The following is a presentation of FCB Faith. This is Keeping America First with Bishop John T. Coats and Reverend Jeff Jemison on FCB Faith. It's a great day in our country, and today we have a great guest from Ohio who is not the director of the Department of Public Safety for the state of Ohio, and his name is Andy Wilson. Good morning, Andy, how are you today? Good morning, Jeff. Hey, listen, thanks for having me on. It's truly an honor to be here, and I'm excited to talk about the Department of Public Safety and some of the great work that the people who serve here in the Public Department Safety do for the citizens of Ohio. Your department is really responsible for keeping people safe, keeping the pub looks safe, and that's one of the most important functions of government. Even from a national perspective, it's always keeping our citizens safe. That is a number one priority. Tell me a little bit about your office and what your tasks were doing. Sure, Jeff, and let me echo what you just said there. I believe wholeheartedly that the number one function of government is to keep its citizens safe. And if you think about it, that only makes sense if people aren't safe. If people don't feel safe, then none of the other government initiatives, none of the other government policies or ideas, will thrive. So I use this all the time. If you don't have safe schools, it doesn't matter how good your curriculum is, it doesn't matter what your education initiatives. If the teachers and kids don't feel safe in their schools, they're never going to thrive. And if your city centers aren't safe, if people are getting robbed and they're getting mugged when they go downtown, it doesn't matter how good your downtown business revitalization plan is. People are going to stop going down there because they don't feel safe. So you have to, as government, before you do anything else, you have to address public safety and keeping people secure. So as I couldn't agree with you more. Well, thanks, and I'm telling you it's an honor to be in a department where we're wholly dedicated to keeping people safe. And that is the mission of the High Department of Public Safety to ensure the safety and security of Ohio citizens. And we do that. We're not a state police state. We do that by leveraging our state resources. But we also do it by working with our local partners and our local stakeholders. So here at the Ohio Department of Public Safety, we have about four thousand employees right around a two billion dollar budget, and we're divided into ten divisions. So our primary divisioner that the. Division that probably is most visible out on the streets, is the Ohio State Highway Patrol, and that's our largest division as well. So they're responsible for enforcing our traffic laws and keeping people safe on our roads and highways, and I can talk they do a lot of extra stuff in the public safety realm and working with locals, we use them. Actually, we used to stay high of patrol earlier this fall to help in Springfield when there were bomb threats and schools were getting shut down. The local police department just couldn't they couldn't respond to all of the threats that they were getting. So we were able to leverage the governor was able to leverage the Ohio State Highway Patrol to come in to those schools and what we did, and again I don't want to digress into just the Patrol because we have, like I said, ten divisions, but this is a great example of how we come off the highway sometimes and help locals. So what we did in Springfield is they were getting these bombs threats that were potentially going to shut down the schools for the day, so we would bring the troopers into the school before the school they'd sweep the schools for bombs. They would be physically present out front of the school when parents dropped their kids off. Then they would spend the school day just outside the perimeter, you know, making sure that the outside of the school safe. People who weren't supposed to be at that school weren't going into that school or threatening that the kids or the staff that are at that school. The end of the school day, they'd be outside when the kids were released to the buses of their parents, waving everybody, shaking hands. And then at the end of the evening or the end of the school day, they would then sweep the building again for bombs. The building would be locked down. And we just repeated that again and again, and I tell you, Jeff, my phone was ringing off the hook from parents, grandparents, teachers, school staff, people who just were so appreciative that the governor was willing to use that resource to keep their baby safe. And it was amazing, just the sense of security that these folks felt because again they were getting it's almost every. Day at these schools and people were really scared. So we're able to do some local support stuff as well. And that's a great example of showing again the importance of public safety because those kids, because those troopers are there, the troopers were at the school, they were in school, they were learning, and they felt safe and secure to go about their school day. So, you know, the patrol is they do a lot of amazing things. We also have the Ohio Department of Homeland Security. We have the Emergency Management Agency, we have the Office of Mergical Emergency Medical Services, we have the Office of Criminal Justice Services. We have the Ohio Narcotics Intelligence Center, we have the Ohio School Safety Center, we have the Ohio Traffic Safety Office, we have the Ohio Investigative Unit. And believe it or not, the kind of outlier that we have is we have the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles, So your licenses, your registration, all of that runs through the Ohio Department of Public Safety. And that's actually just kind of historical. They were together. I think it was the Department of Highway Safety back in the day, and they were because they did the regulatory licensing. They were together and we just kind of hung on to them. And I'd love to talk if I get a chance about some of the great stuff we're doing in the BMV. Yeah, a lot of people oftentimes feel as though if they go to the BMV, they're they're gonna have a long wait and long lines. And I'm going to tell you, last few times that I've been to a Bureau of Motor Vehicles, it just wasn't the case. I was in there and out of there, but no problem. Can you speak to that in a little bit. Yes, Jeff, So listen, we are incredibly proud of what the BMV is doing for the state of Ohio, and that is a direct result really kind of the initiative in the way that the governor and so Governor Dwine, Lieutenant Governor Houston have really prioritized how the BMW or BMV excuse the BMV services the citsens Ohio. Because you think about it, what is your most precious resource, Jeff. Your most precious resource is your time. And nobody wants to spend their most precious resource their time sitting in a government office in a line waiting to get a license or waiting to get a registration or whatever it is you have to do. And again, a lot of times, because people work Monday through Friday, the only time they get to run that errand is maybe on a Saturday morning. And again, who wants to spend their Saturday morning sitting in a government office. So the governor and Lieutenant government really passionate about leveraging technology to better serve Ohio winds and to protect their time. So we've engaged in a lot of different initiatives. So we one of the initiatives, and I won't highlight