Tony Bailey - Clark County Jail Chaplain

[0:00] I live down the street and unfortunately I am a pretty messed up family because I am a warrior and an arrow.

[0:15] And so I think we're on the Mason-Dixon line here, aren't we? And there's probably some warriors and arrows here too. We are Northwesterners, but we travel over to Tecumseh for my one son.

[0:30] And this year was scary. William is in the 8th grade at Tecumseh and Jacob is in the 7th grade, but they're the same weight class.

[0:41] And I thought they were going to have to wrestle each other this year. And I was heartbreaking. I was worried sick. Jacob, fortunately, he wasn't able to wrestle this year, so he just backed out.

[0:54] And William had a pretty good season at Tecumseh. So they faced each other in track though. So Northwestern and Tecumseh faced each other at least once this year.

[1:07] They're going to face each other again. And then I thought they were both going to face each other in the 100. And I'm like, oh my gosh. They're going to go to the end of the line. They're going to come to the finish line.

[1:17] And then my two sons are going to beat each other up probably. Well, so I had a great idea. I said, I'm going to be an unbiased dad. You know, make sure that's equal support.

[1:31] So I decided when I screamed and they're both running, I said, you both stink. My wife didn't like that though. I don't know.

[1:42] I want to say that Ron Gannon has been instrumental in so many things at the jail. He's been the pillar of consistency, of faithfulness to inmates.

[1:57] He's mentored a lot of guys. And when I talk to Ron, I just think of the world of him and Joyce. And I appreciate the Gannons so much. They've done so much for Clark County inmates.

[2:09] And we appreciate them. And that's the model that we want to have for volunteers. Then also, of course, my sons, we go to one youth group.

[2:22] But there is a Sunday available. And we've been asked to attend another youth group. And that's at Ron's daughter's church. And so Michelle and Jim Welch have been very instrumental in my two sons' lives for youth group.

[2:38] And we're just so thankful for this awesome family. And they're just a model family. And we just thank the world of them. We appreciate them. Oh, could we get...

[2:49] Yeah, thank you. I'm going to... Let's see. And feel free if you'd like to get a better view. We're going to have this little promo four-minute video coming up here.

[3:00] But I'm going to do mostly slides today. So if you'd like to come on up here and get a better view here, I encourage you to do that. I'm going to move this...

[3:11] Well, let me see. Make sure anybody's blind spots here. We'll get this out of the way here. I'm kind of... A little maintenance here. I'm a little high maintenance sometimes. I see a leaf in front here.

[3:22] I'm going to go... Give me that trimmer. It won't grow back, will it? Okay. Now to the jokes. All right. I found this church sign here.

[3:33] I don't know if you can read it. I'll read it for you. Don't let worries kill you. Let the church help. Now the next sign...

[3:46] I hope this next sign hasn't been out here out front. And it says, Cape Coral Community Church. Now's a good time to visit our pastors on vacation.

[3:59] I'll send that to Pastor Marv. He'll like that. He'll like that.

[4:11] A little bit about myself. I'm not normal. I've got to get that out of the way. I've got a surfer background, I am sorry to say. I grew up surfing.

[4:22] That was a God in my life. I thought it was the greatest thing ever. And I moved to Hawaii. And in Hawaii, God really touched my life and changed my life. And I love the Hawaiian people.

[4:33] And so I became an overseas missionary in 1996. I was in Hawaii. And I went overseas to the cold tundra of Ohio.

[4:47] Left it for Springfield. And that's where I started working as a youth minister. And the jail chaplain here in Clark County asked me to come and visit.

[5:00] So it was about in August of 1996, I got to step foot in our local jail here. And it wrecked my life. It changed me. It hooked me in and never been the same.

[5:11] And I just love it. And actually, this August, yeah, will be the 19th year. And it's been pretty amazing. And I met this gorgeous lady.

[5:23] This is Tina Bailey. I met her at the Springfield YMCA. I think it was in late 96, 97. And here's our three children. We've got a football player, a wrestler, and a Dora the Explorer there.

[5:41] Now, we're talking about the jail. I don't know what your opinions are. But if your opinion is, you know, they're inmates.

[5:54] They get themselves in trouble. You know, I believe they need full punishment. I'm with you. I'm with you. There are a lot of inmates that are victimizing women and children and victimizing our community all the time.

[6:09] And I don't like it. And I get very angry at it. And so a lot of times it's like, why do you want to help out these guys? Well, the problem is 99% of them are all going back home.

[6:26] And they're going back to their wives or their girlfriends and their kids and their families. And they're going back into the streets. And that's our streets. That's our community. And those are some precious kids coming up.

[6:40] So, I think this is one of the stories we are shooting for. Is I got my daddy back. And this is a quote from this little girl right here with her father, an ex-offender.

[6:52] Says, I am glad my dad is home. Because he tells me about Jesus. And he keeps me safe. He prays with me. He takes me to the park. He buys me clothes and shoes and toys.

[7:04] I love my daddy. That's what we're shooting for right there. We want to see families reunited. We want to see that the jail becomes known for a leadership training.

[7:20] Guys are going in and all of a sudden it gets a reputation of, hey, they're coming out better. They're coming out better fathers, better husbands, better workers. They're getting away from the old junk.

