So sorry. So with that, um, I shall call this meeting to order and looks like yes, we're all here. Mine is you all in addition to he's pressure landing and our chiefs and Shannon. Are there any additions or modification to the agenda that anybody has have a couple. So I'm going to jump in on that a request that we amend the agenda to remove agenda item 6.01 and 6.02 from the agenda. Um, I've talked to the city attorney and they have yet to review, um, the misconduct release policy and the body, body worn camera release policy. So we cannot take action on those. Yes. Do is anyone, uh, does anyone want to make a motion on those amendment changes? Uh, Shireen motions to do I have a second? Second. Uh, Milo seconds it all in favor of removing agenda item 6.01 and 6.02 from the agenda. Raise your hand or say aye. I believe that was unanimous and, uh, and the second motion to the agenda, sorry, second amendment to the agenda is to add a presentation from Lacey Smith with regards to, uh, her position as the community affairs liaison and, uh, to give a small presentation on the community assistance intervention and peacekeeping program that was, I believe briefly mentioned, uh, sometime last week to the public. Do I have a motion for that amendment? Sorry, do I have, uh, do I have someone do that? Shireen motions it anyone? And, um, commissioner chair Fommage, I could, I'd like to motion that we do that as early in the agenda as possible since I see she's already in the queue. So could, as soon as we do it after public forum, so we don't have to take up her whole evening. I am, I'm absolutely, I'm more than okay with that. Okay. So that would, uh, be between 3.01 and 4.01 on the agenda. Um, do I have anyone to make that motion? I think you raise your hand saying yes, I should. Sorry. That's all right. Do I have a second? Second. Uh, Christian Durfee seconds it all in favor. Please raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Aye. Passes unanimously. Any other amendments to the agenda? Not seeing or hearing any. Um, the motion is on to agenda item 2.01, which is the approval of last meeting's minutes from 11, 17, 2020. Do I have a motion to approve the minutes from last meeting? Christian Durfee motions to minutes from last meeting. Do I have a second? Christian Hart seconds it all in favor of adopting the minutes from last meetings. Raise your hand or say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Passes unanimously. Moving on to public forum. And Shannon, is there anybody signed up for public forum today? I did not have any requests. I, um, do you see someone with their hand raised? I'm not sure if. Absolutely. Uh, if anyone out there in the public, uh, who's listening on Zoom would like to, um, say something in public forum, please raise your hand and, uh, attendee's list and Shannon will promote you so you can speak. Okay. So this is, um, a telephone number. If you would just state your name for us, um, and you may have to unmute yourself on your end. Call her on the phone. It's area code 254. Looks like they are muted currently. Yeah, they are. Um, looks like hello. Perfect. Yes. Can you just state your name for us? Okay. Sorry. I just, my name is David, Bidgen. Perfect, David. Thank you. Uh, happy to have you. Um, so this is public forum and you have, uh, yeah, two minutes to, uh, Am I allowed to ask a question or make a comment? Absolutely. I have two minutes. So yeah, knock us out, sir. Okay. Well, I just want to know, uh, on behalf of the people and everyone in the area and around, um, if, if and when and what y'all are going to do about the BLM problem and the writing and the looting and the just the uprising that's been happening to our country and in the state of everything. I just want to know what y'all's position on this and what y'all are going to do because they, they think they're going to defund the police and I'm under the understanding that it's not, you know, something that's going to happen, but I'd like to know what y'all's position is on it and how we're going to move forward here. Well, uh, I would say that looks like the caller left, but, um, I was going to say that I don't believe BLM is looting and destroying property or whatever he was saying, but, uh, yeah, um, I think moving on. Uh, thank you. Moving on. Well, I guess this takes us to the amended part of the agenda of, um, community, community affairs liaison Lacey Smith. So, Shannon, do you mind promoting, um, miss, miss Smith to a panelist? Thanks for being here. Well, we really appreciate it. Yeah. Um, thanks for having me. Um, so I am here. I guess to talk about, there's a radio in the background that's kind of distracting. Anybody? Yeah. Somebody mute. Thanks. I am here, uh, to talk a little bit about what it is that I do, what my role is with the department in the city of Burlington. Um, I'm inclined to remind people that I work for the city because, uh, because since I am at work, I work out of the police department. I work with the police department. People assume to think that that is the only thing that I do. Um, so, uh, myself and the other social workers of the police department, because there's, I'm one of, I would say three currently. No. Yeah. I'm one of three. And then we have, um, a domestic violence officer who is a part of the team. Um, so this brainchild was, uh, CAPE was developed by us. And I think what's worth knowing. And I think, you know, I thought long and hard about what my, uh, what I would like you all to take away from just kind of what my job is and what I do, um, kind of boils down to three things. It's, I could talk about this for hours.  Um, because this is really complex stuff. And, um, you don't often hear from the lone social workers. You're usually hearing from everything else, everybody else. Um, so to give a brief understanding of kind of what it is that I do, um, community affairs liaison is really kind of a police jargon for social worker. And it is really, I have my or an involved in really any sort of civil issue that comes to the police department from homelessness and neighbor disputes, any low level civil issues, graffiti, vandalism. Uh, I am on the hiring panels. I take a source of complaints for the community. Um, I manage a policy on behalf of the city around camping on public land. Um, so I have a broad, very broad spectrum of things that I do. And I think what the immense amount of value that is in my job is the fact that it is different than the rest of the social worker positions that exist within the social service fabric. And the reason for that is because I work for the public. I work for the city. It's not an, and given that it's not a nonprofit, I have the fluidity, the flexibility, the autonomy to really fill gaps in a way that, um, isn't really happening elsewhere because all of the social services have created gaps. And so inherently what my job does is have a broad understanding of what the social service fabric is of the world to include everything, housing, you know, any sort of benefit, gosh, everything, mental health, developmental disabilities, the whole spectrum of wellness. Um, I am a part of like larger comprehensive care teams where the need of one individual is so great that they can't just be done by one case manager. I am one of multiple case managers that are working with folks. So I think, and I can do that and kind of move in and out with my, basically based on how I assess the need. It's 100% autonomous in my world. And so I've never had a job coming from the nonprofit world where the level of accountability, independence and personal responsibility far exceeds anything that I have, I ever did in the nonprofit world. So this is really a gem that the city doesn't really, I think doesn't understand often misrepresents what I do in the media. And so I think it's really, I know that there's conversations out there around like, why should we have social workers at the police department? Like can't there be other places? And I understand the rationale as to why. Um, but I would, I would argue that as long as the social services in our community continue to function as they are, then there will always be a need for social workers in the criminal justice system. Because that wherever those gaps are throughout the social service system, those people inherently often cycle into the criminal justice system. So there needs to be people that are actively working on assisting people to get out and exit the system. And unfortunately, like you have to be at the ground level working with the first responders because they are often the people that are going to be there before the social services step in. So how do I bridge that gap? And that's really important to me is that knowing where somebody is, and knowing the delay before they get connected to services, knowing that the social service, like street outreach is going to say to them, I can get you connected to Howard Center. But I'll give you, you know, that appointment is going to be Wednesday at 9 a.m. on Pine Street. So get yourself there. That's not how I function. And that's not how we're like, we need, I need to go to where you are. I want to know what it is that you need. If you don't want anything for me, I'm just going to call and say hello. We're just going to, you know, it is about low meeting people where they're at, and then building the trust that's necessary to help them slowly get to where it is that they want to go. So I just, and I think that there's also consideration needs to be put along the fact that like, Burlingtonians voted for certain non criminal behavior to have punitive enforcement approaches, like the noise ordinance where there's tickets, like quality, other quality of life issues that have to do that all like civil tickets or what gets issued. That means that there's enforcement to it. And that in itself is kind of contradictory to what everybody wants. Those are civil issues. They're not criminal. Police should not be responding to those. It should be people that are trying to build the relationships within the community so people can kind of try to help solve their own problems. But you there's enforcement to this now because there are tickets attached to it. So I think those are the things that people have to understand when we talk about defunding it really should be about why how do we want to re envision public safety and social workers, those and, you know, kind of all of the other frontline people and not even necessarily police officers are the ones that are the ones that are that need to be basically at that ground level with working with dispatch in the department to meet people's needs that officers inherently shouldn't be meeting the needs and they don't want to go anywhere. That's not what they got. They didn't get into policing to issue noise to take it. So um, that was a lot. If you guys, I'm I want to answer questions and I don't want to just ramble at you. So please feel free. I'm happy to answer. Lacey, I want to follow up because you and I've had a conversation and we talked about the fact that you are situated at the police department and they wonder if you can talk about why you think that's valuable as you know, sort of fit to be physically at the police department rather than separated from the police department and and how that affects your autonomy in terms of doing your job. So we part of what Cape did was actually kind of create a wing within the department. So we inherently have our own sort of space that allows for, you know, it basically entry and there's its own entry into the building. It is secure from its own sense. So we don't share space with officers per se outside of the domestic violence officer. Um, but I think it's essential because one, I mean, if they are working and going to be the hope is for them to be triaged. So the hope is that dispatch will be able to call these social workers and send them from you know, and send them off to wherever it is that they need to be. I think if there's one thing I know about this job and if there's one thing that I know about social work in general is that you're not going to get anywhere without collaboration. You're not going to get anywhere without communication. And you can certainly do that by putting someone out on the island and putting them in the CJC. But inherently, they're missing that just cross pollination that comes from just somebody walking by in the wing being like, Hey, do you know so and so I'm working around them with them this issue, but they brought up homelessness issue. And then I can come in and be like, I can step in and I can help and get into the coordinated entry system. I can walk them through the housing navigation process and you know, and hope and with the end goal being getting housing. And so with, you know, with the Cape team, we all have kind of our individual sort of responsibilities. But inherently people are complex. So it isn't until you're talking to them that you realize that there's other issues that other people can work on. And like I said, I mean, people could pick up the phone, it's not impossible if you don't put if you put them out on an island. But I think you just are inherently losing the value of just the team of the people that will be surrounding them. And there isn't inherently anything like, I don't know how we think we're going to resolve our issues. If all we kind of do is continue to keep everybody in their boxes and say, you need to be over there because you can't hang out with them over there because if there is and we're concerned, you know, like those are the sorts of things that to me just feel more devised of this. And the police need social workers. And they're the first to tell you like, folks don't come and tell me what to do. They come and they ask me for advice and guidance and direction. It is not I'm not under on anybody's thumb. I I go and tell them what it is that I am doing with my time and what my intentions are and what my agenda is. And I don't and inherently isn't even an ask. It's really just like, this is what I'm doing. And I have built enough trust and respect and clout for them to know that like, I'm going to do what I am saying to do. And I have the ability to make my own decisions and it inherently will be for the benefit of the community. And if there isn't something, if I'm doing something wrong, the only person that is going to be held accountable is me because I don't have a shlue of people behind me. I don't have a shlue of management above me. I have me. And so I'm going to think twice about the decisions I'm making. I'm going to think long and hard about my intentions where things are coming from. Why am I doing things? How am I reacting? Because ultimately it's my job. It's me that is going to be called called a task if something goes wrong.  