Okay, good morning everyone. Uh uh for for anyone uh for anyone who will was not here last last month for our meeting uh this month's going to be the dog program and it's being presented by
the district attorney uh Tim Cruz, the Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz. So we want to get going with the program because he doesn't have too much time. So anyway, so uh the our speaker for June meeting will be Josh Cutler who
is now involved in the uh the Boston State House. So he'll be here for June 3rd. Uh our own Halifax administrator Cody Hadac, he will be here for the meeting on July 1st. So, those are the
two we have set up right now. So, right now, I'm going to give the program over to Tim Cruz. Thanks, Ken. Thanks, Ken. It's It's great to be back in Halifax and it's great to see all our friends here at the Brockton Rocks are here today. So, make sure you go up and
talk to them. Remember, their season starts in about a week, I think it is, and it's new and improved baseball. So, uh it's well worth a trip to to Brockton. Uh Brock is a great safe community no matter what you're reading in the papers. Uh there's a lot of good things going on down there. There really
are. Uh and it's great to to try to get more and more people down there and try to help get that city going in a positive fashion for all the good things that are going on down in the city of Brockton. Uh for those of you that don't know me, my name is Tim Cruz and for the last um 24 years, I've been the district attorney here in Plymouth County. I've
been a criminal trial lawyer here for the last 40 years and I've been involved with lots of different uh things. And usually if you see me that means uh something bad's happened. uh and which is why we try to get out more and more on some some of the preventative things that we do and get people understand
exactly what it is because you know in our county we have anywhere between on any given year 15 to 16,000 criminal cases that we have to divide up between Plymouth Brockton Hingham and Wearham and we have our superior court cases in Brockton the more serious cases the homicides things such as that but we've
been doing a lot of stuff on the preventive end and many times people don't know it and if you are uh interested in what we're doing because I'm not going to get into all the programs that we have. Plymouthda.com, you will see the things that we're doing with young kids, trying to make sure that we can help them, kids who are drug endangered, kids who have adverse
childhood experiences, kids who are going to try to get help. And that's really kind of a the segue into what we're doing today with the dogs. The dogs started back in 2021. Now, like I said, I've been DA a long time. We've gotten a lot of grants over the years, got a lot of programs.
Some have been great, some have been not as great. Uh but so you never really know what you're going to get. In dealing with the comfort dog program, it started with a call from the Hangingham police asking us if we had what was known as a mini grant because they wanted to get a dog up and running in their school system. Now uh we have, as
you know, uh we we prosecute drug cases. We go after drug dealers. People are putting fentinyl, carfentinyl, xylazine, whatever it is on the streets, and it's important for them to go to jail because most of those individuals, they're doing it for money. So worse than going to jail for some of these guys, believe it or not, is going after their money. And
so we go after their money civily and we forfeit it and we go to court and we then take that money. We're allowed to put it back into the community through our community reinvestment program. So we give money out all the time. And like I always say, if you come to our senior lunchons, I said, "Not that any of you know a drug dealer, but if you did, you
could thank him or her for your senior lunchon because they're paying for it just like they're paying for the dogs." Because we were able to give these mini grants and get the dogs up and running. And we started with one dog, like I said, and hang them back in 2021 and try and have these animal assisted interventions because lots of kids,
especially during co had a really tough time. Real tough time. They weren't in school anymore. Uh they were really socially ostracized. They weren't talking to kids. There was no playgrounds. There was none of that stuff. So little five, six-year-old kids and many times a lot of these kids, the most important people in their lives are
their teachers and their friends at schools. And they missed that for a couple of years. So you see kids who are dealing with all sorts of issues, these adverse childhood experiences, these kids who come from broken homes, these kids who are in a situation where they need help. So we got this up and running, this program in Hangingham. And
originally it was it was a challenge. I'll be honest with you was a challenge to get the dog into the school system because the school system didn't want the dog because they looked at law dogs and law enforcement as together and it was kind of like a very difficult program very challenging programs so uh the original dog opery ended up going to work at our children's advocacy center
which we have which is loc then it was in Brockton now it's in Plymouth uh making sure that we can deal with the more than thousand kids who are physically sexually abused every year in Plymouth County a thousand kids more than that um so the dog worked down there got his training in and then eventually we were able to get uh we were able to get additional resources