[7:33] And so, that's kind of the vision for this. Now, you probably have followed the papers lately. And we're dealing with an epidemic that I've, in the last 19 years, I've never seen anything like it.

[7:48] And that is with the heroin abuse and overdoses and many deaths. Over the fall last year, let me back up.

[8:00] But about, maybe about this time last year, I was telling a girl, she was 27 years old. I think she has three kids. And I was telling her, her mother has died of an overdose.

[8:11] I had to notify her. And that's one of the jobs of the chaplain is to give death notifications. And when I told her that, immediately we all start talking from staff, the lieutenant, other volunteers.

[8:27] Everybody keep an eye on this girl. Because we're worried to death that she's going to go back to her ways and use and she's going to overdose. And unfortunately, she got out last September and went four weeks, no use of drugs, used once, and died.

[8:49] What's worse is I found out that her grandmother also died of an overdose. Think about it.

[8:59] Grandmother, mother, and daughter all died of a heroin overdose. This is crazy. Like I said, she's got three kids.

[9:11] There's more generations coming up. We have a new office, a chaplaincy office. And I had guys come in that are on Pride. And Pride is inmates able to get out of the jail and serve and do things.

[9:24] They came over. They're still in jail but away from the jail. And they're working. And this guy put up trim on my office. And then when he got out, I had him come back to the office and fill in a piece of carpet.

[9:38] Ari did a great job. Then I asked him, you know, I live right here on Miller Road. I asked him to come over to Miller Road. He replaced the window for me. And then a couple weeks later, I had to find out at the jail that he died of an overdose.

[9:53] It is heartbreaking. It's crushing. Specifically, this guy that was working for me, he was great. He was a great guy. You could see that oppression on him.

[10:06] You could see kind of the shakiness in his life. You know, long-term addiction and everything. But an excellent handyman carpenter. I mean, he had great skills.

[10:17] And what's happening, too, is, you know, heroin, addiction like that, you know, it's just, you get in it. You made the choice to get in it most of the time.

[10:27] There are occasions when you didn't even choose that. It's that bad of having older siblings or even parents or friends inject you or something as a young kid and start you on it on purpose.

[10:42] I mean, that's just horrible. But this guy and many others, like this other girl that got out, they stay away, stay away for weeks. And they go to their meetings.

[10:53] And guess what, guess who pinpoints meetings or as far as pinpoints addicts at meetings and they pretend to be an addict is drug dealers.

[11:04] This particular girl that I was telling you about the three generations that got out, went four weeks, she was picked off by a drug dealer coming to the meetings. And I've been talking to Prosecutor Andy Wilson a lot.

[11:17] And, you know, that's high on the agenda. This is crazy. And that's smart, though. I mean, that's a devilish, smart, wise thing to do to pick people off that are struggling. But what's happening is they get clean time.

[11:30] They go and they're fighting and they get through their sickness and they get better. And then they're away from it for a while and they're doing great. But people are looking to pick them off. And if they use once, they have a good chance of dying.

[11:46] There's a couple of reasons. One is the type of mixture to make it more potent or spread it out and make it go farther. And so that becomes a lethal injection because they measure the amount.

[12:02] They have a certain amount, like a tenth of a gram. And so the next time they use, they'll take that tenth of a gram. But what they do is they steadily increase it to maybe two tenths or half a gram.

[12:18] They intense their dosage because each time it's not the same and they increase it. But if they get off and they've been off for a couple months and then they use once, they better use way down low or they'll die.

[12:32] They cannot use the old dosage. But there's the other problem is now you can't trust the dosage of what's in it. It's mixed with different things and those things make it multiply by ten to a hundred times.

[12:49] And then, boom, there's an overdose. So there is no safely falling off the wagon. Us here, I believe, I don't think I'm talking to any addicts, but if you fall off the wagon and when I say that, you do something wrong and you sin, you'll live through it most likely.

[13:06] If they fall off the wagon and they sin, they die. It's very dangerous. I can't imagine being in that situation and having those addictions rouse you up all the time.

[13:18] And you go four weeks but use once. But that's what's happening. This picture is kind of hard to make out, but these guys have their heads down and they have their shirts over their heads.

[13:31] This is very common. This is a culture that's dodging anything authoritative because they're all in trouble. They all have, but they see the Google camera going by and it's just kind of a famous street term.

[13:48] Here comes, oh man, here comes the Google street car. Referring to the fact that everybody hides your face. You don't want to be announced publicly. You got warrants.

[13:59] But we've got a whole toxic neighborhood full of guys running around and ladies running around and it's just bad. Now, there's lots of crime and happening and everything.

[14:14] And so people are getting grabbed and arrested and put in jail. The problem is they're going into a jail full of toxic people.

[14:29] They're coming off the streets where it's toxic and they're going into a jail full of toxic people. What's going to be the outcome? Is there going to be any change?

[14:39] Not really. There is some pockets of good things always going on in the jail. And we're trying to do our best. We have seven church services a week.

[14:53] Now, imagine the guys are all in the jail. They get called and they come down and they have a service. And then this next section, which we call pods, gets called.

[15:05] And they come out and have their service. And we rotate it. So that means everybody in those seven services. And we're working hard. Seven services a lot every week.

