. But you also
have to consider that there's growth, you have to have
more than enough to support the needs of the community.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
I appreciate them being optimistic that there aren't going to
be that many juveniles committing crimes that necessitate they need
to be supervised somewhere, but that's not been the trend,
especially when you know the push now in schools is
is you can't do anything with these kids acting up
in class causing problems. Yes, if they get in a fight,
they might be out of that school, but then they
(08:31):
go down the other one across town and it becomes
that teacher's problem becomes that school's problem, and they send
their problem kids over to the other one. We look
at issues related to poverty in our community and we say, well,
we need to do something to eliminate poverty, and they
talk about how kids are actually some of the biggest
rising demographic of those who are living in poverty. When
(08:54):
the schools are offering food, there's all sorts of other
programs that offer food. If your kids are eating is
because you've got a parent not feeding kids, not getting
the kid the resources that are abundantly available. And as
long as we make excuses for this is criminal behavior,
we're going to have more of it, not less of it.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Correct, So there need to be programs in place to
help kids.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
But that is that there are programs in place to
help kids.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
But that's the responsibility of our sheriff, that is the
responsibility of our legislatures. That's not the responsibility of the
county Commission.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Well, thank you very much for keeping an eye on this.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Scott Voyes, Mornings nine to eleven, our News Radio eleven
ten KFAB
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