them all, but one of the initiatives that has really worked out well is we have the Get in Line Online program and it works just almost like almost like a restaurant. You know, you can sign up online to get a reservation at a restaurant, Well, you can do the same thing at the BMB and that way, when you get there, you're table's ready, or your seats ready, or your place in line is ready. And it's all about, again, just protecting your time as the Ohio citizen. So the average I'll give you, I'll give you this real quick the average nationwide, the average weight time at a BMV is about forty five minutes. So that's why the bmvs a lot of times are the butt of every government inefficiency joke if you think about it, because you've got to go, you got to wait forty five minutes just to get serviced. In Ohio. It fluctuates a little bit, but I think the average last year was right around fourteen minutes. Is what your wait time in an Ohio BMV was. That's not bad at all, and it's always good to see departments in agencies becoming more efficient. That's great. In this day and age, folks, a lot of women and just people are just always looking over their back at gas stations. They're concerned, they're scared. There's a lot of fear about crime and what's going to happen next week. Watch the news and. There's always some criminal activity taking place, and uh, the issue of public safety is at everyone is at the forefront of everyone's mind. My question is what can leaders do in these crisis situations that would help them to get a handle on problems. That's my first question, and then I've got another question to We're going to wrap it up with and that's going to be how what what things are being done? Okay, but what can we do? What can leaders do? Listen, I think the key thing as a leader in government that you can do to address crime and address public safety is you have to be proactive. You have to build an environment where your your law enforcement officers, where your public safety officials, that the people who are actually in charge of keeping people safe feel empowered to actually do that. The other thing, too, is you have to to build relationships in the community between your law enforcement and the citizens they're protecting, of trust and mutual support. Because listen, I have been my career prior to coming here as a prosecutor. I spend a lot of time in prosecutor's office. I have been in a lot of distressed neighborhoods, and I've been in a lot of high crime neighborhoods at different murder scenes. And I'm telling you, the majority of the folks who live in those neighborhoods want help. They want to be safe, they want to be protected, they don't want their houses getting shot up. They want to be safe when they're walking their kids to school. So a lot of times, actually the argument that I would get in these neighborhoods are what I'd hear in these neighborhoods was we need more police, We need more police, we need more help. You don't care about us the way you should care about us, which is contrary to what you hear in a lot of sessions of your overpleasing us. Or there's too many police in this in the high crime areas, I heard a lot a lot of times we need more help. Now. Look, that only works if there's mutual trust and respect between the officers who are working in that neighborhood and the community there that that's being serviced by them. So the other part of it, too is you need to empower neighborhoods so that they feel they feel safe helping. They they feel safe if they do see something, they feel empowered to say something that it'll be addressed and they'll be safe to talk about these problems. So it's all about culture, it's all about empowering. Look, we have to support our line level law enforcement. It is a tough job. It's a tough, thankless job. And until you actually go out on the streets with the officers, you can't fully understand what they're seeing. Every day. So I encourage again, I encourage local leaders to get in, get in the car, go on and write alongs with your local police. Actually see with your own eyes what it is that they have to deal with day in and day out, and then support those officers in allowing them to do the job we ask them to do and protect the community. What can regular citizens do to strengthen law enforcement to in their communities. You talked about leaders, We did talk about leaders, but what about just your average day to day citizens that want to just you know, women who are out there, who and who just want to feel safe. What can they do? How can they get involved? Listen, I I there's a lot of different things you can do. First of all, take an interest and a lot of these a lot of these departments, a lot of these offices have citizens police academies. So take an interest, Go go see what they do. Put yourself in their shoes. Spend some time with some people in law enforcement and get to know them and understand that man their public's surban and they are really putting their safety on the line to help protect you. Take the time actually to proactively support and encourage them, And you don't understand how good it is for our men and women in law enforcement to hear the good things. Hey, thank you, thank you for taking that criminal offustry. Thank you for helping keep my neighborhood safe. Because so often they hear all of the bad things, they hear all of the negative things, and I'm telling you, it takes a toll on them. It takes a toll. Wellness is a huge issue in the law enforcement community in our profession because we have young officers who come in really wanting to serve, really wanting to make their community a better place, and they're exposed to so much trauma and so much violence, and a lot of times it's thankless. They get a lot of negative feedback from the same people that they're trying to help, and over time, you know, they if they stick the whole career out, takes an emotional toll on them. And we just need to support these men and women and understand that that they've got a tough job and actually trying to help us. Well. Director, We're going to do everything that we can on our part to do to strengthen those relationships and support law enforcement. And when I say support law enforcement, those good members of law enforcements, which are the majorities. And you know, it's sad that one bad apple spoils a whole bunch, and it's kind of like that in almost every industry an area of life. But this is so critical to making our communities and people feel safe. They've got to have that support. And here's what I'd like to do for you. I just got an idea, go ahead, I would let me officially invite you to come along with me and do a ride along and we'll go out. I don't know if you've ever done it right along, I'm going to do it. You come along with me, you do a ride along, and then we'll do a follow up and we'll talk about what we actually saw and what you experience and what you learned in the quality of the law enforcement officers that you wrote along with. We're going to do that. We're going to do that real soon. Well, Director Wilson, it was great having you on. You know, we're out of time, but we're going to have you back to talk about safety in the public space in our state, in our cities, in our country, and keep doing what you're doing and keep fighting the good fight. And we're all with you and again, thank you, Director Andy Wilson of the Ohio Department of Public Safety, thank you, we're going to have you back. And thank you to our audience for listening with us and may God bless you all.