And right now it's me and one other person and a little a gigantic wing all by myself. And so the hope is, is that there will be buzzing with social workers and there will be kind of this back and forth of officers coming and saying like, like I got a call about a gentleman where the VNA is going to pull out of services for him. Doesn't mean he still doesn't need the VNA services. It means that they've decided that it's too much of a risk. So there's nobody to respond to this man in his house. It will come to the police because he calls the police often. It will fall to the fire department because he calls them when the VNA can't help. So I can't I'm not if I had another social worker that inherently we could kind of pick this person up and be like, all right, how are we going to help get you? How are we going to advocate for those services not to leave you because it's not like your need didn't go away because it's still there. But it's yeah, I think it's a long way to answer your question, but it's just invaluable to have people be centrally located and not inherently creating an invisible wall by putting them out in the island. Commissioner Derfie. Hi. Hi, Lacey. Thank you for your service. I care. Just wanted to ask a couple of logistical questions. Sounds like you answered one where there's only two of you, correct? Yeah, there's well, there's so I'm the there was another social worker and that was the opiate policy manager, but she has since gone and we did not fill that position. So it's me and then the other social worker that I throw in there is the parallel justice slash victim services, Anthony. He is I would throw in a social worker and then Mary McAllister is the victim advocate, which is specific to kind of like DV and S.V. So that's that's it. There'd be three of us working on social related issues. And so and I don't know if this is for you or I'm trying to wrap my head around. There was a proposal around having a couple of more folks join the police department. Social workers, I think the mayor was saying, you know, that that needs to happen. Is that something that has not happened is going to happen still on the table? Where where is that at? For my understanding, there is still discussion about I mean, people who have issues with people with social workers being at the police department. So we're doing a fair amount of processing around that. And I know people say that it's necessary, but it doesn't seem like I don't think there's been any movement in the way of budget or anything like that. And I could use some help.  Which is which is just I mean, I'm a regular like eight thirty to five or I can go a little bit in both directions. But I'm running in. Yeah. And so much of my work has kind of like began because it's fluid. It started out with certain things and now it's kind of homelessness has really been like my the gap that I've found myself living in the most consistently. Yeah, I think it's important just to ask those questions. So people listening can understand like, OK, it's you and, you know, exactly get a picture in their mind. Yeah, thank you. But what's happening? All right. Thank you very much. DC LeBrecht, I'm sorry, hand up before. Do you have something you wanted to say? Thank you, commissioner. I'll actually let the chief go first and see if he was going to answer. I just want to say like, yeah, when I hear, you know, when we talk of the CSL's, I envision more Lacey's that would be at the department working with her, helping her out because she really is a one person army right now. And I could talk for quite a while about her as well and how much she adds to and takes off the plates of officers at at, you know, almost daily and especially when it comes to like connecting those social services and just the broad spectrum of services she works with is, you know, from the courts to to cuts to like all the shelters to the homeless encampments really, you know, I guess when I heard the CSL positions, that's really what I envision would be some more Lacey's working in there. And, you know, she already has kind of established, I believe what it should look like what the program should look like and how to integrate it. And, you know, I would if that's what this turns out to be, I would look towards her really to be, you know, training these people as they came in. I know they would come with degrees already in some of the fields, which would be a great thing, but she would be like the boots on the ground day to day, like how this is all going to to work together. And she really does, you know, when she comes to me and asks me for something, like, I know she needs it. She's not, you know, she will take and handle whatever she can up to a point. And if she needs an officer for something, she also has no problem of coming and saying, like, you know, this is why I've tried all these things and I need an officer with me for safety or just, you know, you know, for another person being there to help her out. So I guess that was my my two cents. And I'm really glad that they've kind of moved from where they were into the spot where they and I concur with her 100 percent, like putting them together in this room. And when we looked around and and where she wanted to move, like it does allow to add more people in there. But the workspace is really nice that they can all communicate and work together. So I appreciate you letting me speak. Thank you for that. And I believe I saw Chief Murat's hand raised earlier on. Yes. And I'm really just going to echo a lot of what D.C. Lebrek has said. I can't speak highly enough about the work that Lacey does and have sung her praises frequently whenever I can. And frankly, the discussion about the CSL positions was frequently phrased as we need another Lacey. We need another Lacey who's going to deal with things other than just homelessness. We need, again, to have a capacity to deal with the opioid epidemic and substance use disorder and to make certain that the people who suffer from that are treated with humanely and with dignity and that we have the capacity to do the kind of outreach that comes from police encounters and that the information sharing is organic and is immediate because of that embedment in the police department, but nevertheless has immediate impacts on people who are in those situations. We also need a person who's going to deal with some of the things that Lacey does currently deal with that are more routine kinds of mental health issues that are not mental health crises. These are not people who need a police response. They're not even people who are in the downtown corridor or out in the street who necessarily would require street outreach, nor are they people who are in a position of needing of exhibiting immediate harm to themselves or others that would require, for example, something like first call, they fall into a place that is not police appropriate is not necessarily a street outreach issue. Although we do sometimes use street outreach resources to deal with them depending on the time of day and depending on whether or not they're out and about. But these are people who are frequent callers and frankly all of you and all the members of the city council have been sometimes the recipient of emails and communications from such folks, people who are our high volume users of our city resources and need to be treated in certain ways and handled in certain ways that are appropriate and lawful and caring. And also are maximizing the systems that we do have available and when possible finding out whether there are gaps in those systems so that there can be alternatives that are developed for specific cases. This is what Lacey does all the time and the police department's control of that is nominal. We allow we don't allow we work best together when she is able to have that kind of autonomy and be able to move through those cases when I can walk in in the morning after having gotten certain calls certain types of calls at night or having certain emails in my inbox and turn to her and say, hey, have you been following this and inevitably she will say yeah, we have and yes, we've been noticing that this individual that individual is is changing is spiraling is is having some problems right now. But the ability to have that coordinated immediately and organically with police services is what really drives home the value of having that here. Frankly, the community has long wanted the sense of saying either police need to be social workers or they need to be more or more versed in social work or we want social workers to be doing some of these things with the police and the goalposts keep moving on us because when we bring a social worker into the facility and into the system and really start developing a working rhythm that is effective and productive, then suddenly there's an effort to say no, we don't want them to be based in the building. The practitioners who are talking about this and are seeing the benefits of how these things work almost universally say that this is the place to have those kinds of resources. I think I would just like to add that like I don't know police are going to do less but that doesn't resolve any of these issues and are like for individuals especially just given the nature of the systems that we're working with. So I just there has to be kind of a balance like we we need a balance and I think the social workers are inherently able to fill gaps in different ways that are not only just reactive but also preventative. And I think policing has no real ability to be preventative because all they're doing is being reactive and they don't have time to be preventative and the preventative positions we had the community affairs officer the domestic violence officer like those are the type those are more the SROs. Those are all in my mind a lot of the work that they do is preventative. It's farther upstream. They have the ability to do reactive stuff but their purpose is to be more preventative and we've lost that. We've lost not the SROs but the community affairs officer is been taken and the DV officer is just like hanging on by you know the threat. So we need social workers that are not only going to be able to do the reactive stuff but they're going to are trained to do a lot of the preventative stuff. Director Dodson. Thank you, Chair Gamash. Hello, everyone. Good to see you, Lacey. So if you'll all bear with me and anyone who is on here who wants to correct me, please do. But I have a ulterior motive as a director of police transformation and as a citizen. Kyle Dodson raised a family here lives in Burlington. So here's a situation we have. These are facts. We budgeted 105 sworn officers resolution to reduce that to 74, 92 at the time that the resolution went down. Thereabouts and 82, 81 effective currently and that number is going down. So this conversation because I have an interest in the commission understanding things to the best of their ability so the commission can weigh in and support this community in getting the things that all of us need. And this conversation seems to be very much part of that because part of the question is we've had historically a set of occurrences in the city events, things that the police respond to. That number will be a down a little bit in 2020 but not nearly as significant as you might think. And the command has put out data that actually the most significant the type three are up. But as we move into 2021 it seems reasonable to expect that with hopefully most things seem to point to the fact that we will open more at some point in 2021 than we have been since pre-March and with that opening and with the excitement people have to get out there and to pent up everything we're probably gonna have more things go down. So we're decreasing in resource at the time that we might argue some things need to happen and there's a lot of conversation about how we fill that. So back to Lacey I wonder if it might not be helpful if you could in your opinion Lacey as objective as you can be what is it that you do that a street worker does it currently to the degree you're both trained their social worker your social worker they have relationships you have relationships you have very different you work under different circumstances but for the community's sake and for this commission what is it that you can do with the same training underneath BPD that cannot be done? And then I was wondering if you could walk us without giving us the names but an actual case give us someone in the community that shows how you intervene how that intervention actually supports community expectations meaning that you intervene in an absence of you maybe a uniform the gun toting officer would intervene and what latitude do you have to support that person in a way that it might look different if a uniform officer were to do that same thing and then that point where but there's a limit and sometimes you're involved and you're not enough so is there a line and because all this stuff has probably happened for you but the community doesn't know walk us through what that actually looks like I responded to this thing it seemed at this level and I know the person and things were going well but then things kind of went sideways and therefore it called for something else like we need to flesh out what's actually happening because I feel like too many in the conversation are abstract boots on the ground like walk us through it please Lacey Yes so you had two questions you wanted a story which I can give and then you also wanted oh the difference between me and treat Irish that's right because people are saying let's just get more street workers and have them work at Howard and maybe that's the way to go but no one understands why that's good or not good what's at least your opinion on what we gain from that or what we lose or why that's not perhaps as simple as it seems let me start off with things I mean Street Outreach is valuable they offer what they do for the department is invaluable and so but they have changed over time so just to give some context when I started you know five and a half years ago they had the ability to not only just respond to dispatched calls but to actually really kind of dig in with the individual check on that like look for calls of service see that someone's called multiple times and that it's all kind of related to civil civil issues and then they would almost like pick up the person and they would kind of take the point of contact and they would build a relationship and a rapport and then they would be able to just intervene when calls came in from the individual and calls would inherently drop because they would have the relationship for the person to reach directly back out to them which changed for Street Outreach is that with their funding kind of them losing funding in people and they're a smaller team they've pivoted and so they're they are not able to respond as much as they have been historically so they are much more involved in the broader picture of things and so they respond to dispatched calls with officers or instead of officers but that is generally specific to Burlington specific it's Burlington Greater Burlington so they are located on Church Street and that is where they kind of function at it that is where their ground zero is and so they will disband they will go to calls that the police department asks them to but they inherently they're not going into someone's house to you know to like check to see if you know someone's had so let's say someone overdoses and part of what Jackie's position was the other social worker prior to leaving was that she'd go in the day you know her when she got in the morning she'd look to see if there was any overdose deaths and we would do direct outreach based on just the fact that somebody had a really bad night the night before and so we want to know if you're okay and have you do you have everything you need have you thought about you know what is it that just know we're here and so street outreach doesn't have the ability to do kind of again the preventative work where we are going out in doing the outreach that's necessary to encampments encampments really are not their gig they are not going out and doing cold outreach to encampments they will go if again if dispatch were to send them if there's a reason for them to be there but they are now more of a bridge to resources than actually kind of providing the service themselves and holding onto them so they build relationships and rapport but they are really meant to be a conduit to something else I am also like that however there is nothing that dictates how long I am with a person how long our relationship is what I do with them like if I'm just calling to see if they need help doing laundry I can do that I don't have to have like it's not ticking a box around like what are your goals today and you know do you you