Good evening everyone and welcome to the February 2022 meeting of the racial disparities in the criminal and juvenile justice system advisory panel. I'm the chair. It's on that thread and long go to him pronouns. Let me go down my list and everyone please announce themselves when are introduced themselves when I call your name if you would Robin from crime research group Tyler. Good evening everyone good to see you all again Tyler Allen I'm the commissioner designated appointee for DCF. Susanna Davis and may I say director Davis you're sitting at a very fetching desk this evening. I'm Susanna Davis racial equity director for the state and I'm finally no longer working on an ironing board. Oh Aaron. Everyone Aaron Jacobson from the Attorney General's office. Now Jennifer I'm going to get your last name Richard Zoynick. It's Zunick but you are yes it's Slovenian married in Germany. Eastern European. I'm Jen Zunick I'm the director of local programs for the National Police Foundation. We're working on the data piece of the stops and so we are just here and my colleague Christine Johnson will also be joining us. Apparently she's on Vermont time because she is not here yet so we are appreciative of being able to join this and I think it's just you know contextual for us to be able to understand the conversations around these issues and we are just here to listen and learn. Great thank you. Karen. Hi everyone Karen Genette crime research group. Captain Kessler. Hello Barb Kessler Vermont State Police. Evan. Evan Menon with the Department of State's Attorneys. Great Elizabeth nice to see you. Good to see you too. Elizabeth Morris juvenile justice coordinator with DCF. Thank you. Pat Patio. I'm Pat Patio from Quinty-Fermont racial justice alliance. Thank you. Singh if you just tell us who you are I'll tell everybody shortly too. Tingren I'm calling from South Springton. I work at Shelburne Farms. Great. Representative Lalonde. Martin Lalonde I'm a representative for South Burlington. I'm on the Judiciary Committee and I've been working on the the bill H546 to try to implement the fantastic work of RDAP over the last couple of years. Thank you. Sheila. Sheila Linton she her panel member the Root Social Justice Center. Thank you. And Shalini welcome. Shalini I well when she comes back let me begin with some announcements and the first announcement is that which he sends regrets but after God knows how long this pandemic's been going on he's finally able to visit family in Puerto Rico and I hate him because I live in southern Vermont and I'm covered in ice and I'm feeling really unhappy anyway but we love witchy and then I also am very excited to introduce our newest member of the panel. If you remember that Act 65 gave the executive director of racial equity two positions to a point and one of those positions was witchy who's just been mentioned and the other person who is brand new to us is Chingren and welcome. Thank you. We're all clapping although you can't tell. Not can tell. Thank you. So there we are. The only other thing I have to announce is that between comments by panel members who've given testimony and the final item of the discussion of future directions for the RDAP I would like to put in Monica Weber who is going to talk to us about data integration with the oh god I'm going to get it wrong. What is the acronym? NCJRP. Got it. Thank you. And so she's going to talk between is that okay Monica. Yes I was I was primed. I knew that would happen. Okay great. So without further ado if there are any more announcements I'm sorry I forgot. I just want to say I'm here. I'm here. There you are. Yeah I'm finally back. I'm Don Stevens chief of the Nalhegan tribe and RDAP member so I just wanted to thank you know I am here. Oh and my god there's Jen Furpo. Jen Hi there. Sorry for being late. Dinner ran long. And thanks for Rebecca Turner here from the defender general's office as well. Wonderful. And hi I'm Jessica Brown. I'm here to a attorney general appointee to the panel and former public defender and current criminal law professor. Thanks A-Tom. Absolutely. Is there anyone else I've forgotten or just didn't see or or something. Hey Tom can you hear me now. I can hear you now. Ah this is Shalini. Shalini. Good god I don't know what happened. It was on my end. I got a new laptop as I've started my new job working with Susanna Davis. So I am the education and outreach associate working in the office of racial equity and I'm so delighted to be here. It's really nice to meet you all. Great. Thank you. Okay now that I have gotten even the people I forgot or couldn't see. Representative would you like to take over and give us some thoughts about H546 which I have to say feels like our bill. It's like our collective bill. And I think give us some idea of where it is at the moment and committee legislature all the rest. Thank you. Yes. Happy to do so. And yes this definitely builds on some really good work over the last couple of years by our DAP and by a subcommittee that put in lots of yeoman labor to get us the information we needed to put into this bill. Of course when you get it into a bill when you get the good ideas it hopefully further improved and I think it has. We've had lots of testimony from you and a number of other our DAP members really focusing on some issues related to data governance to transparency of records as well as to privacy protection or protections of of information that's exempt from the Public Records Act and really been honing certain parts of the bill quite well. So the one thing that that we've had to do more work on and actually I anticipated that the Appropriations Committee and the Government Operations Committee would be doing that work but it ends up that we need to do more work in judiciary and I'll explain that in a moment. But the way this bill is going to travel is the judiciary committee will vote it out of our committee. It will make a stop in the Government Operations Committee and then after that it will go to the Appropriations Committee to determine what resources are going to be needed. So we did have testimony related to the resources from Kristen McClure of the Agency of Digital Services and she gave us an idea of what the overhead for agency of digital services would be and also a recommendation of what division staffing should look like with a deputy director to data stewards and to data analysts. But we need to dig into that a little bit more to make sure that we've fully built the record for what the resources are that are going to be needed. And one of the big questions is whether we start right out with the five positions for instance or if we scale up and these are some questions. So we have scheduled some more testimony. Hopefully Kristen McClure and Susanna Davis will be able to make it in this Thursday afternoon. We've also asked a couple other folks who have done this kind of work before to sit in and perhaps we'll be asking them some questions including Karen Gannett and Professor Abby Crocker as well. Maybe there's going to be other folks but any event what we're really trying to do is I think we have the structure pretty well in place. There's been some pushback from probably elements in the State House that I'm not necessarily surprised. Pushing back against the cost. Pushing back against having five additional government employees. There has been some concern about creating another advisory panel. I've been explaining to folks and we may need more testimony on that as well that the advisory panel there's a couple real purposes for having what is a fairly large