[15:16] We're working very hard. But that's only one service per inmate. Because of the rotation of what we have to do throughout the building. You take other programs and stuff that they're going to.

[15:28] While in jail, it may be far less than 5%. But I'm just saying 5% while in jail is programs for them and help.

[15:39] That means 95% of their waking hours is downtime. And it's incredibly toxic. It's incredibly destructive. And while they are hanging out, laying around, and most of you guys, and I especially disagree with that, they're watching garbage TV all day long.

[16:02] And they're just filling their cells to perpetuate the lifestyle that they already had when they came in. They're watching Jerry Springer, TMZ, all kinds of junky stuff all day long.

[16:13] Well, what's worse, too, is when they start communicating to each other and talking to each other. And guess what they're talking about? Hey, you know what? I made money over here. I could show you and connect you to some guys over here.

[16:26] Here's how you can do this and get away with it. So what they're doing is putting together a network. And they're getting stronger. And we call it Crime School 101.

[16:38] So what we want to do is invade that 95%. Now, that 5%, we're working incredibly hard to do. But it's not enough.

[16:49] So we want to take over that 95% downtime and invade that. And this is the first time ever we'll be able to reach all the inmates almost all day long throughout the day.

[17:05] And that's going to be through television. As we speak, well, they're lined up to do this. And I'm going to guess within the next four to six weeks, they'll switch out all the TVs.

[17:18] And they'll prepare the new TVs to get prepared for this as well, which we're very excited about. But we started a program. We've named it.

[17:28] It's hard to see there, but it's called Key Vision. So in the future, you'll probably hear me speak more and there'll be more literature. Or if you ever hear anything about the jail, you'll start hearing more and more Key Vision.

[17:42] Key Vision is a media ministry under the Clark County Jail Chaplaincy. But hopefully it'll be out there more often and people will hear about it.

[17:52] And we're going to try to do some things that have never been done before. I'm going to describe to you what this is real quick.

[18:05] This is, to the left you see is the jail. That's the white building there, right downtown. From this right corner close to us, I took that picture from Huntington Bank.

[18:16] So that Huntington Bank on the corner of Fountain and Columbia, if you didn't know where the jail was. And it says out front there, it doesn't say jail, it says public safety building. And to the right across the street is our new TV office.

[18:28] We have an office inside the jail. And now we have a second office across the street, this jail TV office. And it's upstairs at Craven Bail Bonds.

[18:42] And Mr. Craven did a fantastic thing. And I came in there and I said, John, this situation. We need a little space to put some computer equipment.

[18:55] We also need access to a roof and be able to beam a TV feed to the jail. And he walks me into a two-portion office.

[19:10] And at the bottom left now, he just said, you can have it. And it was just a miracle. It was so wonderful. So free of charge, we are exactly where we need to be, approximately so many feet from the jail.

[19:23] And we're able to broadcast there. So to the left is our little recording studio. It's all ready to go. It records very high-quality video.

[19:34] And to the right is the next office over. And that's our broadcasting area where we're going to be broadcasting the videos. Accomplished to date, we have, this is huge.

[19:52] This is not going to happen unless the backing of the sheriff is with us. So the sheriff has released us. Now, as we've been going through this, it's been years and years of talking about this.

[20:03] Thought we'd never get this done. And, I mean, it's the grace of God. He's blessed us to give us the opportunity. Well, God has had to give Sheriff Kelly, give us favor in order to do it.

[20:18] Because if he says no, it's not going to happen. But not only did he say yes, I said, Sheriff, we've got a problem. And that is, if we put this TV thing on, they've got all the other channels.

[20:32] And they're going to be switching those channels and da-da-da-da. What are the chances of us becoming the one channel everybody watches morning to night?

[20:42] He calls the deputies and everybody in. They unanimously said to him, do it, please. So, with his approval, we will be the one station throughout the day and night.

[20:59] Now, I'll address some more to that because, obviously, there's going to be a reaction from the inmates. And we're going to ease this in and there's a lot of discussion on that. But you know what?

[21:11] I had a bunch of guys on the fifth floor, fifth floor the other day, yelling and screaming. And there's the chaplain taking away our TV. And guess what I was thinking about that?

[21:23] There's three generations of ladies. Grandma, mother, and daughter dead. And that's what I told them. I said, three generations, guys. That whole stinking pod shut up.

[21:36] I don't hate them. But, man, I'm ready for some tough love. And I think a lot of people are like, yes, let's do this. We've got to do something. We've got an epidemic. It's obvious. So, yes, there are going to be some backlash.

[21:48] But I'm willing to take it. I don't. What's the alternative? It's getting so bad. What's the alternative? So, I hope you guys can feel that, too. It's just like, hey, it's like little children.

[22:01] We don't want to kill them, I don't think. But we want to hold them down and say, look, we're going to straighten this out. So, that's what we want to do.

[22:11] And I'm preparing for lawsuits and all kinds of stuff. Yippee. But we're going to do it, right? We're just going to do it. We've got the offices that I talked about that were donated.

[22:26] We've already purchased and installed the broadcast and production equipment. Partnerships with lots of community resources, the prosecutor's office, Wittenberg, Clark State, all types of churches and community organizations.