and monies. And then we were able to get additional monies and get a grant. And we took one of our grants, which we dealing with, and we turned it from a Department of Justice grant, and we're able to get more dogs and more dogs and more training and more more K9 officers who are working with them, who are also our school resource officers. That's
what most of these men and women are doing are in the schools one way or the other. They're in the schools talking to kids with these dogs. And what it really does is it breaks down the barriers and it helps the children who are having a difficult time in their lives. and they will tell you and I'll certainly let them please talk to them, please pet the
dogs. Um because you know what they are, they are special animals and they have been trained and what we provide through the grant is we provide the dog, we provide the training, we provide uh the the the comfort cruiser cages that they put into their cruisers to keep them warm in the winter and cool in the summer. We provide the veterinary care,
their medical care. It's crazy. It's a it's a federal grant, right? The only thing we can't buy is the dog food because with federal grants, you can never buy food. I couldn't buy you a tuna fish sandwich with a federal grant. I don't know why, you know, so we use the state monies for those things sometimes, but but what I've seen and and now as we're working with
Bridgewwater State University and usually Mikey's here, Mikey's the dog from Bridgewwater State uh University stars from the sheriff's department. You know, we have Roxy, Pedex, uh Mikey, and Rio. Mikey's not here today, but uh these dogs are throughout our county. And I think what we have seen, these
dogs and all these officers, not for they're from different towns. They're from different areas. They don't normally work together. if something bad happens in Halifax, we're dealing with the Halifax police, you know, unless there's a joint sort of jurisdiction thing. This has really brought, I think,
these these these uh communities together. And I think it's made a difference because now when there is a terrible event and unfortunately they happen when a young child passes away and all of a sudden, you know, they need I get the calls over the weekend, we need comfort dogs to show up at such and such uh middle school on Monday morning
and you will see 9 10 11 dogs there and they're just dealing with the kids and the trauma that they're dealing with and the problems that they're having in their lives and all it really is is try to help them as best as we can and it's try to also try to show as we have to show with our grants because now we have I I think we're in the second year of
the grant. I think it's like $1.4 million. And what we're trying to do is show that it's working. You can you can say it's working. So, we've we've got Dr. uh Dr. Leslie Safler from Bridgewwater State University. She's doing all these uh trainings and things and getting information and putting
things together and evaluating it. And what I'm really proud to say is that, you know, these grants just don't spin wheels. You know, they're always constantly moving forward. They're making a difference in the community. And we're going to be doing more things with some of the dogs also as we go forward with the more K9 things that you
would normally think that you deal with a police dog. You think of a police dog, you think of a cadaavver dog, you think of a drug dog, you think of a gun dog, all the different dogs and the things that they're trained for. But isn't it important for our dogs and that some of them do it now if there's an autistic kid that's lost? Isn't it important for those dogs to go out and look for those
kids? Isn't it important to look for our seniors who may have wandered away from uh the places where they're staying at? So, that's what I'm hopeful that, you know, as we go forward, we're going to continue to do that and make a positive impact in our community. And and that's really what this is. And I know that Roxy is uh she just woke up. I don't
know. She's probably hungry. They're all hungry. If you have dog treats with you, they will love you. If you don't, not so much, you know. So, uh if you have little kibble things with you, and these guys all have them, u make sure you get them and you can feed the dogs and they're very happy uh to do all that. So, that's really what I have to say
today. Uh I thank you for coming here today. I'm not sure what the next step is with this. Who am I supposed to be giving the microphone to? Uh I can talk for a real long time. People get sick of me u including myself. So I don't do that. So uh Ken, what am I supposed to do? Am I giving it back to you already?
Already you I don't sing and dance, you know. So I'm to the point. So maybe we give to the offices if guys want to say how how it's all working. Mike's here. Hi, I'm Mike from Five Rings K9 Services in Hansen and uh I work on the team for
the Plymouth County Comfort Dogs. There are four trainers on the team. I think we have what 24 dogs now. Uh 24 dogs and four trainers on the team. Uh these guys are trained to a really really high level. When you think of uh dog training, think more of like a service dog for these guys. So they basically
follow the same regiment in their training as a service dog would follow. The difference being that service dogs are more geared towards helping one person whereas these guys are more geared towards working in a crowd and um engaging with the crowd.
So I'll kind of explain uh good way that I use Roxy recently. Um so I'm a part of a critical incident team. So what we do is we go out and we uh respond to officers that are part of critical incidents and trauma. So say a police officer goes to a call and it's a bad call and the police officer struggling.