advisory panel admittedly. But we have an individual from most of the different entities that would be providing data to the division. And then because we're really trying to do this work closely with affected communities. So we have a number of slots for the panel to have those voices at the table when we're figuring out how to address how to collect and more importantly what the data is telling us about disparities in our criminal justice system. So I've definitely been pushing back on people who are concerned about that and probably will need some more testimony potentially on that if not in judiciary committee but when it makes its next stop. But I'm fairly confident there seems to be some good momentum that is building with respect to this. I've not heard anybody saying that we don't need to do what we're doing. That we don't need to have better data about our criminal justice system from law enforcement all the way through to the end of Department of Corrections. And that's certainly positive. It's a matter of how best to get there. And so we should know a lot more after this Thursday hopefully and I think it's on a pretty good path right now. I'm certainly open to questions or if other folks who have been watching the testimony have comments or input certainly would would love to hear that as well. So feel free guys. I mean questions but also might as well mix this all up. I know Evan and Rebecca gave testimony. Monica who am I missing. I don't know everyone who gave testimony but feel free to weigh in on that if you like now. Representative does this feel I want to know that the baby is going to be born all right. Like with all the limbs and not still breach birth or anything like that. Do I dare to hope. I think so far the limbs are all there and we've added some muscle and tissue to them. So the big issue I think at this point is getting the staffing right initially to get it through in the budget as well. Okay. Okay. Well thank you. Are there other questions comments? Okay. Everyone's very quiet this evening. Thank you representative. I didn't misspeak because I'm sure Evan, Rebecca and others would have corrected me for where we are. I'm pretty sure Julio I think testified as well and if I'm not mistaken and Judge Gerson did as well. I'm missing a couple people but we've had some very good testimony. Great. Rebecca. I was just going to weigh in. Thank you representative Lalonde for your support of this legislation in the summary and I didn't get a chance to share with the RADAP members what the defender general's position was but we supported we support this legislation for the most part and no surprises in terms of of what we have shared and and our concerns about this bill relating to making sure it's consistent with current public records act and FOIA and transparency making sure that that was this was not creating a new system but using what was tried and true was heard and responded to and in subsequent amendments so thank you representative Lalonde for your hard work on this and yeah thanks. And thank you everybody for the good work to set us up to be able to be doing this so. This is great. Thank you and certainly call on us if you you know for the next round of testimony. We'll do definitely. Great. Thank you. And it's there is anyone who hasn't had an opportunity to weigh in about H546 but who's got some information that might be useful to the panel. Has that anyone not been able to speak yet. OK. That's that then. H546 off the table. Monica your turn. Oh good. I'm sure this will be equally exciting for people but I'm going to give an update to everyone on the project that's happening and the National Criminal Justice Reform Project. Some of you there's a lot of new people here so the National Criminal Justice Reform Project is a project based in the Department of Public Safety and it's funded by NCJA the National Criminal Justice Association and the National Governors Association and really funded by Arnold Ventures and this project started several years ago with a with a focus really on several different types of policy initiatives mostly it focused on pretrial and bail and now the project in the latter part has shifted to data integration. It was always part of the project but the real effort of it had not been started yet and we were lucky with Arnold Ventures to be able to actually get some funding and with that funding work with a project manager from the Agency of Digital Services and that position was hired in December so only been around for a couple a couple of months. His name is Joe but we've been working with him and what we're doing now is sort of building a project plan that really sets the foundation for requirements that this state can build on are on how to integrate data. There's a lot of overlap and I know we talked about this a lot in our subgroup when we were putting together the report. Some of you heard about NCJRP. We had a meeting with Mo West I think with the whole whole group and Mo is from an organization called Search. So the NCJRP group there's a sub team of us that's been meeting with our project manager from ADS and that includes myself, Robin Joy from the Crime Research Group, Darwin Thompson and Kim Pryor from DPS and also the project manager and really we've been looking at like how to build out a charter for the data integration plan that the state can really act upon to increase criminal justice data for policy making and decision making. And while the project's not really focused on the Office of Racial Justice Statistics itself the benefit of the work we're going to do is going to pay off for the office once it gets established or in fact I think any type of integration project that might happen within the state. It's not actually going to integrate data we're just sort of building out what the plan actually is right we're not going to get to that step of like pulling data together because of course as we heard in all the testimony that's going to require funding and resources. So we've put together a project charter we've identified a lot of stakeholders many of you are on that list we're looking at technical considerations, a governance system, a sustainability plan. We've had Mo West from Search come in and provide a lot of really rich resources from some other states who have done this and done this successfully and worked through a lot of the things that I think are also you know in H546 around user agreement and data sharing and public records and just all of the you know pieces and nuts and bolts I'm going to call upon Karen's Karen Gannett's terms around how you would have to do that. We've had Kristen McClure come and talk to us and we're working very closely with Tanya Marshall as well at Visara given their you know both important roles in data management and governance they're they're not the same but they're very important on both ends and in fact just recently just because I'm on the committee the department of corrections walked through a information governance maturity model with Tanya and her team that assesses our database we just picked one database we have on these eight principles of accountability, transparency, integrity, protection, compliance, availability, retention, and disposition and that was really interesting and the idea is that we may be able to do that type of work with the other stakeholders in the NCJRP project. I think there's going to be a meeting later this month or in the next month to really talk more with that whole team about what's going on and then expand the group out and work more with with the stakeholders once we