[22:47] We are very careful of what's going to be seen on the TV because the organizations that we work with, we don't exactly agree with. But those organizations can come in and support in areas that we do agree with.

[23:01] And that's a long talk, too. But we are definitely going to be careful and filter out. We are inviting the community to get on board. But ultimately, what's seen on that TV will be filtered out correctly when we believe what's based on what God wants us to do in God's Word.

[23:21] And this is the big one. A couple weeks ago, we got everything going.

[23:32] We've been working on it for a long time. We were at that office across the street. We beamed it across. And all the TVs received it with full strength signal.

[23:43] It works. And this is just a beautiful day a couple weeks ago. Brad Johnson is our lead video engineer. He's done a fabulous job. And the gentleman that's on that screen right there came into our production studio 13 years ago.

[24:02] He was using. He was so dope sick. He knew he was going to die. And he's been 13 years clean. And he's an AOD counselor.

[24:14] And full of the heart of God in his life. And his name is Steve Massey. And he is the example of what we're going to have on that television. We are going to go at the direction of what the community wants us to address.

[24:28] And that's the alcohol and drug addiction. But we're going to use good, godly men to do it. We're going to go over employment.

[24:39] We're going to go with introduction to resources. Which means we're going to put faces and places on the videos to walk them through to where they need to go to when they get out and get them prepared.

[24:55] Mental health and cognitive behavior training. I'm a certified thinking for a change instructor. And what we can do is take inmates and we take their problems and they tell us their problems.

[25:09] And then they'll get on that video and we'll act them out and use inmates to do this. And then we'll create solutions. This department of corrections throughout the whole country has a curriculum called Thinking for a Change.

[25:25] I've been preaching on repent called Change Your Thinking when I came across this national publication. There is not one Bible scripture listed in it.

[25:37] Every bit of it is based on scripture though. It's unbelievable. And it's sweeping across the country. So we're going to do this Thinking for a Change. Well, I have been doing it with classes. But we're going to do it via through television too.

[25:49] It's phenomenal. But we're going to address other things. The motivational aspects of it. I don't know if you've seen the great family movie, Christian movie, Facing the Giants.

[26:01] And there's a scene where the guy does the death crawl, which basically gets on his hands and knees. And the football player lays on his back and he crawls across from the one yard line to the other goal line. The whole hundred yards or whatever.

[26:12] I show that to the inmates and they go crazy. It's just a ten minute scene. Those things we're going to start showing is these real strong inspirational videos.

[26:23] Because there's defeat all over that place, if you can imagine. That jail is so full of defeat. So hopeless. No vision. We want to spark vision in there.

[26:35] We're going to show some what we call redemptive entertainment. Where we show a movie. It's a regular secular movie. And then we go and segue into training, life skills and stuff like that.

[26:49] But Les Miserables is one of the greatest. A lot of you might be familiar with the movie. You've seen the play or the movie. Or you might have seen the recent movie. The older movie is the one I'm going to be using.

[27:01] It's one of the greatest forgiveness stories of all time. And I just absolutely love it. And so there's so much stuff out there. Man, I could talk more and more about what's out there.

[27:12] And I'm throwing that out to you, too, as a think tank here. At the end here, I would love for you to join our email list. And you might get a blast every month, once a month.

[27:27] But we want to hear from the community on ideas. We're totally open to this. We want to hear what you've seen, what you think could benefit inmates.

[27:38] And we're open to hearing that. We've got another site. It's on Google Docs where you can fill in and you can put the name of a DVD or something. And what's the description.

[27:49] You can fill it in. You can give us ideas. It's a way for everybody to log into something and communicate on things that you think would be valuable to inmates via through a television show. Also, just plain out ideas on creation of TV shows that we can create.

[28:04] If you have ideas. If you have an interest in production, absolutely. We're looking to train people or definitely looking for experienced people in the production end from lights and camera and from sound and all those things, those technical things.

[28:20] If you think you can get in front of the camera and you think you've got something to share, think about it. These guys are all growing up with no dads and there's a lot of great fathers in this place that could just lovingly talk in front of that camera.

[28:35] Or maybe there are some things that you have as far as trade skills. We want to teach trade and all types of occupations, trying to create avenues of abilities to get them into workplaces and stuff.

[28:48] So lots of stuff on the content aspect of it. What's left to be done. So the whole jail gets it, gets the TV feed signal.

[28:59] There are externally outside the jail, there's things called trailers, portables, and this is where the women are. So we still have to run cable through that way. We're not sure.

[29:10] We're still going through the ceilings and trying to figure out how we're going to do that. But hopefully that will be done within the next, I'd say, two or three months. We're going through the next, two or three months. Developing our content.

[29:22] Installing the new TVs, which is coming very soon. And then the funding for this. We're a non-profit. And we have yet to get tax dollars on this.

[29:32] So we're looking for the community to fund it. It's about a $300 a day production at this point. And that's good quality stuff at great content for all the inmates.

[29:46] You talk about an audience. You know, if we singled out and went out in pockets out here to our community, you know, we would come across a few.

[29:56] We've got everybody lined up, ready to go. It is such a golden opportunity right now. There's this other video, too. And if you get on my email list, we'll send it to you.