know I can make a referral to you to this place that you can go at eight o'clock but I'm not going to offer you a ride and I'm you know I'm just going to let you know when it is and that you need to get yourself there so I just think that what this community needs is really the low bar we're going to come to you we're going to go and just say to you hey I'm here I'm a social wrecker and if you want to just have coffee then that's good do you need anything oh you need some gloves I can get you some gloves I just meet people where they're at and inherently a good example of that is a gentleman that I work with and he lived long time homeless and was very much adamant about building on outside was his gig that was it and we dealt with him fairly regularly because he is his again his turf was city hall park and then when city hall park closed he moved and he sat right next to city hall and he's a super intelligent man who is very good at advocating his name and advocating for the homeless and so I started connecting with him really just because he was camping down at the waterfront and and I really when the park was closing I started a conversation with him just around like just how he was and who he was and continued to just check in with him because outside of city halls where he sat every day and and ultimately he ended up having a medical issue which resulted in him going to the hospital and I was able because I work with the social workers at the hospital they let me know because they knew I had a relationship with him I visited him multiple times that's why he was up there you know there was no there was no other social service provider at the time so I was able to get safe harbor involved who's still connected with him he has since moved you know out of the hospital and is wants housing and because of a change in his circumstance I have inherently not only did I help get safe harbor involved but you know we worked on the paperwork around housing so he has a voucher and is about to get housed now and I followed him you know during the beginning of COVID when everything kind of started I was trying to figure out excuse me if I wasn't going to be at the office and I wasn't going to be in Burlington at the time like what was I going to do because I mean and being a part of the homeless community and the services provided to them you know there was a need for motel outreach and for people to go into the motels and to help people essentially exit the motel system and so just again through my relationships through my working with the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance I was able to get myself into a place to be able to provide the necessary service to help people move out of the motel and into permanent housing so I can provide that service now and that's simply because of the relationships that I've made I would work with years for people to get on releases to enter information into systems and so and I still I'm giving this gentleman a ride on Friday to go get his to replace his ID ID and this has been about two and a half years now and I just my role with him I'm a part of like he's got a nurse case manager he's got his other housing case manager and then there's me who is really just I understand him I know him he trusts me and so I have the ability to just you know his case managers call me when they want to deliver news to him that they might that he might not like so I'm the person that delivers the news and I'm the person that they call in the moment of crisis it's not their other social service providers it's me so I just think that through relationships and through being a part of these bigger collaborative teams he's one example of multiple people that I work with that I have inherently I'm just a part of their lives in a different way than the social service providers are because I don't come with expectations I come to hear them out I come to see how I can be helpful and again if it's advocacy whatever it may be if they just want to complain about something then that's what I'm gonna spend two hours doing of my day I'm gonna listen to them and so I just again it's invaluable because I don't have the same red tape I don't have the constraints I don't have the you know the HIPAA and the whole like I can't talk to you or I can't I can't confirm or deny if I'm providing service to this person it is I'm here because they've asked me to be here and I'm gonna continue to be there as long as they want me to be and that's really kind of how I function and I think that's the beauty of this does that answer any of your questions? Yes thanks Lacey I guess I would just say that and you know just for the record that question perhaps depending on who is judging it might seem like it was a setup that I was you know setting you up to give the answer that I wanted but I think that one of the big challenges is the community doesn't understand the complexities I don't I've spent you know going on two months inside the building but it's a complex organization with a lot of pieces and we've got big decisions to make and we don't have a lot of time to make those decisions so I just want to echo and thank you for being here and sharing with us and hopefully providing the commission and the community with insight so that we can you know better make decisions about this these difficult issues and also I think it's you know just personally is wonderful that with regard to the conversation we're having now here we have a woman of color who loves her job who's out there every day and I've heard nothing but good things about the things you do and it seems like that's what we're asking for as a community is people who have that I I have not heard of community members having bad interaction with you it seems like you're a supportive resource for the community and something that helps people in the way that I believe our community is asking to have happened so I think it's great that you're out there thank you well I think that one of the things you know for me one of the restored you know a one of a restorative practice or like just a restorative thought has to do with the fact that there is you know intention is different than impact and so I understand that like folks are really you know the intentions that are out there because and I you know I'm all for police reform I am all for more social workers I'm all for police responding to not responding to things that they shouldn't be responding to um I just think that like the how simple it seems to be discussed is what's the most concerning for me because it is immensely complex it is immensely gray and I know again intention is always is different than impact and I know that I've seen plenty of times within the social service world where they're well-intended people do well-intended things and inadvertently have a negative impact on their consumers because they created a box and now we weed you out now by and by thinking that we're doing something well-intended so it's I think it's just good for that I just want to ask can I ask a quick question I just want to ask what what degree do you hold I just have a psych degree and I am all of my training has been really related to social work and mediation and um I started out in the world of developmental services and have worked through basically the whole spectrum of family uh and in and then ended up kind of doing crisis work and also just work with people that were co-co-occurring so both mental health and or substance abuse or developmental disability and or substance use are just kind of it all poverty at all thank you yeah thank you for that um do you um could you provide any um further insight into the community assistance intervention and peacekeeping program um that I've that I've been hearing flooded about and maybe explain some of that to the public as well yes so cape as we call ourselves and I am adamant about having a cape just to throw that out there um because I consider us to be the real super hero um so cape is the community assistance and intervention wait community assistance intervention and peacekeeping programs and basically this is just all of the social services that already were in the police department these people already existed they've been doing their jobs for some of them 20 plus years and we inherently were just one of the biggest issues that we have are people don't know we exist they don't know what service we provide they don't know that we even are there and so it felt important that and that it really didn't we didn't need anybody we didn't need any money to do this we didn't need anything from anybody to say how can we do our jobs better and so the purpose of this you know team is really to just be able to you know put us up put us out there to the public in a very can you know concise and um easy sort of way to understand what it is that we do and how we can help um so it varies between us myself as the community affairs liaison there is a like I said the parallel justice victim services specialist and he is actually a joint position between the burlington police department and the community justice center there's the domestic violence advocate and then there is the domestic violence officer um and then hopefully there will be as what they're calling them CSLs community support liaisons and those would be the kind of the folks that are responding to the on you know in the moment active call sort of stuff um instead of dispatching police officers so and I guess it's like anything civil like oh gosh any sort of victim services of anybody that's been a victim of harm or a victim of crime anthony can help the dv stuff I think is kind of pretty straightforward and then I'm really the catchall from you know again complaints to hiring to everything in between is me awesome uh thank you for that um any commissioners have any further questions for uh miss Smith commissioner heart yeah hi lacy thanks for joining us so you talked about and I don't know if this is a question for you but I'm gonna I'm gonna ask it um the fact that we didn't the department didn't replace the opioid I don't know what uh her name is escaping me but I don't know what her title was but that we did we haven't replaced her is there a plan to do so or my knowledge I don't believe there is a plan to replace Jackie they were going to absorb her salary right chief or east east elvin go right ahead go ahead matt I was going to add at least initially our our plan was and this came from Jackie herself that she felt like we could create these csl positions using her salary to fund these positions and then have these social workers who would respond just as lacy described and she actually gave a great summary of also street outreach because previously over the years street outreach has been embedded with the police department and again all these positions are invaluable they all have a great deal of autonomy and really the police administration philosophy is uh how can we support them so if they have issues and they they bring those issues to police administration we just try to help facilitate any solutions that they feel are appropriate for for these incidents or issues thank you another question so we heard like you have in our discussions we've heard push back about the csls being situated at the department or with the department so i'm wondering in your experience how has that played out at all for you are you perceived to be with the department or are you perceived to be more generally with the city or is it i'm just wondering if that has played into your ability to support people so um what i will say is that the people that i work with now like i i have even the people that are staunch like i don't want you know f the police and you're just you know a spy or whatever it may be i just will say all right i mean i'm not there to i'm i'll show you i'll just through behavior i don't just that's fine you're allowed to think or believe whatever you want i'm just going to continue to do me and i think you'll see my intention in what my what i'm here to do um but like from the general public absolutely like i there have been plenty of people that won't i'm not allowed to have a voice at tables because i work for the police department i'm not allowed i mean i must be under the thumb of the police department because my experience is an inherently a negative one because i don't have because i can't you know god forbid i have autonomy and have the ability to ask questions and kind of push back if i need to i think people just make the assumption that i'm just upon at times to push the police's agenda and it couldn't be farther from the truth like i am so not that type of person it's just the exact opposite so while things have become more and more divisive within our community as conversations have become more and more divisive as these kind of echo chambers that we existed in these zoom meetings where the same people show up every time we are only hearing the same voices and so yeah i've definitely been excluded because i work for the police department i had to fight to get on the releases for the homeless alliance that was years of me saying to people showing up and being like no i'm i don't you don't care if your client has a warrant like that's not i'm not a police officer and that's not inherently what i'm here to do i will encourage them to turn themselves in and and inform them of how to do it without having to even have officers involved because there is a way to do it but i'm not i am there to inherently try to help people get out of this system i'm not actively trying to get anybody in the system and so it's really unfortunate to me that i don't have the ability to let people have been kind of so like no we don't want to hear what she has to say because she works at the police department it's probably one of the hardest things i've had to deal with because it negates everything else about me and it gets that i'm a woman and it gets them biracial and it gets everything i'm not allowed to be a part of conversations because of where i sit not understanding that i work for the city of burlington i'm a public servant i don't get to choose who i speak to i don't get to choose which phone calls i answer i don't get to choose which emails i answer i work for the people and therefore that's who i'm accountable to and so if i i will ask officers questions i will ask if i you know if something was professional or not i will come to them with concerns and i've never come across an incident where i've brought up a concern where it's fallen on deaf ears so i don't have to do it often um but i just i think people are missing the boat by behaving as if everybody in our community should not should like we should all be heard this is a community issue and so we need multiple perspectives to inform our opinions and our understanding of what this community needs and not just specific segments of the community it is important to kind of obviously equity is important and we should be raising kind of the voice of the people that have often be pushed to the side but when we choose one subset over any other of the other ones that are equally see this you know suffering i think it just creates such issues within our community just further divides us sorry that was a no i appreciate that thank you thanks for answering that yeah so uh does anyone have any uh further questions for uh macy smith here here gommash i do see commissioner grants hand up oh i'm sorry i didn't see that uh jump right in i'm miss grant thank you lacy i would like to have um a conversation with you at a different time i have um some ideas about um i don't want to say promoting your position but i definitely hear loud and clear what you're saying um in terms of people's incorrect assumptions about your position so please feel free to reach out to me and then a