sort of know what the steps of the work will be. So it's pretty it's pretty exciting all along we've also been giving updates to Etan and Wichey sort of as a honorary member of the NCJRP. He's come to a couple of meetings when he can but obviously it's hard for him so we're trying to do our best of course we have deliverables from the Arnold found Arnold Ventures and so we kind of have to move forward with putting this work together. By I think the end well Karen you can correct me June perhaps of this coming year. So that's the update I'm happy to answer any questions or I'm sure Karen can answer some questions as well. Anybody has anything they'd like to? Rebecca? Rebecca? I just wanted to clarify what since we finished the data and the project with our report appreciate you sharing this but what is what is the what is the role that RDAF is is having with this update just to give us some context. I know that the for others on this I know that the Defender General's Office is a member of this other group and we have had separate questions raised about what's you know what's been going on into the in the process and we haven't been involved in the subcommittees that level working that Monica just shared and it is really important work that you're talking about but I'm just confused as to what how this fits into what RDAF is doing. I just wanted some clarification Monica. Oh okay well I think we were wanting to give an update because it does we think it can directly help and benefits the Office of Racial Justice Statistics and we had come to this panel before and just given an update and people seemed interested. I think there is a lot of overlap in terms of the goals shared goals between both of the projects so we just wanted to let people know what was going on. Rebecca were you curious about like is there something that no I just wanted to make I just want to make clear that the Defender General's Office is involved in that other and that other project but there are it's my understanding is that it's in terms of what's been presented there in terms of all the issues that our subcommittee and RDAF worked on in terms of transparency accountability making sure that we don't borrow and embed sort of racist presumptions that have been built into how we look at analysis what voices perspectives are not thought out like well we all the stuff we've talked about in terms of building into a council representative voices to flush things out that parallel analysis I understand has not been again delved into in this other group and and so we're not I don't it's it just want to make sure that we're not collapsing two different things here and thanks for the clarification Monica. Yeah and I wouldn't say I wouldn't say we're collapsing the other thing I will tell you is that given that conversation that we had we the NCJRP group has been drawing from the AISP materials and is looking to you know make sure we expand so that we can you know have those different voices on the on the on the group so it's something that's in progress for sure and that's why we really wanted to make sure that we've you know kept the witchy involved as a person who could help us and I don't know if anybody else has anything they want to add about that who's Karen or Robin. Yeah I'll just add a couple words I think that this is the the division of racial justice statistics are going to be end users of the data and there's a whole lot of work that comes prior to that division actually getting data and so walking through and I think Julio has talked about this before too with some of the data integration work he's done making sure we walk through the laws rules and regulations that all the departments have around their data whether it's about privacy confidentiality sharing of data all that has to be collected and looked at what systems what weaknesses are there in systems what's missing from systems can systems actually share their data so that it's kind of a review and assessment of both the systems and the data of all the state departments that will be sharing data with the division of racial justice statistics and that's a lot of groundwork that has to be laid and there will be a document that actually comes out of this both for doing the assessment with the departments and their systems either system or systems because some departments have more than one system and we'll also show some of the you know the the weaknesses in the systems and then the reliability and credibility of the data in each of the systems and I think that will be incredibly valuable and for folks from the division doing analysis you know collecting that data from wherever it lands and then being able to do the analysis on the data but there's a lot of groundwork that has to be laid and that's what we're trying to put together there should be from what Joe says there'll be a scope of work done by the end of February we'll be reviewing that with the NCJRP core team and witchy and a town will be a part of that I don't know what that's going to look like at this point but if it's something that's available to share with you all we'll do that as well because we are looking to make this a robust to get robust community involvement in this process so we're trying to keep the link there so you all know what's going on and the work is getting done at the same time and hopefully this will feed beautifully into whatever the division needs questions comments okay thank you all right the oh it's a big issue it is the next item we had this discussion as I noted in the note to everyone in the bc time there was a moment you'll all remember after the first report we wrote for 2019 where we had a discussion that was cut short because of data requirements um act 148 and then subsequently 65 we were talking about what we were going to do at that moment with that report protecting its work product making sure that things were moving noting when things weren't talking about action actions we could take if things weren't moving that had been mentioned in the report and so on that was a discussion I remember quite a robust one in fact um god knows when all the last two and a half years just blend for me but we were talking about that we were talking about future directions in fact we were talking about it so much that when the possibility of this report that we finished in November came up some of us and I will include myself in that were a little unhappy with the idea because we were saying we didn't want to become the our daft that did data and that that was our role in the world and I am feeling like that discussion should be furthered at this point in spite of the fact that we don't know if what else will be needed to do with the current bill h 546 but I feel like we need to start having that discussion in terms of what do we want to do next to that end I sent out yet again um the report from 2019 to you all I hope you had a chance to look over it and I really wanted to have now a sort of freewheeling as I said in my note discussion where we throw out some ideas about where we want to go possibly as I say in the agenda with reference to that first report but it doesn't have to be I was just saying that was our history was going back to that document um you'll remember we that too was a report that was modeled on a report brought in by chief Stevens um there may be things there that people want to mine as well um but I want to open this up to a fairly wide-ranging discussion about where do we want to go next do we want to look at the report of 2019 and sort of go okay this is sort of moving circle