[30:08] Or you can go to YouTube. And it's while they are in Clark County Jail Chaplaincy. It's a long title. But anyway, while they are in, in that video, is about the unbelievable opportunity to speak to an inmate's life.

[30:26] While he's in. Imagine what it's like before he got in. He's out on the streets. It's near impossible to talk to them then. They're doing their thing. But when they're in, all of a sudden there's tears.

[30:38] There's brokenness. There's humility. The ears open up. It is a golden opportunity. Let's see here.

[30:51] Keep going here. I'm going to get to this in a second. I'm going to give this testimony. But I want to show you guys a video. And hopefully this video, if I got it on the flat panel, you'd see a little bit more clear.

[31:10] But this video hopefully describes and gives you an idea of the quality that we're looking at to making our content. And the guys in our team here did an excellent job.

[31:20] Love them to death. And so I'll let you see this here. And then we'll finish off in a little bit here. What if I told you a story about a city who was once an industrial leader known as the champion city, but it had fallen on hard times and lost its way?

[31:44] What if I told you a story about a state that once led the world in innovation and invention, but it too is now struggling, desperate to reinvent itself?

[31:54] What if I told you a story about a huge crisis that stretched as far as the eye could see here in Springfield and all across America?

[32:07] Mass incarceration. The nation. Crime bars. Crime bars. We here in America make up 5% of the world's population.

[32:18] But we make up 25% of jailed prisoners. One in 31 American adults is either behind bars or on parole or probation. It's a crisis so large, their voices can no longer be kept silent.

[32:33] The stuff that you see in here ain't nothing but, you know what I mean, the same stuff that's going on on the streets. If inmates are put into jail and left alone, does it get worse?

[32:48] Yes. What if I told you a story about a drug epidemic that was sweeping this great but bruised nation, in this proud but struggling state, in this city that was fighting for its life, a drug epidemic that left families ravaged and destroyed, fatal overdoses becoming common when greedy drug lords began mixing their dope with substances like horse tranquilizers?

[33:17] What if I told you about a savage media culture, one obsessed with getting rich, and they chose to glorify the vicious cycles of addiction and abuse?

[33:27] And by doing so, they only poured fuel on a world that was already burning. And what if I told you that because of all of this, the human spirit, that spark of creativity that's inside all of us, snuffed out for some of us.

[33:51] and the city known as the Champion City, and I won't throw a look to its name.

[34:01] But then, what if I told you a different story?

[34:21] A story where the media chose to celebrate the best in the human spirit, not the worst. A story where a city, where Springfield, rediscovered its proud identity, and gave everyone the keys to success.

[34:42] And then Springfield, recovered the American dream. And what if, what if that story is true?

[35:08] Is there a way to keep these lights off here and turn the house lights on? Are they all the same? I just wanted to see if there was a way to keep these lights on the stage off.

[35:21] Is that possible? It's okay if it's not. You can just turn them back on. That's okay. It's okay. Turn the lights back on. It's okay. I wanted to, let me read this to you.

[35:35] Well, first, before I go on here, is all that video, except for like excerpts of Jerry Springer. Yes, thank you. excerpts of Jerry Springer and stuff like that was not ours, but the rest of it was ours that we shot.

[35:49] And we hope, we're hoping to give an example of the quality of it. Of course, it can be high dollar production. It needs to have the content value as well, too. And so, we're not joking around.

[36:01] We're not putting a little tiny TV, little, oh, little tiny thing together. No. We want to run at the quality of what is in on national TV and in on the movie theaters.

[36:15] That's the quality that we expect to have soon here. I got this email the other day. It said, I just wanted to thank you for ministering to my boyfriend, Nathan, in the jail.

[36:28] I prayed that he'd go there because his heroin addiction was going to kill him. He speaks highly of you and he's told me he's been reading the Bible and understanding it.

[36:40] Jail saved his life and now God is saving his soul. We both plan on continuing on with our journey with the Lord when he gets out of rehab. I believe that God has chosen him to one day bear witness and share his testimony with others to hopefully help them.

[36:57] I was blindsided by his addiction. I had no idea he was using heroin until he overdosed to my bathroom and was very near death. If I wasn't there he would be dead.

[37:10] That was very traumatizing to me and unfortunately even that was not his rock bottom. That was February of 2014 and I never gave up on him even after the lies, the stealing, the manipulation.

[37:24] I see something in him that is special. I brought a book to jail that hopefully you can get to him. Again, thank you for all that you've done for these inmates. Right now we're cleared for takeoff.

[37:39] It's in place. We have their ear. We have given approval. The amount of ministry that can go on from this day forward is unbelievable.

[37:51] But we do need help to go forward. It's all set up and ready to go. Like I said, $300 a day will get a whole days of production to all the inmates at once.

[38:05] That would be an incredible thing. Can you imagine $30 would do an hour? I just want you to consider and think about getting on board. There's a lot of ways you can get on board.

[38:16] Like I said, help us with the content search and stuff like that if that's something that resonates with you. The production team's advisory.

[38:26] We're always looking for good godly counsel and godly wisdom. Of course, the funding. And then publicity, speaking engagements. If you feel like others would like to hear this presentation, we are absolutely available to go out there and go to churches, organizations, wherever you think is a good place and a good audience we'll speak at.