question i have regarding um some of the things that you mentioned for this meeting so it sounds like you you've made it very clear that you're working independently even though your primary office is at the police station yep have and you don't feel that you could do your job better if you were based someplace else i mean i having done this for five and a half years at this point yes i could do it anywhere i mean i that's because again like i i know what i'm doing it is somebody that's starting the job like and just the high degree of autonomy that you have in this job means that like you start it running you're not like you're gonna get the training that you need and then you're gone and you are just expected to do and so you have to do a lot of like on-the-fly thinking and when you're just trying to like it's your first day and you don't have anybody to like bounce anything off and dispatch calls you and says hey can you go to 219 you know south union for a neighbor dispute and it just what we're told is people arguing i can't even imagine like when you would have access to the system and know like maybe i could go and see what the history is there and who it's the history of these people and what am i walking into and what like i think that all of that comes from exposure to somebody like me who has been doing it and if you have them away from me i can still do all that in the phone they are going to come to me though they're gonna come to the department and they're gonna there's just no way around not working collaboratively this won't work if we aren't functioning as a team or it will but there will be a lot more duplication of services and so i still i mean go ahead so you're saying that if you get a request to go someplace that you've never been before you would use resources at the department in order to research the history of the location mainly to verify that it's safe for you to go alone or yeah and i think it just gives context yes of like what you're walking into because part of being dispatched is that your like dispatch is giving you the only information that they have and if the caller's just calling saying like my neighbor's being noisy and yelling at me because i asked them to be quiet and that's it that's and then they hang up i want to see an officer like i don't that's i don't know how anybody especially someone who hasn't really been doing this work is gonna feel totally comfortable just kind of being like all right i'm just gonna go knock on someone's door and try to you know i think that we have to function as a team as social workers they're not gonna go by themselves to a call like to a response like that there has to be two of us so i think that again i don't think it's impossible and i think the community justice center would be the most appropriate location given there's already kind of these joint relationship between positions with the pd and the community justice center but i i just feel like again like they're we're in a wing by ourselves if social workers wanted to walk into the building and not encounter a police officer they could do that so it's you know i think i don't have the worry because i will be involved and it's like it's part of the their training and they're kind of learning how to do their job is going to be from me and i get i would understand what the concern would be if i was a community member and it was you know you didn't i mean and you're not me um and i get that there are always going to people that are not comfortable coming to the police department and i hundred percent and i still work with those people they don't come to the building i go to them i'll go sit with them on the street corner i will go to wherever alley they sleep in i will go to their apartment i it's and those i still have those relationships so i don't see it as a barrier because i don't my world doesn't function in that department my world is out in the community but just because i have a home base where i leave my stuff doesn't mean that i'm i don't feel as it impedes my ability to do my job because i don't really function out of there anyway okay thank you and then my last question is you had mentioned something about there being discussions and lack of agreement with regards to funding for your position not mine no i think it was around the csls okay the news itself okay new social workers okay thank you thank you and i will i'll be in touch please thank you any further questions i'm not seeing any lacy thank you so much for being here i know i really appreciate this thing people appreciate this and i know the public hopefully appreciate it says well and uh look forward to seeing you sometime in the future yeah thank you all i appreciate it take care all right moving on with the agenda we're at item 4.01 which is the chief's report see we have three chiefs here i don't know who's going to take it but so whoever it is take it away i think i'll i'll take the the first stab at it um not that it's going to go on for for too long um so i think the the major thing that we have to report from the past month or so since we last met just before Thanksgiving is i presented numbers to you i i got them to you this time before the meeting and actually we uploaded them uh to board docs um and distributed i'm happy to read those through but i think that the request previously was that i try to get them to you uh earlier than the meeting because really who wants to hear me recite numbers uh those numbers are important of course they represent the work that the men and women here have done um but uh it's it's up on board docs and and there for your perusal um for us the biggest thing that that occurred was this discussion of staffing of getting our staffing picture out into the open fully and these were things that i had presented from the beginning when we began our discussions about staffing in June uh and in advance of the uh excuse me of the budget process talked about what the the kinds of staffing changes that were being envisioned both by first the call-in of the racial justice alliance and then by the city council what that might cause and what sort of implications it would have and then have been saying as much to this body in meetings as we've proceeded since that time i've been keeping you apprised of our headcount of losses and departures gave a little picture of some staffing issues i think two sessions ago um i on wednesday was on the curt right radio show last wednesday and talked about some of these issues in advance of a presentation that we conducted for all media invited media invited you invited um the uh the city council as well on friday morning and we presented a powerpoint that discusses our staffing in pretty granular detail and i think that it's a very friendly document for lay people as well in that it really does uh spell out initially how the department is structured how we distribute our staff across 24 hours and across three major uh sort of chains of operation those being our road services our patrol services our airport obligation and our detective services and where the staffing is going based on departures that we've experienced departures that we very reasonably anticipate happening and ultimately departures that we have a certain amount of of hypothesis about and then retirements on top of that and the fact that the number of officers eligible to retire by by 20 excuse me by september of 2021 would bring us to a very low level we are already at a staffing level that we have not seen in a couple decades um and so one of the things to talk about in that staffing presentation and i encourage certainly anyone to go to it i believe that i sent a the document directly to all of you um but it is posted on the bpd website uh and the city bpd website right at the top and can be found uh we also on our facebook page posted a link to uh youtube where we've put up the actual presentation itself um and i really encourage anyone who who is interested to go see that to look through it and get a sense of of where we are um and and where we are is that we're losing people and more importantly we're losing the roles that those people perform and the services that they provide and some of the things that lacy spoke about very eloquently have to do with this notion of prevention uh and and going back to 1829 and and sir robert peale and director dodson uh elbowed me and gave me a little bit of a hard time for bringing up sir robert peale on the curt right radio show but sir robert peale was uh both a member of the british parliament and the founder of the meshpong police of london and is really considered the father of modern policing and he has a set of nine rules of nine principles from 1829 and it's probably apocryphal that he himself wrote them but that doesn't matter at this point we're in the land of of the man who shot liberty valence when the legend becomes uh you know when myth becomes legend print the legend so what we have here is a picture of of all the way back to 1829 principles that guide policing and the first of them the first and foremost of them is that the basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder not respond to it prevent it and what we have is a system that thanks to a lot of things cars and 911 and a lot of different kinds of technological advances has become increasingly a responsive agency and and it really is we judge ourselves many agencies by response times by the volume of calls for service but the bread the real the real heart of the work is prevention and our roles that are preventive are our cso's uh excuse me our sro's our sro's our school resource officers our um the the dvp o the domestic violence prevention officer it's right there in the name uh and our community affairs officer in conjunction with uh those are all sworn level three police officers they carry firearms they have arrest powers although they they don't certainly the community affairs officer doesn't use those arrest powers with great frequency nor do the sro's in the schools for that matter but they have them but they work in conjunction with people like lacy with people like our victims advocate with people like the embedded victims advocate from the cjc and they are able to do preventive work that prevents us having to send officers to calls down the road and we are losing those positions because they are not the core uh capability of the agency which is patrol and as we contract with regard to headcount we divert more and more of our resources as a percentage to patrol and this is going to be this is a loss to us um so that's something that i hope people will take advantage of and go see that document uh we've made it as available as we can we're going to continue to do so and try to uh prompt it you know put out additional public notices that it's there to try to get as many people to look at it as possible because i really think it's important for all of our neighbors to become part of this conversation we've had incredibly impassioned people who are weighing in and making their feelings known both in the summer and then much smaller numbers but even more passionate members who were calling in to charter change committees to this body to the city council uh but what that amounts to is uh it is a portion of our 44,000 residents here in burlington and we need to hear from all of those residents because those residents have a stake in what's happening too and the the very probable loss of overnight coverage of midnight coverage from 3 a.m to 7 30 a.m is going to extremely affect this city and the people who are going to be affected by it need to understand that it's happening and they need to weigh in in order for us to find as many avenues forward as we can because without those voices at the table we're going to be constrained to very specific paths and those paths are not necessarily the ones that get us to a point of again being able to provide a public safety that works for all of us. I also want to take this time to talk a little bit about some training that's ongoing and some early pieces that we're coming into. We are going to be engaging in a racial equity training with a provider named Frest Loving who came to us through a number of connections, has an exemplary resume, a lot of experience in this role. Director Dodson spoke with her as well prior to our officially engaging with her and this is going to be an ongoing conversational process. It's not going to be single serving, it's going to be iterative. We're going to be working with her a lot and she's going to be working in multiple stages through phases of planned programming but also in each planned program with each part of our agency. So she's going to be conducting each in a number of times. She runs the Institute for Racial Equity and she conducted a survey prior to engaging with us that was I felt pretty remarkable in so far as the kinds of openness that the men and women in this department had towards this topic and the willingness they had to engage in it and frankly that willingness is something that that encouraged her to actually engage with us. We are working really hard to address what we see as deficiencies in the training that is provided to police officers with regard to physical use of force in their Vermont police academy section of training and instead we are supplementing it augmenting it both in our post basic training although we don't have any officers in post basic because we don't have any new officers but also in our ongoing annual training it is a a form of training delivered by what's called Gracie University. It's based in Brazilian jujitsu. It is focused on grappling techniques that involve control holds that are far far safer than strike oriented control methods that are generally taught. It takes it takes work. It takes time to be able to give officers that time to train and to learn those kinds of techniques that make it safer for the officers and for the subjects and training is going to be tight with fewer officers. The fewer officers you have the less ability you have to divert some of those officers into training for a day while you're still maintaining your presence to do your core roles but it's something that we feel is really important and that we're taking a lead on to minimize the use of force in any encounter and much of it is about the escalation training which is a component as well but it's also training on its own through iCAT. I think that you know we are also very eager to see what happens with our benchmark system and the new system that's been permitted to us by the City Council that is actually going to really be able to track both uses of force as well as other performance monitors that include the officers whether or not they're having disciplinary issues whether we see any kinds of patterns evolving in their conduct and this is all on top of training that we've been doing for a long time. I'm excited about the training with Ms. Loving because it is iterative and it goes into a much more engaged and repeated kind of process and engagement something that becomes a real hopefully two-way process for our officers because we've done a lot of training over the past since basically over the past 15 years we've done 45-47 different sessions of training that can be tracked and and they run the gamut from Arab and Muslim cultural awareness training, white privilege training, transgender training, bias free policing training, policing diverse communities training, Nepali culture and language training, implicit bias training, the the effort that Chief Del Pozzo made to send officers to the Alabama Legacy Museum. These things have been happening for the past very number of years, 15 years, 47 plus trainings, three different types of training that works out to per year and and obviously you know we still want to make sure that we are doing more