something else this isn't going anywhere um talk about actions that need to be taken in that direction for things that aren't moving I don't know but I just wanted to open this up and I don't want to talk anymore so ideas from everyone I'd say the floor but it's kind of vertical. Chief. Hey Tom um I'm not sure I might I'd have to go back and look at what our responsibilities are but I know one of the major responsibilities was to do the report right so I guess my question is what is within our authority to actually do um so that might be a good starting place right because I don't we don't we can't step outside of our boundaries but what's you know we don't know where the legislators are going to go to change what our DAP actually does right whereas that been addressed that well it has I mean in terms of at least I mean we're supposed to keep the report biannually has not changed that was in our enabling statute um we're way off schedule I mean you know 2019 then there should have been one in 2021 there was it just wasn't about the same stuff as what happened in um it was just different. So are you suggesting that we keep going back and revising different areas of the report and putting recommendations in is that the process or? I I'm not necessarily suggesting that I do we did talk about that at one point. Okay I was curious what was within our authority and what we can do and what we can't I guess well one of the nice things about um looking back at the 2019 report and amplifying it two things I can think of one we just did that I mean if the report that we did in November wasn't some kind of amplification from the first part of the report from 2019 that talked about data I don't or not the second part I don't know what was but data was a factor if you'll remember in what we were asked by act 54 if that was what 2017 um to consider uh we've done that I think exhaustively if I may say um we so I it feels like we've done some of that already the second part being we are statutorily required by that the initial enabling statute um to write to submit a report to the legislature every by every two years now as I say we're somewhat off schedule because 2019 should have led to I would think some kind of general report far more general than our report in November was that really wasn't very general at all um the report of 2019 was we I'm hoping nobody wants to do it I'm sorry I heard someone else sorry um I'm hoping nobody wants to write another report this summer in order to play catch up or some strange bizarre notion like that um that would be really horrifying but um but we still do um that responsibility has not changed you okay so I guess my question then goes if that's is that the only thing that we're responsible for I mean I haven't gone back I have to go back and read the original charge but so what other things are we allowed to work on outside of that report that that you're thinking of we could focus on I guess that's that's the question then I and right and I was saying I don't have and I don't have necessarily anything that prescriptive in mind but I think that we should I just was recommend trying to give you some history of where we had been and also for the people who hadn't been here understand I'm just trying to get a gauge on what we're if we're having a discussion about what we should do next and and if the report is kind of already been done so what what what's in what's what's next within the authority I mean for the immediate future I'm not talking about two years from now or the report or anything so that's where I was going was what other things do we have that we could legally work on I guess okay well hold on what Rebecca so I was just trying to put it in the chat right now I just title three section 168 was cited in our 2019 report that a ton shared and it looks like ABC there you know going to chiefs the chiefs question as to what is our mandate pursuant to the statute I think I think what a ton was saying was section C there relating to data collection we've pretty much exhausted and I don't disagree work work work for such on that so so then the question is A is related to the for those who can't see that how to institute a public complaint process and then B was of there whether and how to prohibit racial profiling including implementing any associated penalties and in that subsection B we in our 2019 report came up with a list of recommendations and a ton I appreciate you getting us started and reminding us where we were 2019 it seems like 10 years ago and I would just suggest adding to the mix not certainly I don't suggest re-writing that report at all I was always great building blocks what I would suggest is throwing in some more some more reports that have subsequently come to our to the forefront since then relating to Vermont and and if others could come you know throw those in so we make sure we have sort of a comprehensive list in mind but to me it's it's the Dr. Senguano's traffic report and and her other authors I don't mean to exclude them in her updates I'm also recalling Dr. Crocker's most recent report relating to DOC um Susanna I know that there was a report from your directorate that you actually asked us at one point to see if there was some overlap with our one of our reports to see if there was some common ground for us to go somewhere else I don't know if others have any other reports or things to throw in the mix as well oh we have current bills pending relating to these issues we talked about uh five four six but um there's also oh help me relating to traffic stops relating to traffic stops it's going to be introduced later this week that oh we would be remiss to not talk about here at least to know what's on it's on the table do others here know that name of that bill offhand I don't she was got her hand maybe she does hi Sheila I do not know the bill name but when Rebecca's done I just have something to say okay I'm done I yield before she okay Sheila somewhere we're actually have more light um hi everybody so um so I think that I'm getting what you're putting down Rebecca and I think that what I what I'm really curious about is what I think I hear you saying which is what I want to bring up is around accountability we um many things as I think Rebecca's stating are named in that report that are current aspects of what has or is and reports legislation or whatever and I'm wondering how we're holding um our legislators accountable to this other various aspects of that written report so um and that could be anything that is coming up that we wrote in there that maybe there are things that are being worked on but that are not coming back to this group that are actually being tangibly discussed and so there's a disconnect of where we're working parallel next to each other we're not communicating and so I'm a little bit concerned and I'm going to say I'm very ignorant I've been completely out of the loop in terms of what's really in the legislation and so I can't speak to that but um I think that we should be aware of what um relating to our 2019 report what has been in these last two plus years come through that we should be championing testifying holding accountable those type of things and then in that same sort of vein I'm wondering in the data section specifically and looking at that report like looking at sort of what I would call I guess low hanging fruit which for me would be starting with the data and I have questions and I just can't remember like things like did we talk about when collected data about not traffic stops but pedestrian stops and things like that