So we'll go out and respond and make sure the police officer is okay. We'll do like diffusions and debriefings. We'll get in a group and just talk about what happened. So recently we had one of those. It was a pretty bad accident we responded to and we went out and I actually brought Roxy with me. I was a
little skeptical because I wasn't sure if the first responders like dogs, but the impact that it made on the first responders. Um, you know, I got a lot of feedback towards the end of the meeting. They said, you know, bringing Roxy in, it made them therapeutic and comfort.
They actually was more willing to open up more um based on the dog being there. So, I mean, these dogs play many different roles. They wear many hats just like we do. So that was very um encouraging to hear me being pulled aside after that meeting and cops that's
cops that have 20 and 30 years on the job come to me and say, you know, if that dog wasn't there, I don't think I would have talked. So that actually made me feel really good. So that was just one example that we use the dogs outside of the element of just community policing. Um and so this program is just
awesome. You know, I think Tim Cruz, I mean, I'm just grateful to be a part of it. Hi, my name is Dennis Ro with the sheriff's department. Uh, been on a long time, 31 years. This is Star. She's 5 years old, born on the 4th of July. Uh,
she has two different colored eyes, one blue, one brown. She had a litter of 10 puppies, all 10 are bigger than her. Um, she's small for a great Dane, but she's pretty unique. And to touch upon like what Paul was saying, uh, we've done some fantastic work over the past two
years. And you don't know when you're going to have that effect. You just every call starts off kind of like, you know, you hope you have an effect. But I was sharing some stories earlier with the woman in the front row about recently we visited some special needs adults, four of them, and they were
paralyzed and they were nonverbal. And one of the fathers, he was about 70 years old. His son, Alex, was about 40. And he was one of the patients in the wheelchairs. And I had Star hop up and I had her put her head on her chest. It's
it's called snuggle. And when he did that, the sun really lit up in his eyes. I didn't I thought he was freaking out in a bad way, but the father grabbed me and he's like he's almost in tears and he's like, "You don't understand. Alex has been circling the drain doing really bad recently. He just got out of the
hospital. He had a respiratory infection for 10 days. This means everything to him. I haven't seen his face light up like this in over a year. This means so much. He's like, "Can we give you money?" I'm like, "No, we we don't want any money." But you just never know when
you're going to have that effect. Another story with Sharon. Uh we we go to hospitals, nursing homes, and we recently met met a woman that was 101 years old. And we don't take care of our elderly like we should. And you know, the family kind of tends to forget about
the person in the home after a couple years. So we go in and we'll call her Alice. We visited Alice. She wants to tell us about every dog she's had for the past 101 years in order and we spend 20 minutes with that person and it's a winwinwin. It's a win for Alice. We
affected her. That that was the best day she's had in that month. Maybe I dare say for the next year. It's a win for her and it's a win for me. It makes me feel good. So, you never know when you're going to get that impact that that that home run, but but it could
happen at any time. Just to touch on what the DA and Paul was saying and Mike, we're doing some special stuff inside the schools with the kids, ADHD, kids on the spectrum. We help kids at the courthouse all the time with autism and stuff. They get baldled up, they get
jammed up, they get nervous going on to court. I I don't want to jinx myself, but she's rocked it. She she's been successful almost every time we've gone into the court. So, I wish this program was here 30 years ago. I don't know. It just it's incredible job the DA's doing.
Thank you. I don't know how to follow that. Sorry. Unbelievable. So, my name is Leanne Marshall. I'm from the Hull Police Department. My partner's name is Pedex. He's named after the um the island Pedex Island. Um, he actually
came with the name Bonszo and I said, "I'm not living with a Bonszo, so we got to do something about that." And then we put it out to the community. We came up with the name Pedex and I think it's a perfect fit. Um, Pedex is one of the dogs that that DA Cruz was talking about that's cross-trained. So, Pedex is not
only is he a comfort dog, but he's also trained in search and rescue. Um, so he he's not a bite dog. I know a couple of you are like, "Well, does he go after the bad guy?" No, we only use him for for things that are nonfonious, like he said, children with
autism, maybe elderly people that drift away from home. Um, Pedex actually had a pretty good save last year um on in the summer. It was a It was a horribly rainy day in the summer. And uh we have this little seven-year-old autistic boy that left his house, crossed the main road,
and you know, we have all heard that normally autistic children are drawn to the water and he was headed right for Nantasc Beach. And so we gave Pedex a pair of his pajamas that he was wearing and within six minutes Pedex was licking him on the rocks at Nantasc Beach. The
parents were thrilled. So these dogs Oh. Yeah, that's for you, Pedex. Good boy. So, these dogs have made such a huge impact in the community for, you know, I was not a believer. I'm I'm, you know, kind of one of those people like, I don't know how how this is going to
work, but do you want to bring a dog to work every day? Yeah, cool. That sounds like fun. So, I I I signed up. I went along and even through the training, I was like, there's no way this they're going to teach this dog to do these things. And I'll tell you, a dog is an incredible, incredible being. Um, they
know how to read the room. I've noticed that if you go into an area where you're with a group of people and you're there for some sort of a critical incident, for for whatever reason, these dogs can pick out the people that need them the most and they'll focus on those people and they'll come and lay with those people. And I am such a huge like
believer in this program and what I've seen. Mike, you're saying mom needs therapy? Yeah, that's true. This is just such an incredible program and I can't thank the DA enough for all of his support and and kind of getting this going and letting us run with it.