that we're learning more that we're trying to stay as ahead of all these issues as possible because ultimately our desire is to make certain that we are serving the community the way the community wants to be served and that brings me to one last piece which is that making certain that these kinds of trainings work and making certain that the the sort of things that benchmark may track are being appropriately looked at and appropriately followed with regard to either discipline if necessary or with regard to policy changes if necessary is I think the next step and making certain that we have adequate and strong civilian input is is the key to that and citizen input is is tremendously important and I truly believe that this body represents a real venue for that and I want to make clear that that I think that that you all deserve a much more a much greater sense of appreciation for the work that you do. These hours that we spend in these meetings, the hours that I spend talking to each of you individually or sometimes in groups with regard to specific requests you have with complaints that come in through you that you ask to have evaluated and sent through our process and then brought back to you for final resolution so that you can see those resolutions and weigh in on them and shape them. I think that we can improve it further this relationship I think that we can certainly we can do more about data release and that includes for example the the use of force reports that the Deputy Chief LeBrecht started to present to you in our most recent executive session it includes the document that we already made public for the Charter Change Committee but that you have all seen which is our complaints our complaints for the past three years and and put forward and that's going to be we'll see that again. We can talk about making that fully public rather than presented in executive session we talked about that in executive session previously and we I don't know that we came to a final conclusion about it we can I think give I think that the idea of having this body presented with subpoena power and with the ability to conduct certain kinds of investigations when you believe that it's appropriate for those cases is something that is a positive move forward I don't think it's going to be used very often and frankly I think you all might agree based on the volume of cases you've seen over the past several years for those of you who've been members for a while but the ability to do it is what's important so that you can make that distinction for yourselves and then recommendations based on a disciplinary matrix that I think all of us could build together based on historic discipline that's been distributed based on goals for discipline moving forward based on making certain that it's consistent with the contract with the law with due process for employees and with with the rights of of both employees and of the those who need to have some kind of redress and then that discipline matrix binds both the recommendations made by the body and and by the chief and the final decision made by the chief I think that I'm hopeful that we can get this body camera policy that you discussed out I'm hopeful that we can find the resources necessary for us to be able to comply with it that is a concern of mine that we that even once you release it we will not necessarily be able to comply with it as as written based on our current resources but we can work on finding solutions to that and I think that there is a lot to be done by this body and others and I've had some conversations for example with Commissioner Grant around this about making this body and its work and what you learn more available to the public at large and and letting the public into these processes better making them aware of how these processes work we are going to be offering for the very first time an online Citizens Police Academy starting at the same time as the Police Academy has started in the past in January and that Citizens Police Academy is something that some of you have gone through and I think found very fruitful and helpful in understanding what the job does I want to say everybody in the city get that as much as I want those 44,000 people as part of the conversation I also want those 44,000 people to understand what we do here and then the last but not least is I think that we can really start to take a look at some of the data that is coming out of the reports that we've produced reports that others have including Commissioner Seguino outside of the commission and what Director Lowe's office is now producing and I think that the commission is a venue for for actually making some of those kinds of reviews to take a look at that data and make determinations about you know what are we going to do about this hear recommendations for that and being able to confront and tackle those things that do remain to us which are significant issues with regard to racial disparity in in use of force in a rest rate and making certain that we're moving in the right direction on those I believe that we are especially on traffic I think that that movement has been clear and demonstrable on traffic over the path not over the if you look at the eight-year picture it's one thing if you look at the past two years it's a very different picture and that's a positive story I think we could do the same with some others and I believe that working with the police commission to make those things happen is is the key to ensuring that we have police legitimacy in the form of of the input of our neighbors and the clear role of our neighbors in all of these processes so that we're working together to serve the community as best as we can thank you for that any questions any questions over there any that Christian heart thank you chief one of the things you talked about was the use of force reporting that dc lebrek was doing and I want to I think we're if we're talking about the same provision we might be okay I think our concern was the provision that required reports or updates to be in executive session and that was in the oversight policy is that correct that is correct that that the role of the police commission in employee discipline that we passed together or the you passed excuse me that you passed in um August on August 25th does require that that be done in executive session okay I'm not so here's the language that I'm seeing but I will it is not the final draft but I don't think this changed but I think we might be okay with doing these without needing any more input from anyone reading from numbered paragraph four or section four in that policy and it states that updates about complaints against employees will be shared with the commission in executive session is that so this is we're not talking about complaints the dc lebrek we're just talking about data um about use of force cases is that correct that's correct oh that is correct I'm sorry there's just simply the use of force um incidents that happened in that time period so I don't think we're limited in in having that discussion in open meeting based on that I'm sorry but in in four and if you go down they're not lettered or numbered but the the fourth dash under four states that the chief of police or his or her designee will report to the police commission in executive session on a monthly basis regarding use of force incidents okay I'm sorry so I see where you are I was at the wrong spot yep so we as a commission need to it's our policy so we simply need to because I think we all agreed that we'd rather have that disclosed in public in open meeting if and we're not talking about individual employees so we as a commission just need to change this policy to make that happen is that right I guess I'm saying that to all of us I think that's right that we it's our own policy and so um yeah that makes sense sorry I'm gonna say the one day at the one day I don't have uh the city attorney with us for the actual meeting the answer this question um and I'll be honest I think that I have thought I I would confer with her I think I may have said that that I would try to connect with her on this so maybe we should have that on the agenda for next month that um we revisit revisit this provision and and um and see if we can change it which I think there's no reason we can't but we should check with Eileen will do I agree with that thank you chief sorry about that all right um moving forward to I'm sorry I'm sorry if I may sorry yeah I have my sorry camera inside there no worries uh no this was just a follow-up on Commissioner Hart's point uh so I actually think that the easiest way to do this might just be for somebody to draft you know given my understanding that there is nothing which prevents that particular discussion from happening in open session it seems as though and and given that it doesn't seem as though there's any objection on anyone's part of the commission or the cheese for that happening in open session it seems to me as though the best thing to do would be for us to just draft a essentially a new policy which which you know which which fixes that part of it and then once we have that new draft we can we can essentially kind of vet that draft by the city attorney rather than kind of wait for the next session to have the initial conversation with the attorney and then do another draft and then you know that just we just draft that now and then present that and say does this you know are there any problems with doing that that might just speed up the process a little bit so I think it could be as easy as the paragraph currently states the chief of police or his or her designate will report to the police commission in executive session on the monthly basis regarding any use of force incidents which I'll include demographic data about the officers and subjects such as gender age and race and also provide a description of the incident so we can change that to say the chief of police or his or her designate will report to the police commission in open meeting I agree with that modification I think that we could take that draft to the attorney yeah sorry DC Sullivan just to add some context to this conversation I think the sticking point may be that traditionally these records were considered personal or personnel records within the police department that could lead to disciplinary action for employees and hence these were never public records traditionally but that philosophy has changed certainly with this administration currently and so I would agree with the sentiment that that we all feel like we could discuss this in open forum rather than have it in executive session thanks for that context right thank you um so what I'm hearing is uh just sorry could you see that I do see Commissioner Grinch I mean yeah Commissioner Grinch sorry I can't see hands raised from my from my point of view with my apologies I guess uh for Commissioner Hart and Grant if you have something to say please just chime in because I cannot see you I'm sorry okay didn't want to be rude when jumping in I I understand but I appreciate it I I had a couple of things um so number one just in terms Chief I disagree with you um with regards to community feedback you know I listen to a lot of these public forums and um yes some of the same people call in but I hear an awful lot of different people who call into the public forums and I hear people from um all wards calling into the public forums so if there are people in Burlington and our community who aren't comfortable with certain suggestions that are being put forth certain changes that are being made they need to stand up and they need to speak for themselves quite frankly if they're being quiet and they're not saying anything and they choose not to express what they might feel is important to them I I'm not really sure you you can you know speak for them they have to speak for themselves and one of the reasons that we have so many people calling in to public forums and wanting these changes looked at and wanting processes looked at is because we've reached a real turning point you know um I was pretty shocked by some things and I was like wow you know am I being really naive and I was talking to a friend of mine they're like no me little bit Burlington talks a good game and yeah Burlington talked a good game but we you know we talked to talk but didn't walk the walk and this is all come to a head so I just want to make that very clear if people are not happy with with uh decisions that are making being made and and and directions that um new directions that people want to take you know we're we're are attacking and dealing with systems systems that a chunk of the community feel that are broken and a chunk of the community feel that they've been victimized by in a chunk of the community don't trust and I'll say it over and over again when you have part of the community that just doesn't trust police police can't do their job properly they cannot do public safety properly so um if you hear somebody complaining and they don't like all these ideas and they need to they need to jump on those public forums so that was uh my first thing um thank you for mentioning things about communication because I really uh still haven't felt that we could do um that we're doing enough to get information out to people about a variety of things and I guess we'll be talking about that later so um I'll get more specific that is on tonight's agenda right yeah so I'll jump on that a little bit later um but I just think that some of these processes and some you know the rfps we've gotten I think is it six so far and we'll be discussing that at the next uh combination oh we've gotten 10 okay that's great that's great I flooded your inboxes today okay okay um so I've got some reading to do um so that's great you know we've got to go through that process and we would go through that process then we can really we'll have information I think we still don't have all the information that we need to have and I hear your frustration but I just feel you still have to roll with the process and I think we have I don't I don't know I guess I my perspective of doom and gloom is a little bit different than than yours might be chief um and with regards to I'm glad to hear that there's some more bias training um off this meeting I'd be interested in you emailing out some information about the person you said that would be doing the next round of bias training I am super super interested in seeing the survey that the officers completed uh that you mentioned um I would love to read that and read the results um if that's can be made possible and that's all I have for now thank you thank you for that Milo do we have any other further questions oh sorry uh commissioner derpy I just want to make a comment um you know I hear you commissioner grant and I hear you chief mirad um I also hear from a lot of people not just because I'm a police commissioner you know whatever you know I have many hats um you know people are getting texted 1148 at night being asked to comment on public forum I I was in the last city council meeting and you know I have to talk to people who you know are upset because that's that's the time that they could get on so I I I just really need to say that because that you know people we have no public forum which I'm actually pretty surprised at this meeting that we don't have public forum but um I think that after a city council meeting that went you know on and on and on on Monday you know there's there's really nothing left to say and I do agree that people need to stand up and speak for themselves but I also know that there is a there are a lot of people that cannot stay up that late and a lot of people who don't really get on police commission meetings they want to get on the city council meetings they want to get on you