[38:50] So, I appreciate the time and what I'll do is open up a little bit for some questions. You can turn all the lights on. And does anybody have any questions right now?

[39:01] Yeah. Yeah.

[39:20] There we go. Have you looked to the Turner Foundation here in Springfield for any of the funding? They seem to fund a lot of stuff around town. We get a tiny, tiny bit and I'm really praying.

[39:36] Ask them and if you guys know John Landis or anybody at the Turner Foundation, start telling them, listen, we think there's an opportunity here. So, we're getting a little tiny bit. If they would just pay us like they paid off a roof on a church, that would be beautiful.

[39:52] But yes, thank you for... Hey, I tell you what, I don't have a pen and paper. If anybody could take any, anybody feel like taking notes of these questions because that's good. Yeah, anybody else?

[40:03] Questions? Yes, sir. Hold on. Who does the screening of the material that you're going to be presenting to them besides yourself?

[40:21] Is there another, is there a group? We have our whole board and our whole team, yes. Who is your board, your team? Representation of multiple churches.

[40:31] They're all church-related folks from pastors to elders and stuff like that and they represent county churches. Matter of fact, sir, we are looking for more board representation definitely from this church too.

[40:49] So, talk to me, somebody, and I can tell you about the criteria serving on the board afterwards. But yes, thank you. Most people here know that I don't hear very well so I just want to confirm what I think I heard.

[41:07] I understood that the inmates most of the day watch trash TV. Now, the program that you have coming up here with your TV production, is that going to replace all the TV or just part of it?

[41:21] All of it? There's a long kind of, it's a give and take thing and unfortunately, I hate to say this, they're a favorite thing in the world and I guess there could be a little bit of liability issues to let them keep watching the news.

[41:39] So, from 5 p.m. to 6.30 p.m., Channel 7 local news will be on there and believe it or not, they're all crazy to see themselves on there or friends that they know on there.

[41:51] It's a big deal to them, unfortunately. Also, I'm a red-blooded American and God-fearing man but my goodness, I don't want to take away from the Buckeye football games.

[42:05] Saturdays, the weekends are kind of open from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday and Sunday will be our stuff and then from noon on will be open.

[42:20] It'll be sports and everything. So, on Saturday and Sunday. Yeah. We're not crazy. Yes, ma'am.

[42:32] How many inmates do you have now? That's all I want. She asked how many inmates. We have about 220. We, as Ron would know, back in the day, we'd probably have an average of 24.

[42:49] The men population has been a little bit consistent over the last few years. The women population has doubled and there's a, there's, that's relative to the addiction problem and heroin.

[43:05] Real quick, just touch on that. Guys are taking girls and getting them under the influence and getting them addicted on purpose to make them, you know, to keep them.

[43:18] So, women are being greatly affected by this. We've got a lot of great women that serve in the county jail and do a lot of ministry and stuff like that and they are absolutely included in everything we do.

[43:30] But about two, I said, 220 inmates, 40 plus women out of the, you know, 180 men or so. so.

[43:55] Have you guys already, I'm sure you have, thought in advance when the ACLU or somebody decides to sue? Do you have a plan? Yeah. We, well, one, we have, we have a lot of insurance and that, that's good.

[44:13] I would like probably some more counsel on it, talk to attorneys and stuff, but we can't get enough prepared. So, again, anybody knows anything about the legal issues on that, we'd love to hear and we need to get as much prepared as possible.

[44:30] Yes, that's a good statement. Ron. At the open time you talked about, are they in front?

[44:45] The open time you said, there will be some open time where other channels can be on. Are they taking all the trash stuff off? Probably not. They're, the way, the way it works is they have, and the channels that they have is antenna channels, local channels, they're not cable network.

[45:07] whatever. But, if our system fails or whatever, which right now, as we hooked it up and everything, we keep it running 24-7 and just to see if there's any failure.

[45:20] We've had some installation going on in the jail, so those outside contractors have knocked our feet off a couple times and we're trying to label everything and don't unplug anything, you know, prepare for it.

[45:34] If it does go down, they simply can ask the deputies to turn the channel. Inmates have a TV and they're behind glass and they have audio.

[45:45] They cannot get to the TV, so they're constantly asking the deputies to come by and change the channel. And that's why the deputies are 100% on board with us.

[45:56] They don't want to change the channel anymore. But they also know, deputies have said it constantly, after a Springer episode, they honestly see reaction and fights and dissension go way sky high.

[46:13] So there is correlation to bad TV to hurting the environment, the current environment right now. So most of our weeks, a TV week the hours that it's on is right now from 9 to about 1030.

[46:34] 9 a.m. to 1030 at night. So we're looking at going across the whole board there and then channel 7 from 5 to 630, but then all of our other stuff are there.

[46:48] We're looking at a couple different release points where soon, which a good news is they're saying, okay, Tony, you've talked about this, a lot of reaction is, we're waiting patiently, let's go, let's get this going.

[47:00] I don't see us going full time from 9 a.m. to 1030 every day for about another year. We're looking at releasing and launching maybe a two hour window every day throughout the week is our first release or launch and maybe we'll have that ready in a month.