And we come up with crazy ideas and he always supports our crazy ideas and I'm just really happy to be here. And Pedex, you're a good boy. Well, that's even worse that I get to go last cuz my dog doesn't save anybody. So, we're kind of an anomaly. Um, Rio
and I are from Plymouth Fire Department. I do emergency management. Uh, so we don't do law enforcement, but we are in schools constantly. Town of Plymouth. We have 15 schools and only two of the schools have dedicated dogs. They have the SRO's like these officers at each of
our high schools that have dogs. Uh, so I went to the fire chief and I said, "Hey, I have access to all the schools. Your firefighters would rather hang out with a dog than the chaplain. And the fires that I go to as the emergency manager are when people are displaced and they can't go back
into their house. So, they're already at a low moment on a pretty bad day. And I said, "And I'll get it donated for free." He said, "I'm in." So, Rio came from Puppies Behind Bars. He was raised with incarcerated individuals in the prison systems in New York. They go in at 8 weeks. Um, and he gets parrolled,
no pun, well, yeah, pun intended. Um at 18 months is when we came home. So Rio's only been working with me for just under two months. Uh we reached out to DA Cruz and wanted to be a part of the program. Uh we received one of the mini grants that he was talking about and it's been
a gamecher. Um his primary job is firefighter and medic wellness. We have seven fire stations, 139 firefighters, not including the medics. So after those tough calls where normally you're you're tough guy, tough girls that don't want
to speak to people, we just go hang out, let them off leash, and you know, they love it. Uh, as far as fires, unfortunately, Rio's been to a few of them. We had a complete burndown yesterday morning at 9:00 a.m. It was a 93year-old individual with his 68-year-old daughter. And of course, all
the bystanders are out there as well, cuz it could happen to anybody. And Rio just went around and licking everybody he could. And you know, we hung out with the gentleman for about three or four hours till the Red Cross came. And actually, I had to transport him to BI because that's where the Red Cross went
uh to the local hospital in Plymouth. And this is pretty much what he does. He's the only one of my uh four other human kids that listens to me. So, we'll take it. And I appreciate everything about the program. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah. And I I just want to say I
mean obviously the dogs are great, but the handlers and the trainers are huge uh in this and the training that they go through. And these dogs live with them. They go to their homes. They're part of their lives uh on a daily basis. And if they're if they're if they're married, they have kids, whatever it may be, it's part of all their lives. And then when
the dogs go with them to work, they go to work and they do different things, but they have their job to do and that's what they're trained to do. Uh so it really is a special uh a special kind of person that does this stuff. the school resource offices. I think it's a a special people. Uh and going into the
schools and like talking about now the fire department has it down to Plymouth because Plymouth is such an enormous area. You know, we have Plymouth North and Plymouth South High Schools. They're 15 miles apart from each other and there's and it's such a growing area and our whole county is so growing. You know, roughly there's 800 square miles.