know other meetings and so I think that's an issue in terms of hearing people and meeting people where they're they're at which I really like um you're not going to get everybody you know in this you know in I like that the term echo chambers that lacy use we're we're kidding ourselves we think you're hearing from everybody um and then also I will say uh the city council up until you know recently and maybe still does prioritize voices of color so um I myself have called uh max tracy and asked uh you know please you know let let people when when they call in you know just let's have people of color but let's have you you're not going to get the whole community if you say okay well you can only speak if you're this you can only speak if you're that so you know unfortunately you know somebody needs to say something about that and you know while I absolutely as a woman of color want to be heard you know it is my responsibility to say okay well I didn't get hurt on that meeting I'm going to go to this meeting I can't get hurt on this so I'm going to join the police commission I can't be heard on this I'm going to do this I mean it's it's equal you know 50 50 but we I'm not going to agree that you know okay well if I get on a public forum I'm going to be heard I mean recently up in from since June that's not always the case so I just want to put that out there you know for we we do have you know five five whole people listening tonight um and you know it's just it's just the other side of the corn so so well while it's your responsibility to speak out this forum doesn't exactly give people if you don't have the internet you're not getting on you're not talking so you know if I get mail which I did get to my house you know then snail mail emails all of that you know we don't talk about the emails we get as a police commission from here either so um there's a lot of voices that aren't aren't really being heard and a lot of it's due to you know the covid restrictions but a lot of it's due to you know this is a charged issue and you know telling people hey you know if you want to get heard you know get on public forum sometimes just doesn't work okay well given the impression that we're being given that there's so many people out there that really disagree um I think we could hear more on public forum and and I also feel that um you know maybe we need to be people can email um we don't get a lot of emails but I know some of the city counselors get emails so people could definitely be communicating that way um and then also part of just overall improving of communication and community engagement we could get more people involved but um I I do believe for because I've heard this before and I just don't feel I just feel that there are ways for the supposed numbers of people that are out there that are really against some of the stuff that's going on that more than can make themselves heard and uh definitely you know having on tonight too is hard after having such a long you know I was up last night and I was listening to as much as the meeting as I could and it's hard and I agree that it's hard but part of the communication thing that we'll get to a little bit later is putting ourselves out there more um and finding different ways to to um collect feedback but I just feel that um I I don't like that we just got lectured that really bothered me because that's the way I felt I felt I'll do respect chief I felt like you were lecturing us and I felt like um sometimes you get frustrated I understand why you get frustrated and you get a little dismissive so that is also my response to that uh your opinion about your point about talking to max about saying at this point do we need to when we have these long meetings continue to do that prioritization that that's that's a valid point that's a valid point if people feel that you know they're waiting and they don't need to come on and also when the city council sometimes starts to argue about if they're going to continue to allow their public form and they spend 30 minutes to 40 minutes arguing about are they going to continue to have public forum when they could have continued to have people speaking because they always end up continuing the public forum I mean it's it's definitely some things that need to be worked out for sure point of information I didn't say that there was a groundswell of other kinds of opinion I stated that I wanted more voices in it to hear from a variety of voices I didn't I didn't presuppose what those other voices would or would not say I simply said that I think that more of our 44,000 residents need to be involved and I agree with you that they are not being involved and that they do need to make their their voices heard and known I said the max Tracy thing I just want to I don't think I don't know if you said that but points well taken sorry thank everybody um moving on we are going to go to agenda item 5.01 which is the use of force report presented by the innovation technology department I believe I saw miss Stetson in the attendees if we can make her a panelist awesome thank you and uh hi miss Stetson thanks for joining us and uh please take it away um I think Brian Lowe is also here he was hoping to present as well oh he's here he's the city of Wellington there we go sorry if when we get promoted we lose about 10 seconds so I missed everything that happened after um chair Dimash started started introducing you oh I was just saying thanks for being here and uh we appreciate uh you'd be here taking your time out of the day and um please take it away hey thank you very much chair Dimash Nancy um Nancy do you want me to kick us off with the slides and then I'll turn it over to you sure do you have them I can pull them up yep so we have a short um slide deck to share with you and um can you see this okay uh chair Dimash okay and I'm not able to see everybody can you hear us okay okay we can okay and I when I'm sharing the screen I can't actually see everybody so please interrupt me um at any point um I think a quick word of context I'm the chief innovation officer but I'm here tonight because in the budget process to begin this current fiscal year the mayor and council moved Nancy's position to the int department so Nancy is now the city analyst and is reporting on issues related to crime and police activity across the city but also other issues across the city and is helping lead our wastewater surveillance program as well related to the city's COVID response um the there are basically three things we're hoping to communicate um tonight you know one is we we think it is important to standardize reporting in how our department reports back to you and we want to make sure that we get kind of clear direction from the police commission about how you want reports and when you want them we have a proposal for you but we'd like your your feedback on that we think this is important because currently we effectively the city produces sequentially reports around um arrests traffic stops and use of force these are reports of significant public interest and they're reports that are interrelated um from my perspective you know as a outsider outside the police department um who's tracking some of this data we think it might be more productive for us to report these out at one time all together to the commission so you can see trends across those different domains um and potentially other issues as well um the second thing we want to talk about is we've produced thanks to Nancy's work a public dashboard that now tracks information related to these trends and is updated on a monthly basis so we'd like to do an annual report to the commission but we also want to make sure you have access to data on a rolling basis going forward um whenever you want it and then the third piece is we want to do an update an addendum to the use of force report that the police department proactively put out last year that covered 2012 to 2018 um we'd like to cover 2019 and 2020 through October 31st um just as the kind of final to me the the piece that proves the point like it's a this is a use of force report coming to you not linked to the traffic um data or arrest data and we think those things should be connected to go back to that first main point so those three things the requesting guidance on standardizing are reporting to you um showing you this public dashboard that's now available and um giving you the 2019 and 2020 addendum um it's been very helpful to work with the police department on this this is obviously a relatively new area for our department they've been extremely forthcoming and providing us data um and helped um make this this dashboard possible um obviously Nancy's work has been kind of the key piece here and so I want to turn it over to her to speak about the dashboard um the last thing I'll say just to be explicit is the proposal we're hoping to come to you with is an annual report that covers these issues that would be the second quarter of 2021 and the second quarter of every year thereafter um Nancy why don't I turn it over to you to speak to the dashboard so yeah I think you're gonna have to advance yeah there you go um so I put together this dashboard as a way um partly inspired actually by Murad's reports he does every month and I think a few meetings ago there was a mention of that it would be nice to have this data all in one place which um I knew we could we could definitely do um so it just covers the data that I that I usually put out in these reports but instead of putting out the data once a year like sort of as I get to it I just set up a process so that it it comes out every month um so this dashboard will cover um it has five five areas right now recent incidents trends traffic stops arrest and use of force so it covers you know what what we look at in these reports um generally um the data files like if you if you want to actually download the data you can still do that but I've moved those data files to the the open data portal that covers the entire city so those are in a different place but they're still accessible and they're now updated through um for incidents and arrests they're they're through the previous month and traffic and use of force need a little more review so they're through the they have a one month lag so those data sets are through October 31st now Ryan if you want to so um you can you can this the dashboard is more fun if you're actually looking at it on a computer I just want to do screenshots for simplicity oh this will be a little easier to see Nancy sorry okay um so um but I just wanted to walk you through it so you can see you know how you use it um the first page is just police activity that's happened in the most recent calendar month so the default shows uh this November you can click on any of the um a lot of the charts are interactive so if you like click on burglaries the map will just show burglaries of the month you can also this is just a selected list of activities that you might be interested in but you can also you can pick any of the call types that the police respond to and you can and you can see though how many there were and then you can change the the date range too so you can click through and and pick what you want to see and see what the police have been responding to um Brian if you want to go to the next one uh next we just have a trends over time you can see that uh calls are down a lot in 2020 um again you can pick your own filters if you want to look at particular types of calls or where the call came from if it came from a phone call or 911 you can pick if you're interested in a particular ward you can you can choose just to look at one ward um you can also uh select the severity of the call so um the different types that chief mirad has talked about uh type one through three on the next slide we have arrests again more of the same um with arrests you the the main um filter is the charge you can pick what arrest you want to see who's who's been arrested uh by demographics um for that charge um and again you can you can sort of filter through next we have traffic stops which tracks a lot of the same things that I would report on in in the traffic report uh traffic stops by race you can see um who who got tickets and and and filter through them and and also where the traffic stops happened and what the traffic stops were for and uh finally we have use of force which I'll uh talk about more more of the results in detail here but again you can you can filter through um and all these uh variables to pick what what sort of analysis you want to do what what you want to look at I don't know if anyone has quick questions about the dashboard we want to jump in or we want to wait till the end so in terms of the screenshots that you just showed you're saying that these are screenshots that we should be able to see on the dashboard um they're just screenshots of the dashboard itself and the dashboard's live yes it's on the police data page right now okay so how exactly do I get to that like when I'm on the home page of um the city's website I do see the icon for open data okay so don't go there though that's that's good feedback maybe those things are linked so that you can get to it from either location um but if you go to the police department uh page um I you can do that by the department um peter yeah and police department okay and and then on the side uh panel there is um I think it's reports and data yep and it will be right there and then it works best if you if you sort of blow it up to full screen so there's a link there to do that okay using this link yes all right so oh that looks much much better okay got it because I when I um read your presentation and it definitely implied that the dashboard was actually could only get to the old one uh Milo is um okay um yeah I didn't I didn't I didn't set it to be live in oh um commission I think you're not right you Dodson yes you're not muted you're live sir you're my there you go oops um yeah so I uh I made the dashboard live this morning oh okay great yeah uh this looks much better much much better um I will definitely be um reviewing it in more detail because the old one was just not user friendly at all and some of the options were really dated um so I look forward to uh checking this out thank you very much I think one thing to emphasize is that it'll report with a about a monthly lag so it'll be updated every month and just so commissioners are aware it does there is some time that we need um to keep it up to date but that should be a monthly report and the theory that we would love your feedback on is if you have this dashboard that is updating monthly in this way we think we should also present to you some kind of annual report that pulls together trends around use of force arrests and traffic stops but we think that you know that should be done once annually at one of your meetings with all those trends together at once for your kind of review and then you have the dashboard at any point if you need it during the year can the does the dashboard just go monthly or can you look at information quarterly or do you have to do a quarterly report to get that information um for if you want to look at the incident counts you can set that timing to whatever you want so you can you can look at whatever date range um you're looking for most of the charts are either by year or by month awesome um does anybody have any uh any further questions at this point uh it regresses uh use for support i can i can put up some slides they give you kind of quickly some details on what that um report the highlights of that report um as well because the the reporting that we're hoping to do um let me make sure can you see your your power points just one of the tabs sorry folks um yeah um there it is yeah so basically you can i think there are a couple highlights