did we talk about I mean I know we talked about these things but I don't remember the resolution to these things um did we talk about the sample size and it being so small did we get to a place to where we can collect that data or so like no we can't is that a final like no we really can if there's two people like I wanted we talked about that being concern and it being noted but what is rather than just being a concern and noted what is actually happening to address that situation and that concern and then the other part of data is I was penalties I put two in my notes was just around it kind of connects for me if people are identifying people as such and there's some bias in that that kind of is in the data can be in a data realm as well so I didn't know if there was stuff within the data that we could be making sure that gets in there and that we remind people or at least get the questions answered and then the last thing I just want to say is around other initiatives that are going on around the state and how they complement this work here so I'm part of the team who is working on a bias incident a bias advocate position and and Windham county and to me that directly connects to some of the work that our DAP is doing and more specifically around complaint processes and what does it look like one of the things is is establishing a complaint process and what are other people doing around the state that might be again complimenting the work that we're doing here that we need to be communicating with each other to not be reinventing the wheel and maybe just collaborating more and then I'm kind of curious there was something in our report I think around staffing and I'm just wondering if how the racial equity office and other staffing positions have come out and specifically with people of color being able to be in those positions does that speak to anything that's in our report so basically are there things in our report that we can check off are there places in the report where we right now can be holding people accountable and are there places in that report where we still have questions around whether people are communicating or working together sort of my three overall arching questions and sort of ass of the group Lulio and then Evan so I just put in the chat a link to a senate bill that was introduced last month by senator from Hinstale about various aspects of law enforcement accountability um related to the data points that have been raised tonight there is a provision in the bill to expand the type of data that's collected in connection with traffic stops but also to begin collection of data relating to certain use of force incidents as well as any any contact with law enforcement that results in death or serious bodily injury there are some other provisions in the bill as well but I rather than eat up time tonight I thought I would just provide a link to it it's assigned to senate government operations and the first day of testimony with the beginning with the legislative walkthrough is um this Thursday I think at 315 okay thank you Hulio sure Evan I think I was uh some of my thoughts I think were in line with some of Sheila's I was trying to very quickly get up to speed again on the 2019 report because it predates me in the last time I read it was several months ago um but I I had similar questions I think which is which parts of these have been implemented which are the ones that the entire RDAP was on board with have been implemented to our satisfaction and if there's items that have not been implemented to our satisfaction do we need to focus on getting those across the finish line before we move on to other topics because if these were sufficiently important to us in 2019 I would think they would still be sufficiently important to us so it seems like maybe the data piece that's referenced in our you know subsection c of the enabling legislation that Rebecca mentioned were maybe making hopefully going to be making some strides towards that with the division of racial justice statistics but in terms of subdivision a and the recommendation that the human rights commission is an appropriate place to address public complaints of implicit bias across all portions of state government I'm not aware that that has happened but I could be wrong about that and then also some of the some of the provisions related to prohibiting racial profiling including implementing any associated penalties it looks like there was a number of recommendations that perhaps haven't been fully followed up on yet and maybe it's time now that we've made so much progress on the data piece that we go back in and think about how we can reinvigorate the discussion about the recommendations in you know a and b on pages three and four and then the other thing that I wanted to flag and I know that many of the folks on this call also have some involvement in the criminal justice council but I was looking at our enabling legislation and there's a couple of there's a couple of sections that that require us to engage with that council and make some recommendations for example we're supposed to make recommendations related to model trainings and policies for law enforcement judges correctional officers attorneys and we're also supposed to make recommendations regarding model training and policy on deescalation and the use of force and I can tell you based on my experience of the of the chair of the rules committee of the criminal justice council we're in the process right now of rewriting our entire rules and as the chair I've asked for recommendations from the waiver committee the training advisory committee and also the entrance testing committee which are currently reviewing things like minimum training standards for law enforcement what topics they should cover how many hours should be spent on each topic and things of that nature so I don't know how long it's going to take for them to complete that work and get recommendations back to the committee that I sit on but they're trying to do that and if we have a statutory obligation to make recommendations concerning those topics now might be the right time to start thinking about that and maybe the first step is to engage with either Heather Simons who's the executive director of the and then and also Bill Surrell who's the chair of the council and sort of see in what ways we might be able to help them in complete that work okay okay thank you Evan uh Julio go ahead so I just wanted to follow up the point about Evan's point about the penalties for traffic stops or presumably on constitutional traffic stops or profiling that's inherently part of a bill that the senate has already been taking testimony on for a few weeks which is S-254 which was introduced by or sponsored by Senator Sears as well as Senator Balant that would eliminate the qualified immunity defense for law enforcement officers for legal violations and require the law enforcement agency to pay damages for any legal violations with or carve out that if the officer was essentially acting in bad faith the officer could be liable personally for either 5% of the damages of $25,000 whichever is less which is very similar to the statute in Colorado so I mean that is right right now often oftentimes for for traffic stops if there's a claimed you know constitutional claim under state or federal constitutional law against an officer the officer almost invariably seeks to dismiss the claim or get rid of the claim before trial on the grounds that whatever right was violated was not clearly established at the time of the officer's violation so I