There's uh you know, uh roughly 600,000 people here scattered throughout. Um so that it's always a a changing ball. as we get more and more things and we try to distribute them to the county. You know, part of my job coming through our office because I'm the Plymouth County DA. Some people think, "Oh, you're always in Brockton." I go, "Well, that's
where we're located. That's where I'm located." But this is for the county. All right? So, things that we do are for the county. Whether it be here in Halifax, whether it be uh down in Bridgewwater, whether it be down in Plymouth or Dubberry, wherever, it doesn't really matter. Uh what really matters is that we make sure that we
provide those services best we can equally. Now, there's a couple of towns that are still a challenge with the dogs. Uh, but I think I'm wearing a couple of them down because my goal is to make sure that we have goals in all 27 of our communities. And I would also like to know and we have with the sheriff's department, we have
Bridgewwater State University. I'd also like to see them start getting into the boys and girls clubs and also, you know, or the wise because lots of kids after school, the after school programs are going there. Uh, and and so we we had one for a while and one of the wise and it didn't didn't work out for whatever reason. And that's what happens. I think
you're always going to have growing pains with these sort of programs. The difference is in this instance is that these men and women, uh, like I said, they they do a tremendous job with the dogs and they are seen as one. They are seen when they when they see the with the dogs, they know the trainers going to be there with them because that's how they get there. So, they do a tremendous
job. I'm very proud to be working with them. I have, you know, other than it comes to my office, I I have no dog skills whatsoever. I marginally have people skills. And so, you know, I I we do the best we can, but that's why we let them do it. And I mean, look at St. She, you know, says it all right now. She is completely passed out uh lying
over there. See, normally normally when I speak to when I speak to a crowd, that's how most of the people are. So I don't I don't talk that long. I don't talk that long because I don't want to put everybody to sleep. All right. So, um, having said all that, what am I doing next? Hi, Darlene's here. Darlene,
what's going on? Come over there. Am I giving you the microphone? Am I giving Ken the microphone? I have a question. Yeah. We also we have a really exciting day today because we have a little of everything. I know. I see baseball guys. The baseball guys, the rocks are here,
fraternities here, and all the outreach, the girls and the dogs. Um I do have a question. So, how long does it take to train a dog or is it just different depending on the breed? Roughly, it would take the initial training is probably going to take you
close to a year. Uh so the initial training will take close to about a year to complete. Uh these guys all have to go through three tests through the AKC. So is the AKC good citizen test, the good citizen advanced and the urban good citizen test. They have to pass all
three to be on the team. And that would take between a year and a year and a half, but about a year. But the training really never stops. So one of the things that we have to do is is train them for any particular thing they might come across in the community. and we never know what we're going to come up with. There was an incident with sock puppets
recently that was unpredictable. Um when are you going to train to run into sock puppets? But it happened. Um this morning we had some dogs moving over here that presented a little bit of a challenge. Uh but it's all good opportunities to be out in the community and continue to train with them. So the initial training about a year and a
half, a year to a year and a half, but the training continues weekly after that. They look like until we can get them to melt like star melts. Yes. It's very comfortable.
So I also think with me I try to find different things been exposed to to get her exposed to it. So like on the days off I'll try to find areas that she exposed to. The main thing is is getting them accumulated to all different types of vitamins. So they're not
like it's a lifestyle 247 reward. So does track his dinner and that's his reward. So it's it is a lifestyle. 8 Monday
through Friday you work at a bank and at 401 you're not thinking about it. That's not the case. Depending on where you work I work fabulous organization starts all food. So that's a huge difference for
us. She gets 100%. I don't know. Anybody have any questions? So, we we have the comfort dogs actually, you know, for for these days when there's a lot of things going on in our world and it's so nice to have the
dogs visit us. We have the senior center different depending on what senior center you do have. you know, the senior centers um vary and some of them don't have a garage, but I do. Um I think it's a a wonderful program to have the the
dogs at the school, but can you hear me? Um also too, I mean to get out and and do something fun with the grandkids as well, the bronzy here. If you have any questions for them as well, you know, come and ask for them. I invite them to
everyone's hand. Please everybody come. It's just everyone. Are you passing on? I am. It's a work in progress. That was a good question. I like that one. I will hold you to it, but we It would
be nice. Well, thank you, Tim. We appreciate you coming as always. You're a real good person to have. We don't care. We We don't even care what you talk about. Just come and see us.
I know you are, but you're welcome to every meeting we have. And And your buddy your buddy there in Plymouth. We don't I don't know. I What's he do with all his time? You know what? He's got he's pretty busy. There's
a jail. Is the jail full now? His jail is good. Good. And he says, "No matter how full they are and no matter how many people get rest," he goes, "We may be full, but there's always room for one more." Yeah. Okay. Well, we thank Tim Cruz for being here
and we thank all of these fellows and the women here with their dogs. Uh do you have to go leave now, too? Uh, would anyone here that wants to go to walk up and take pictures yourself with the dog?
Go ahead. Anyone that wants to go up to have a picture taken? Joe. Joe, do you have You want to go up and have a picture taken with the dogs? Take a
quick and can you take a quick picture with the DA the dogs and Sure. Stay. She's talking so I didn't know she had What did you say? Okay. Ready. One, two, three. I think that's good.