from the use of force reports from 2019 into 2020 that we should make sure to share with you um you know all this information will be available on the dashboard as well but i think it's important to highlight a couple different things number one overall total use of force incidents are going down and the total number of people involved in use of force incidents are going down i want to highlight though that where you see this 149 with an asterisk next to it at the far right hand side that's because 2020 hasn't totally finished yet and so the downward trend here is is is accentuated in a way that's not accurate this is including data up through october 31st if it were truly year over year data that number would be slightly higher um but you can see the trend lines are generally going down um the other interesting findings that we have for your awareness you know take it for what you will use of force incidents are concentrated in the downtown and they are concentrated late at night in the city that is probably not surprising um but we wanted to make sure to to share that another interesting finding is that um white individuals are more likely to be injured in use of force incident than black individuals in burlington uh and while the number of black burlingtonians upon whom force is used has gone down since 2017 the total percentage of black burlingtonians who have force used on them is holding steady at about 26 percent nancy i should turn it over to you for some of the the details on these slides um sure yeah i'll walk through um the the brand covered the the main conclusions um so so these two charts show you both the number of of black use of force subjects compared to their percentage of of the total um and you and you can see that generally one in four use of force incidents involves a black subject um and that ratio has stayed um somewhat somewhat stable over the past few years um the other the other pattern um we've we've seen and and we saw this in the past report too that use of force it it really is concentrated in the downtown area that map is is small i know but um most of those incidents are happening like right in the downtown core um the police department you know splits up the city into five sections and the downtown area gets by far the most um use of force incidents happening there and it's it's generally late at night and those early early mornings so the next chart also shows this even more clearly if you look at the both the time of day and the day of the week that police officers use force there's a there's a strong concentration in those early early morning hours on Saturday and Sunday if you take out uh incidents that happen in the d area and just look at other parts of the city that pattern isn't nearly as strong and you see that there in other places in the city there they're not there's not as much um use of force happening but it's it's at all times of day so there's there's this real like core problem that's happening in the downtown area and then outside of that it's it's more mixed the other piece that we looked at that was a follow-up again from the the past report was when firearms are pointed so what this chart shows is the gray area is all uh all incidents that happen where a firearm was not pointed the dark blue is when uh a firearm was pointed but no other force was used and then the the light blue is is sort of in between where there was both a firearm pointed and some other type of force and black subjects are more likely to have a firearm pointed at them than white uh subjects of force and um in in uh incidents where there was a firearm pointed 37 percent of subjects were black so that is higher than their their general um uh portion of the of all subjects of force um so it's something we've we've noticed that this seems to be happening more um to to black people in Burlington than to white people in general um the next slide we also looked at injuries associated with force this is sort of a proxy to try to figure out sort of how severe the force is and you know we've seen that the number of of subjects injured is is generally around you know 15 to 20 percent um in any given year and the numbers are are pretty small but white people do seem to be more likely to be injured than black people in this data and so that is is like the quick summary you guys have the full report I think um so I'm happy to ask or answer any questions you have sorry just a quick question I know about the black population in Vermont but what is it in Burlington do you are you familiar with that or no yes uh it's about 4.5 percent in Burlington professor yes sorry you you made it uh commissioner it's um it's about six percent in Burlington in Burlington thank you um Chair Kamash I'd be happy to make some comments absolutely be my guest I have several comments on the report itself but then a broader issue um I want to just um encourage you to revise the first part of this report in which you say that Burlington alone is alone in providing these kind of data reports that is really inaccurate a number of other agencies do and certainly the Vermont state police I don't think we are leaders in this I mean I appreciate that the department does them and that you're producing those but there are a number of other agencies that are in fact doing this work my comments really are more substantive than that and uh I'd like to say a few things so that the public who watches this will be able to extract some things from this report um people of blacks in Burlington are roughly six percent of the population they are 28 percent of the people against whom force is used that is 400 greater than their share of the population and uh you uh there has been um uh with regard to blacks in terms of the percentage of people who a gun is pointed at that is five and a 525 greater than their share of the population and these are astounding disparities and I think they speak to why the community is feeling the way that it does today I personally I'll be honest with you that I think that the tone of this report that it doesn't identify this as a critical problem but in some ways minimizes it in the language that you use does not do a service to you or to the community I have read your use of force reports in the past and your arrest memo from June and in those reports especially in I think was the last year's the 2019 use of force report what what what came across to the reader is that you justified the disparities in use of force because blacks are also a high percentage of people who are arrested and you make the analogy that well you know there are roughly 25 percent of the people that are arrested and there are 28 percent of the people against whom force is used there is bias in arrest rates as well we know that arrests are influenced by bias so we can't justify use of force disparities using arrest rate ratios and again I just I'm sort of apoplectic at the disparity and the lack of response to this as a critical problem as evidence of racial bias there's a there's a great deal of research on what causes this this to happen why guns are more frequently pointed at blacks and that has a lot to do with negative stereotypes that we as a culture have with regards to african-americans perceiving them as more criminal or more threatening and so on and so forth so police officers have bias as do we all I'm not suggesting that somehow police officers are different than the rest of us we have all drank this toxic chemical for a very long period of time but the police have a special responsibility to when they see numbers like this sound the alarm and dig in and find out where the problem is I'm glad that you're doing racial bias training but again I want to just compare you to the vermont state police which in june put out a report on its traffic stops showing wide disparities in search rates and they they themselves acknowledge the problem they they they've been over backwards to say we have a serious problem and this is what we're doing to address it and I think that that's what this community wants from this police department in burlington as well especially when they see these kinds of numbers um so um I have a few other comments so they're not as serious and I'll let others uh oh actually let me just make a couple of comments um one of them is that one of the thing is so interesting to me is I'm looking at my notes so that's why I'm looking away uh that uh you said that most of the use of force incidents are downtown at night and it's interesting because that population is in my understanding of my experience being downtown late at night is that it's predominantly college students are overwhelmingly white so again the disparity is all the more shocking if you will um I um want to just uh I'm gonna say a wonky thing to Nancy Stetson here with regard to statistics but I think it's important in the injury table I didn't see tests for statistical significance and in fact if you do them the injury rate between blacks and whites is not statistically significant and so um so you know I think it's therefore problematic to say that whites are more likely to be injured statistically speaking actually it's within the margin of error so I I I just encourage us to do the deep work and to honestly present the data not to sugar not to try to justify it or to minimize it because I think that that creates more animosity than it does good will um and Chair Gommash when you're ready I have a motion you know I guess yes so uh I'd like to move to request the chief of police to present a report to the police commission that outlines the chief's strategy to reduce and ultimately eliminate racial disparities in use of force with a timeline to be presented to the commission no later than the February commission meeting I second that um flow for discussion I am that Mila are you chiming in for a comment or discussion I just want to say that I um really agree with what was just said I just the 37 percent number just made my head explode um and the facts the point um that when we're talking about the the downtown area at these specific times or these incidents are occurring and it's overwhelmingly younger white people this has to be deep dived so yes I I also wholeheartedly agree with the motion thank you Mr. Lowell get to one second sorry I just want to take care of this motion first and we'll get to you um any further discussion on the motion on the table that's been seconded a quick comment I would just um I don't know whether this is a suggestion to amend the motion or not I'm happy about it as it is I I would just the only thing I'd be cautious about is is I don't know quite what the baseline is by which I mean um I wouldn't want to presuppose that the kind of the the appropriate level of of use of force incidents across the population is going to be just strictly proportional to the percentage of people in the city uh that does not seem because part of the question is um you know who what is going to be the input to certain kinds of um kind of police interactions and that's not necessarily going to be evenly attributed across all members of the city so I would kind of I'm reluctant to just kind of presuppose prior to looking at exactly what makes up each police each police interaction that the appropriate level should be proportional to membership in the city overall I I certainly think that as I said that the disparity is something that ought to be looked at and addressed and so I'm happy to request um you know a strategy to improve those disparities but I would be kind of concerned about the suggestion in the request that if it is not brought down to six percent then it is flawed or problematic just because I'm not sure that is what the appropriate baseline would be and I want to look more into that particular number specifically. Chris, just so we know I'm happy to respond to that first of all one of the things that you're likely to see in the data is that whether it's traffic stops or whatever it's never going to be exactly proportional to the benchmark each year will always be fluctuation one year up one year down so on and so forth but also you know truthfully we also don't know the dynamics of the city over time but I think that it is important for us to identify this as a goal to work towards and maybe this will be modified if we have a better understanding of the use of force over time but I think that we have to at least identify this as a goal that we want to move towards and develop our understanding as we do that. Right so just to clarify again I the goal ought to be to reduce bias and discrepancy in applications of force and then the question would be what is the best indication that there is in fact such bias discrepancy and I think that suggesting that there that a even a prima facie sign that there's bias discrepancy is any incident rate higher than 60 percent or 415 percent or whatever the current black population is approaching I think it's not I think that that's a slightly faster way of looking at it but like I said but I'm not denying at all that there are disparities that ought to be addressed it's just the question is what is you know what is the science is that there's no more disparity and that there's no more kind of bias and application I think that looking at the population rates is not I think the best metric for that is my impression. Youth Commissioner Nipper. If I'm not wrong just speaking on what Randall said if it was 6% even if they got it down to 6% and I could be reading this wrong because I was just like listening obviously while I was doing something wouldn't 6% still mean that the majority of population of black burlington people were still getting use of force so you know that's like the whole population almost right am I wrong if it's at 6% it means 6% of the use of force incidents right so there's 6% of the population we'd expect them more or less to be 6% of the use of force victims. So would that be that would I'm sorry it would that be a majority I'm I'm sorry would that be a majority of the black population or no I'm sorry. Maybe I could help out Stephanie I think the the challenge it seems like you might be having land and if we were to say that 6% of the people that 6 that there were 6% of burlingtonians who had use of force instances and then if we said that all of those people were black then it would be true that it would be all the you know that all the incidences were all black folks because 6% of the use was also connected to the 6% of the population but this is different this is 6% of all the people 40,000 got were in these instances and then of those a certain percentage were black folks. Gotcha that's COVID schooling I don't know that's on my back through the cracks. If I can jump in another way to think about it is you know that the population of black people in Burlington Professor Grinnell you can or Commissioner Segrino you can absolutely correct me but I believe it's around 2000 people and and then in the 2018 or 2019 and 2020 it was like around 50 black people had force used against them. So that that's sort of the the ratio we're looking at. I appreciate it thank you. Awesome uh sorry precious Segrino. Just to respond to Commissioner Harps comment maybe what I could do is is amend the motion to delete the the phrase and eliminate it would that be um would that be helpful? I believe it would yes. Okay then then I'd amend it to delete the phrase and eliminate it. So I guess for security do you want to just um resubmit the motion with uh what's up in it? Yeah would you mean to read it again or yes yes please sorry okay yeah move to request that the chief of police present a report to the police commission that outlines the chief's strategy to reduce racial disparities in use of force with a timeline for actions to be presented to the commission later than the February police