[47:22] I really want to get it off the ground and get going right now, but we're making sure we get prepared. Again, we get to that full time point in a year, they could watch whatever.

[47:35] Well, that's a good question. See, we may have the remote ability to program, let's say, those Saturdays and Sundays, we program the channel that they'll watch.

[47:47] We figure out and study the TV guide to figure out where the Buckeyes are playing, where NASCAR, whatever stuff like that is. But yes, there'll be a little bit.

[47:58] So going from 100% trash TV, we may have a few percent trash TV, but some things that were unavoidable, but it's a lot better. You know, yes, ma'am.

[48:09] have you ever heard of me, TV, Emmy? I love it, yes.

[48:19] The old programs, absolutely love it. And that's one of those things where, very good point, and that's where we want to be. And Andy Griffith is excellent, and there's so many good quality programs back in the day, and we would definitely want to use those.

[48:37] The problem, too, is we have to get release. We've got to get the permission. We could show whatever, but we could take an account, and that comes back to lawsuits.

[48:51] Somebody has a problem with us, that's a good way to pursue us if we were showing something without the release of it. But yes, we are going to pursue, and if anybody's legally sound on that, on how to get releases, that would be great.

[49:03] We're going to have to pay for one license for $900 for the entire year. But it covers one third of all motion pictures. So, Facing the Giants, Courageous, all those are covered under this license blanketing.

[49:21] So those are covered. But TV shows and stuff, and I don't know about you, this may be funny, but I can't wait. I'm hoping to get released for Duck Dynasty. I think Duck Dynasty is such a great family-oriented show.

[49:33] They bring in a real family sense in there, and they don't see that. They don't know anything real. They don't know anything functional. We can talk about that for a while. So, yes, I think me is excellent network, and I hope we can get something going with them.

[49:47] They have a little moral part to each program. Yes, yes. So I thought it would be good for them. I thought you threw your voice behind me. What about videos?

[50:09] I mean, couldn't you pop in a Christian video? Yes, that's the plan. There is the subjects that we're covering. Like I said, the alcohol and drug, and the other ones, the introduction to resources, and da-da-da-da.

[50:24] But there is a plain out subject of what we'll call the faith-based time. And let's say it's on an hour a day. Absolutely. I look forward to having, I hope we can get Marv on there and do some Bible studies and stuff like that.

[50:41] But Bible studies, discipleship, evangelism, absolutely is going to be a segment on there. And, by the way, she said videos. So, if you have DVDs, and if you want to donate them or let us borrow them and see if we can get released for them, absolutely, we would take them.

[51:02] Is that Gary? Yeah. What's the average length of stay of the inmates, Tony? There's a lot of factors. Believe it or not, a lot of people can be arrested and then don't stay.

[51:15] They can be arrested, processed, and released. And, unfortunately, when you see incarceration numbers go down, it has nothing to do with things on the street getting settled down and peaceful.

[51:25] It has everything to do with tolerance on what you hold in a county jail. So, if you go back a few years ago, you could hold certain people, but now it's like, oh, we're overwhelmed, we're cutting loose these lower fences.

[51:39] So, a lot of people kind of cycle in and out. Now, once you are arrested and staying, let's say about 30 days is about an average, about a month, but we have folks that are doing a year and a half.

[51:54] So, this is not prison. If you, jail is, someone's arrested, you go to the county jail, if you're going to prison, then you may be there six months, who knows, if it's a big high profile trial, a year or two, and then you go off to that institution or that rehab or whatever.

[52:15] So, jail is a constant hallway. So, it's a quick turnaround. Our goal is to create programming for possibly about a three-month window and then take that three month and loop it, but always update it and get current with it.

[52:34] But get that bulk of programs down, that foundation down, always to revisit it and always to update it. But, so. Yes.

[52:54] Jimmy, I can repeat your question. Go ahead. I guess I'm not sure why in the first place inmates are allowed to watch trash TV just as we are careful about having our children see harmful things.

[53:12] Why can't those in charge be careful about their inmates harmful things? She said, why in the world are we in this situation as it is now?

[53:22] Why are they getting to watch trash TV? We watch over our children and what they watch. Why are they getting to be able to do this? Very, very good question. Think about the way the world is lost and leadership is lost and I think I get a whole big amen.

[53:42] Leadership and government and everywhere imaginable is lost. I better be careful. I will defend them in this way and that is they're running silly, they're exhausted, exhausting our community resources to get the guy there and then that's it.

[54:04] They throw them in and then that's it. They put TVs up and just try to quiet them down and just, you know, whatever. whatever. But there is no process for the justice system to intervene.

[54:19] That's where a nonprofit or others are trying to do intervention while they're there. So that puts the work on us and that's fine. And they're starting to release us to do what we want.

[54:31] But on their end, they're doing everything they can to catch the guy, arrest the guy, put him in the court. Probation, you know, $30,000 a year to house him.

[54:43] But you imagine there may be one guy in our jail and it took five people making large figure salaries to get him in there legally. So by the time they throw him in there, it's like exhausted out of resources and it's like, and think about it.

[54:59] This is a huge thing. $300 million to build a new jail. And I haven't gotten a dime from the county in 18 years. So they've gone this far.