you know I don't know where that bill is going like I said there's testimony on it the bill that I put in the comments earlier S-250 Senator Rom's bill contains the identical language that's also an S-254 so there have been a lot of witnesses testifying on the issue and I think there's testimony scheduled on that bill for tomorrow afternoon as well okay thank you I have to admit Evan I forgot that part of the statute I feel very badly but yes there was that about interacting with the council it would seem that's where we need to go then yeah and I admit that one of the reasons why I asked as the chair of the rules committee asked those other committees for recommendations was because the composition of the rules committee I mean seemed to have expertise on wordsmithing but not necessarily subject matter expertise in some of the underlying issues and so you know I think that I think the question I think maybe for this group would be do we you know is can we identify folks with subject matter expertise on some of those issues that might be different from that of the members of for example the training advisory committee and would we make a recommendation that those you know those folks be heard before any recommendation is presented to the full criminal justice council to determine what are the new entrance testing standards going to be what are the new what are the new what's the new training requirements going to be for each of the three levels of law enforcement some of those topics you know I don't know that we necessarily have to come up with the answers ourselves to make meaningful contributions to that conversation we might be able to just help provide sources of information for people to look at and identify people who should be heard from Erin Evan can I just ask you a follow-up question about this and that's if you had to guess what do you think the time frame is on this rule rewriting project like how much time would this group have to get subject matter experts before the committees who are considering the rule changes well the realist in me is saying probably quite a bit of time but that's because the skeptic in me is doubtful that the that the committees that I referenced they're going to be able to wrap this work up quickly because they are complicated issues you know I the the and you know the the the meetings that I held for the rules committee were all public meetings publicly noticed you know no one tended to show up we were kind of getting into some of the nerdy wordsmithing as I mentioned but our work ground to a halt I would say at the beginning of last month because the work of those other committees and determining sort of answering these substantive questions hadn't really begun yet in earnest and so we're just sort of waiting now at this point and so we're not my committee is not having any more meetings right now we're just sort of waiting for folks to make recommendations to us and then we'll resume our public meetings and figure out okay well are those recommendations good should we try and come up with a draft rule do we need sign off from the full criminal justice council on these recommendations before we were to start taking a you know a crack at a draft rule so I'm not entirely sure the direction that things are heading in but I would imagine we have time and those are probably questions that either Heather Simons or Bill Sorrell could answer because they're in more frequent contact with the chairs of those other committees I sort of just sent them the request and said let us know you know if you have recommendations on these topics so we can finish our work well Jen might know I mean that's true no you don't know okay okay I just wanted it I'm not privileged to know timelines um my my work is more in the in the trenches okay so yeah okay yeah I was having that concern too um Erin because I mean there's been there been many times actually with this panel where I have had to say to the legislature for instance we meet once a month and they're all surprised they're like you mean you haven't taken this up yet and I'm like no we haven't I'm sorry um so I'm I'm I too am concerned about that but Evan is that something that you want to look into perhaps yeah I can certainly reach out to Heather and just sort of just just mentioned that we were talking about our enabling legislation and that we noticed that we were supposed to be participating in these types of conversations in some fashion um the timing of it seemed to coincide with the work that these other committees were doing and ask for her to sort of give you know keep us updated and if she has any sort of time estimate to let me know so that I can report back I'm more than happy to do that that would be excellent if that if you could do that I would really appreciate that particularly given that it's grounded in statute and it hasn't happened yet chief um Evan thank you for that information I guess my question is sort of like what we did on the original report um we can't be the only ones that's ever done this or you know instead of reinventing the wheel are there are there other areas in the country that that may already have some of these standards that make sense like how much training you should have or how much cultural competency who should do it where should be you know is there a certification is there not I mean I I can't think that Vermont's the only one thinking about this or there's other states I would think that have already gone through this exercise and there's probably some standards out there I don't know that but would that make sense for either this committee or that or your committee to look to find those resources and then have that conversation about how do we tweak it to work for Vermont right and not just overall I don't I just a question that I hate reinventing a wheel if it's already out there yeah that's it's a it's a perfect question because it's it's the exact question that all of the people on my committee were asking you know we were like it doesn't make sense for us to sit here and try and just come up with this stuff ourselves there must be things that we can turn to for guidance and then the then the question became okay well you know which which committee of the criminal justice council would have would you know which committee's charge is most relevant to answering that substantive question and it occurred to us that it wasn't the way it wasn't the rules committee which is you know we're just writing the rules it really was the sort of more substantive committees like the training advisory committee and so you know so that's why we we thought you know they should really be taking a look at this they also have all of their their meetings or public meetings they should all be you know duly warned and and we asked them to take it up because it seemed like it was more within their purview but well I had the same exact thought that you did chief Rebecca there's just a clarifying question for Evan what what statute are you referencing that asks our adapts involvement in this I was just trying to find it on West Salon I couldn't yeah it was the oh I thought I muted myself again it was the uh it was the same one that you referenced actually it was the 168 uh well title three 168 subsection f and the provisions that relate to our interactions with the criminal justice council are f2 and f3 I mean we're also supposed to make recommendations to the vermont bar association and some other stuff but I sort of mentioned that the council just because I happened to be aware that they were talking about I hope they're