commission meeting. Do I have a second? Second that. Seconded by Commissioner Herzchak. Any further discussion on the motion on the table? I am not hearing any. All in favor for this motion um raise your hand or say aye. Aye. Aye. I believe that was unanimous and yep that passed unanimously. And I'm sorry uh back to you Mr. Loh I sorry I did forget you had your hand raised up before. That's fine the comment I was gonna be made was made and um you know I do have a question for the commission still on the table that I'd like to go back to if that's possible but I don't I don't know the kind of order of events here so we do still need guidance from the commission around the timeline for reporting. One of the things that we are not comfortable with is if it would be helpful I think as city staff to have a clear set of expectations about when these reports are requested and I think an annual report is something that we should be producing and it should be all these different measures at the same time. But I think it I am uncomfortable making that decision independently. I would like to have kind of some kind of clear direction from the commission on that. I would love to quarterly report with your to date information. I think the other consideration uh commission around I hear you there is Nancy is now the city analyst running not just crime data but all right now currently there's nobody else doing any data reporting in the city um so I don't know that a quarter of the report is realistic but if if that is the commission's desire at the end of the day I certainly can take it back to Mayor and see if that's something we can do. If I may so I mean given that the the data is very helpful being uploaded to the dashboard that that data is now being made available I am happy with a less frequent report. In fact I'm happy with a yearly report given that I'm able to run those analyses as I once along the way. So I'm happy with the yearly report and combining all those different different modalities of analysis. I'm happy to request that. I think that the polls that you put forward was a was a useful one but I'm happy to defer to the other commissioners as well. Commissioner Durfee followed by uh Director Dodson. I concur with Commissioner Harp and I also we haven't voted we voted on a motion that will to me in the forefront is the use of force and annual report seems doable for the city. Thank you Nancy and Brian for bringing this forward and asking for direction. I think annual is is is good with me. I believe it was Commissioner Dawson followed by Christia Zawina. I would welcome others to weigh in on this because this comment is about clarification and hopefully moving us forward. My observation has been that for the last several years four to five years one of the most robust and active collectors and analyzers of please traffic stop please use the force data has been Professor Seguino or at least she gets a lot of the press and she's doing conferences and talking when you hear about these numbers it's often Professor Seguino. From my perspective I don't think we've developed a clear enough procedure here in Burlington for dealing with this. My sense is that as as Director Low just said that he and Nancy are sort of these is more the technical work in the city of doing all sorts of data and I'm not it could be that it's there that it should be their responsibility but in my conversations with them I'm not so sure they understood their role was to focus in on disparities and amplify them and do that. They were it seemed like they were just like here it is here's the data and I don't know if it's the police commission if it's the police department but it seems like there could be more clarity on whose specific function it is to look at the disparities and then really dig in. I will say that there was a you know I was going to do it offline but I think it's worth doing it here. There was an internal conversation with me and the command and we had a conversation about the data that I thought began or created the seed for a fruitful discussion about race and about bias and the chief was responsive to it. I pushed back on a reading of the of the data and we had a good conversation and he thought and welcomed an opportunity to dig deeper and I think because at the end of the day right it's phenomenal we have disparity and so it makes sense to understand what that disparity is about and you know depending on who you are you might make excuses so let's say for example someone says well there's more hopefully no one's going to just stop and not deal with the disparity so someone says okay well we have more black folks who are impacted by these situations because there's blacks behave differently when they interact with the police so I would say okay so as humans they behave in a certain way in these interactions well then why don't we examine the possibility that white cops behave differently in these interactions if that's the case then we've got some to look at because they're the professionals and if if one set of human beings is impacted by the dynamics of our society and we would argue that that set of human beings has some sort of way of showing up in these instances that was impacted by their experiences and by environment and by history well then another set of humans has the same likelihood of being impacted such and that to me seems like a really fruitful discussion because I would hope as a community we want to understand disparities and not just kind of say well you know I guess that's just what happens and move on so I guess I'm inquiring with the commission what your thoughts are about what our mechanism should be for having a structural moving forward way of dealing with this because I might argue that traffic stop arrest and use of force might be more helpful to us in bias than the complaints and the discipline because those numbers are so small the reports I have from 16 to 20 the complaints were I don't think there was a year that at top like 50 or 60 complaints whereas here we have hundreds and hundreds just more data it can help us I think see patterns of bias so if we want to understand bias I think this is a place to look and I don't think we have yet the robust systems to interrogate and investigate these disparities and I think it might serve us well to put a lot of attention there not to not to in any way say that the complaints and the discipline issues as it relates to individual experiences that people complain about isn't important but this data it strikes me might be more consistent and give us an ability to do the kinds of understanding of the nature of bias in our police work that we are looking to do. Thank you and appreciate your comments. Commissioner Grant has a hand and I have a hand as well and I think the commission has hands so but I want to I think Commissioner Grant had her hand up raised in the chat before me. Thank you one of the reasons that I would like a quarterly report done is that I feel we need to be making more of an effort of getting this information out so one of the things that we can do with the report is to get it out to the public and I think once a year during these times is really not enough having it done in the format that you've presented is something that's quick and easy for people to go to. I'm interested in the dashboard I'll go to the dashboard I will search and play around with it but some people might not do that but they might take a quick look at that report. It's also something I'm getting to some of the things I wanted to discuss later but I'd be interested in having it discussed more in local commercial and community media so that's why I'm thinking quarterly thank you. Sorry go ahead please thank you so yeah I mean so the one thing I was going to say is first I think the data are public and that's already the most important thing about you know the fact that it is released makes the data public and the analyses that constitute these reports at least so far as I've seen like that's not difficult analysis right now you know obviously no you know no no shade on Nancy or Brian because you work but this is like this is not difficult stuff to do so so the fact that the data already out there means that anybody can do that sort of work at any frequency that they want to if we wanted somebody to compile that sort of report on a quarterly basis we could do so the question is do we want to task basically you know kind of the central city office which is responsible for gathering data across the city with giving us this report every three months and we want to just kind of have access to the data ourselves and so right so that's why kind of my view is the most important thing is making sure that the data are public and then you know any analysis that we want to run on that we can do or we can ask someone to do it um and so I prefer to kind of make sure we have the option of running those analyses rather than asking those analysis to be done for us at certain periods of time especially when that's kind of I think more frequent than it needs to be that's my perspective I would respectfully disagree I just really feel from my conversations with people in the community no matter where people stand with regards to how they feel about the police department they really don't have a firm understanding of exactly what's going on so um I can see what you're saying about maybe having somebody else put together a report and then we would need to discuss like what would we want that format to be and who would be putting together that report um I don't necessarily want to volunteer to do it because I have a lot of plans to do a lot of other things so I would like to have something done and presented to me and then I can work on getting it out with other people um so I don't know Mr. Dobson maybe that's something you could help us with um if you know where we could I don't know do within the commission find a volunteer to do it for the commission so if you have any ideas much appreciated thank you yeah I mean I'd be happy to weigh in my my comments were more um and I am working with the the chief and uh commissioner Segrino and I talk often as well as Nancy and Brian to try to set up a structure right so I think that that is an appropriate role for me we want this procedure that we put in place to last much longer than the director of police transformation role so I think setting it up and having clarity and a reporting structure the frequency is people here are talking about and who receives it and um how it gets picked apart it's important and that work is ongoing um commissioner Grant in terms of trying to figure that out um director Love um and uh Miss Stetson have been uh reaching out to me to try to have those meetings to figure that out so we hope to at least have suggestions for how we think um might be a robust way for uh processes to be set up that help support this activity uh commissioner Durfee followed by commissioner Segrino I'll yield my task uh I'd be happy to volunteer to take the discussion of the commissioners follow up with everybody and come back with the next meeting with a proposal that responds to uh the request for timetable for reports uh it might also be helpful to have give me the opportunity to also talk to chief mirad and director Dodson about some of the data issues as well Stetson um I was just going to jump in to say that I'm not totally opposed to a quarterly report as the more the more bare bones it is the more automated it can be I can I can set up charts to run that you know that they go and you have you have the data result that you need every quarter I think one thing we have been talking about is is not feeling confident that we are going to be looking at the metrics and ideas that you you want us to be looking at and so if if the commission has certain things they want to see and can make a list of them it's it is possible to set up a super basic report that that you know spits out those those statistics if I may that's just one one additional thing which is not this is not actually an argument against quarterly reports per se it's just uh given season of very variability I worry that also that you can get some kind of you might get misleading results if you just look from a kind of quarter to quarter uh look at how that the data are moving because you know for example you might get seasonal effects of things around new years or Christmas and and if you just say oh like this quarter it's down this quarter it's up that will kind of that will hide some of that data and yearly reports are much more uh able to to balance out those kinds of season variability but that's like I said but that that's just that's not an objection to getting the reports core that's just to worry about how we would interpret the results that we would get well that can also be part of the discussion of the reports as well the point would be to be talking about this more um and having people have a better understanding of what is is going on because I look at it um also along with you know the other types of calls as well it's it's part of of a fuller picture thank you would something maybe like three quarterly reports that are very you know kind of a more snapshotty ask and then maybe like one in depth yearly one um would that kind of cover all bases uh and as far as I'm concerned that's that's the worst option for me but obviously like I will do as told and and you can you can tell me what's the reports to make but in a lot of ways actually an automated quarterly report is is the easiest for me because I can't just press a button and make it go whereas a more involved yearly report with with discussion and and more in depth is is a substantial amount of work all right all right um so yeah we're for a couple couple ideas here moving forward um could I just emphasize one last thing I'm starting to interrupt chair ganash absolutely it is very helpful for us to hear the metrics of interest to the police commission um this is a new responsibility in the innovation and technology department that we were not looking for um in the sense of the police um budget has been moved and and changed and so now um our department is taking on this responsibility it's a very important responsibility I think it's tonight shows and I think you know I hear what prophet professor sorry a commissioner so we know said like we have a lot of learning to do as well um you know it would be very helpful to hear which specific metrics are of interest to you because we would like to produce those metrics um and I don't know that our misunderstandings or misguesses about what you're most focused on um are unexpected in this process so you know I hear Nancy saying that she can set up a fair bonus report that will only work if we can set up metrics that are of interest to the commission um so we may need to do some offline discussion as well potentially with commissioners that we know if you're open to it um to make sure that what we produced is actually what is relevant and useful um to your discussions um I don't know how that will impact your timeline um in terms of the February discussion um but I think it would be prudent for us to to maybe discuss some of that um at some point as well I believe the things that are highlighted you support traffic stops and arrests are definitely my big three um anybody else had other metrics they would like to put in there please uh please present them I find um oh I'm sorry no no quite all right me like uh uh so the chief's monthly report which is a snapshot of the various types of calls that are responded to is that something that's under your purview now do you generate that report for him I generate that myself I generate that myself every uh twice a month once for you all on the police commission based on the date of the police commission meeting an