[55:11] They've gone nine-tenths of the mile, but they don't do anything to intervene. And so hopefully these tides are going to change. And hopefully there's good wisdom and solution and they'll see the fruits of this and they'll jump on board.

[55:25] But yes, why didn't they do like the old days? The word penitentiary comes to the word penance where you lock somebody up with a Bible. And so I think we're hopefully going to return to that.

[55:36] But it is a mindset in leadership today of oppressing people, not rehabilitating them. And so, yeah, you are correct. Why do they do it in the first place?

[55:48] It's amazing. Yes. are you familiar with Joy Fagan of the Safe Harbor House?

[56:01] Every once in a while I'm very nice and I let her in our jail. Yeah, she's fantastic. She's been coming in for so many years and she has been great on taking a lot of our women.

[56:15] We've loved our partnership with her. Yes, thank you. She's a great resource. A lot. Her program is really expanding.

[56:26] Yeah, it's growing, leaps and bounds. And she's doing fantastic. Safe Harbor is for women. It's a housing for women. And she's starting to develop different concepts.

[56:37] The first concept is to come in and do a year time in that house. And if you haven't been there, it's such a great setting of peace and atmosphere.

[56:48] You know, I want to also throw out there, and I'm going to tie us into Joy and Safe Harbor. When you hear me say drug and alcohol, or if you hear me say cognitive behavior and mental health, if Jesus Christ is not Lord in those programs, they're nothing, and you guys know it, and I know it too.

[57:04] I say it, and I'm kind of slithering into positions with the community and being a little political, but we know that God is in the middle of change.

[57:15] The reason why I say that, Joy Fagan, or Safe Harbor's house is here with women coming in, addiction, and sex trafficking, all kinds of prostitutes and stuff staying in this house.

[57:26] You walk into that house, the peace is so strong in there, it's so beautiful. You go a half mile down to another house for rehab, it's like the gates of hell.

[57:39] It's awful. It's death. And everybody looks there. You ever heard of a dry drunk? They haven't been delivered of the alcoholism. They're still in them, but they're not drinking.

[57:50] And that's the way some of those places are. It's so sad. They're miserable. And it's like they're looking out the window of life going, I really want that back. I've not been using for a year, but I'm still a user.

[58:03] In Joy's place, or in Safe Harbor, you can feel the freedom of God in that place. You can see the happiness. You see the healing. And so, in our production of everything we do, we may label it one way, and the justice system jumps on board, and the sheriff jumps on board, but down in the car, on the core roots, especially on our follow-ups, because this is not a stand-alone television program.

[58:28] This is to send volunteers to them, and face-to-face, and work things out, praying with them, leading them to the Lord, helping them grow. It's got lots of follow-up with it.

[58:41] So, yes, you are correct. Thank you for that. That's a great point. Ron? Talk funding. I have some letters and stuff here, and there's a couple of ways for funding.

[59:00] You can simply, the information's on here, and I don't have nearly enough, but the simplest thing you can do is join our website, or, excuse me, email me and join our email list, and I will get you the appropriate information.

[59:16] One simple way is we have a lot of people getting more and more involved in monthly credit card donation where you don't even notice it. You state a monthly amount, and then it just comes, you know, automatic, and some of you guys have got that going, just automatically comes out of your account every month.

[59:34] But like I said, imagine days of programming is working out to be about $300 a day. So it has got definitely a cost involved. We started out with this first year at $100,000.

[59:49] It needs to take off at a budget of $100,000, and I just want to praise God for saying we are $40,000 in. So we got $60,000 to go. It's been terrific.

[60:00] And so we're meeting it there. Then after the first year, we're looking at about around $60,000 every year after that to maintain it and everything.

[60:11] So we're very excited. The cost effectiveness to reach so many people at such a large scope is just pennies to the dollar. It's amazing. So thank you for asking that.

[60:23] And like I said, you have a budget. We have a budget. And you're on our budget. Is that just for general stuff down there?

[60:33] Or is this thing you're talking about something that's going to be a designated fund? Every dollar is going to this television.

[60:46] Every dollar is going to the programming of these shows and everything. So it is designated right to it. Everything, that's the thing we're in right now.

[60:57] We've got everything set up. We've got the structure set up and it's ready to go. So there's no pain for equipment unless we're going to update and fulfill some new stuff.

[61:09] Yes, ma'am. Are you saying that the monthly donation that we make to Clark County Jail right now and we have been is going to this program?

[61:21] Correct. Okay. Correct. And I would say our overhead is about 4%. Red Cross's overhead is about 85%.

[61:32] I don't know if you knew that. A lot of major organizations is large overhead. We've got like a 4% or 5% tiny overhead. So your money is going to this program.

[61:44] So we appreciate it. Like I said, I've got cards. I've got information packs. And if you simply get on the email list and we can follow up, you can go to our GoFundMe page and you just simply go to that page and fill out the credit information and you can donate there.

[62:04] You can write a check to the Clark County Jail Chaplaincy. So all that information is right here. I can certainly just leave it and everything like that. Thank you so much. Appreciate your time.

[62:15] Tony, thank you so much for coming. Appreciate it. Thanks, Tony. Thank you.