talking about some of this stuff because I'm waiting on the recommendations but they're talking about some of these issues now so I thought it was timely if we're trying to figure out where we're going to move to next right julio you're muted there to the chief's point there's a ton of material out there related to bias and implicit bias training um you know for the last 10 years at least uh cities under consent degrees from the U.S. Department of Justice have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars developing with DOJ with subject matter experts and community groups different forms of training and policies that ranges from you know the sheriff in northern California developing with local um advocacy and support groups policies relating to um you know arrests and interactions and custody and safety of members of the lgbt qia plus community um there are just a lot of materials out there as well as um uh that ny nyu law schools policing project has a lot of material on this sort of training uh i have mentioned to the academy previously that there is a very robust um nationwide free training program uh to teach law enforcement how to intervene and stop officers from engaged in bias through unlawful uh policing that's run out of georgetown law school it's called able a a b l e active bystandership and law enforcement that's based on a very successful program that was developed about seven or eight years ago in new orland's called epic which is ethical policing is courageous um i'm you know i for full disclosure i'm on the board of advisors for the able program out of georgetown i know that the academy is interested in it but it's just it's just an illustration that there was a lot of material um and there are also people we could connect with if if we would like to have speakers at future meetings in boston there is a century old uh nonprofit that does a lot of work all over the country in dealing with systemic disparities uh um uh the director there's a former director of the criminal justice program at the kennedy school christine cole um and they're in boston and you know and it's zoom time and i can send people links there's a lot of work that they've already done uh you know for projects that have taken two three four years um and so um the answer that's the long answer to the chief's question is is there stuff out there there is and a lot of it hasn't been developed kind of from the insular uh perspective of a given agency but people who are you know either in the community or in academia and all all getting together to work on these issues which is good news i'm feeling like on some level we need a kind of really clear i mean not that you're not being clear evan god i was gonna i didn't want to say that that came out all wrong all right um my fantasy is that you have this is just a fantasy don't go anywhere um it was all written down that this committee is working on this this subcommittee is working on this this subcommittee is working on this so that we had something some way of conveying the information from those subcommittees that we are statutorily required to interact with back to this panel so we could actually do work on that yeah wouldn't that be fantastic aton it would be lovely i know i know i admit you know everybody fantasizes yeah to my knowledge that does not exist and i because i was sort of learning i'm fairly new to the council as well and so i'm i'm sort of i was learning about the existence of all of the committees um as i was doing the work on the waiver committee and so i don't know and i there's other council members on here so so maybe you guys know but i don't know whether or not there is sort of like a nice one paragraph charge for each committee that exists all i know is bill said hey you like to write things you want to rewrite our rules and i said don't you know someone's gonna help me and he goes there's a whole committee for it don't worry so um so i know what we do and i know what we've asked other people to do but you know in terms of in terms of how far along they are in in meeting those requests i don't know but like and if there's written summaries of their charges i don't know that either but like i said i can i'll you know i'll reach out to heather on that first issue and i'll cc you a ton and because that way you know you can you can get the response as soon as i do great rebecca and then jen so i appreciate evan bringing up that council um side of section what is this statute again section 168 title three because what you're bringing up is just one of six right and i included just number six with the with the three subparts and and historically you know is one of the one of the original members on our depth i don't think we've ever tried to tackle any of the others because i think we others can correct me if i'm wrong but we were zeroed in on i mean it was it was a list it was a huge list of things we needed to work on we zeroed in on on on six subparts abc because we had that reporting requirement connected with that directly right um so maybe one of our i don't know if we need a bunch of subcommittees i don't know if our starting point is where do we want to prioritize within f um of subsection 168 um and for what it's worth i think that we have spent so much time on six c that's the data entity we have our 2019 report that started looking into a and b i would suggest we refocus and our energies on developing further updating however we want to do it but going back to a and b again building upon what we've done before i i see the statute i see what the legislature has asked us to do just for the record i don't have we done i don't think we've attempted to try to do anything beyond f six maybe wrong not i don't think we have either but jen you had your hand up and you took it down is that uh is that i understood oh no my computer had some sort of little moment so my hand came down inadvertently yes go ahead that i just popped into the chat um a couple of links one is to the the criminal justice council's um web page the list of the committees and then the second one which might be more useful is the uh committee subcommittee and working groups resource guide which has um all of our subcommittees and working groups their charges their um their membership although i say that with the caveat that some of those may need updating um they were put together um last summer so it is possible that things have changed since then because you know we move faster we fall apart thank you monica hi um just circling back to rebecca's comment um i i'm one of the few people like me and chila and rebecca and a few of us who were here jen you were here i can't remember from when when our doc was first established and um you know i don't want to bring up old history but there was a report that was submitted um not necessarily by that full panel but by the chairs of that panel which i opened up um and it references those sections that we were just talking about that we seem to have um you know forgotten about and in that report um there's a very clear statement by the people who wrote this report that um basically it was just impossible to do that work because the panel didn't have enough um staff or time to do it and so my i'm just thinking that you know as we moved on we just kind of inadvertently kind of put that aside as a result of of that first report and then the subsequent activities that took place after that any money so rebecca you're feeling like am i am i getting this wrong that you're feeling like the stuff about the council we should just put aside and go back to a and b yeah my my instinct is to go back to where we just spend all this work on on our 2019 report which was you know to me like revisiting updating reevaluating what we came up with an a and b but perhaps uh perhaps we take advantage of having a representative from the legislature here to to sort of uh i don't know if there's any insight in terms of what is the interest from the legislature i mean we are here to to provide some some advice on the subject matter um i don't know if it's worth reaching back out to to the chairs of the judiciary committee on on this question in terms of whether there is a priority request we see these pending bills this session they have this data um but i for one i i i would also discourage us from trying to try to hit everything in subsection of um i am inclined to suggest we build upon where we last were in our 2019 report okay and i'm i'm just thinking it may not be either or it may not be either or chief i want to also point out that the people that worked on the report and did a lot of work on the subcommittee has been acknowledged put an incredible amount of time into that that's not really compensated either so i guess my my question is we have to make sure that if this panel is meeting once a month and we're not requiring a whole bunch of people to do a lot of work on their own time maybe they want to but um what you know what could we feasibly do in a limited amount of time unless people there are people on the panel that want to spend you know a lot of hours working on something because that's their passion i don't know i'm just saying is i don't want to sound like we don't want to do anything but i'm just saying is you can't expect a lot of people to spend a lot of time on their own that they're not compensated on to try to come up with something uh on an ongoing basis right so i just want to throw that out there um because god knows i got enough work uh i don't know if other people do too but um i just want to at least i don't want to i don't want to assume that there are a lot of people on the panel that have all the time in the world to work on things so i just don't want to set up a false expectation with the legislators or somebody else that oh well we can work on that and then people are scrambling to try to do it so maybe i don't i i think that's a i think both of those points are good you know and i and i tried to i tried to say something similar and they're like let's not move on from what a and b said and on pages three and fourth they're still important you're still important right i mean maybe maybe um uh you know my dad used to tell me that you know he would ask me how do you eat an elephant and the answer is the same way you eat anything else one bite at a time right so maybe what we need to do is just focus on something more concrete during our next meeting and revisit that recommendation regarding 6a right which has to do with the human rights commission yeah just hone in on page three and figure out what's the next action step i did want to give us some history on that you'll remember that they julio erin one of the two of you or both of you will probably remember how many people did the human rights commission end up getting two years ago because i do remember that they oh well oh i'm all excited by that i need air one person huh damn well you know i was kind of kind of say maybe we should get somebody to go back and see what had happened with the human rights commission because we made a lot of noise about it but if what that resulted in was one position i guess maybe not um would it be useful to get or to ask boar gang to return and talk to us about the human rights commission and 6a specifically don't make me answer my own question well etan wasn't that during the time that um they were waiting on to see what the um axanas position was going to do and who was the one that should be collecting data and maybe i'm wrong but i mean i know that we had all suggested the human rights commission do it and they said they couldn't do it without having staff and they had i think one person that was uh funneling things or or trying to just to funnel it or stay on top of people but i think wasn't there some other discussion because that job was they were looking at what does that entail who's gonna who is the proper place to get those things i don't remember but i almost recollect that they were trying to figure out who was the best people to get those complaints or those we had recommended the human rights commission but i don't think they ever settled on that did they i don't think they did either i i'm looking at it now i'm going i don't think a whole lot happened i think my impression was more happened than did um what chief what do you feel about would it be useful to get the human rights commission back here to talk about like i mean like i could for instance send that part of the report to boar who i know has too much work as it is and see if she can come and address that because things do look differently now you're right there was no executive director of racial equity at that point there were a lot of things that were different i see axana put something in the chat too i don't know how to get in the damn chat good lord i guess is there what is the what some of these bills are in the legislative session to deal with some of the recommendations of the report and and talking about staff and needing needing things is that should is that going to be addressed i mean what we talked about or not really i mean i have to be honest i wasn't i didn't really spend time on that report i mean i was away from the committee this panel i'm sorry so i mean i um i i know most of it had to deal with staff right to be able to handle the volume and who's the proper place to do it who already had um protections for disclosure or who could request data remember there were some issues with who could request data because of confidentiality and all that and then at one point they thought about having the uh the the um it place who had these agreements with different places to collect data and other types of stuff so i get maybe i'm confusing things a little bit i remember that there was a discussion uh we couldn't really they weren't sure where to go and who had the staff to be able to handle it so i don't know the right answer of your question should we go back to the human rights commission or should we have some other discussion about where that should be housed i i don't really know it's been so long ago it's like i said it seems like 10 years ago so um anyway uh i don't know the answer to that question i'm gonna recommend that one thing that we do is follow up just at least so that we know Evan's proposal around at least getting in touch with Heather Simons and finding out the answers to those questions that we put forth about the connection between the subcommittees and this panel so i think Evan i'll work with you on that because i think we should look at that the other thing i think we should as others are saying go ahead with 6a i think starting with that again i don't know i it certainly seems like a reasonable conversation to to reopen to me um rebecca your hand yes there it is um what if if there's interest in subcommittees being formed around these subjects um 6a 6b and this council uh i don't know what what subsection of f that is um uh number but and any any other any others that we can come up with um and i was really i forgot you know and talking about this the things that have happened since our 2019 report that is relevant and should should be relevant or in the mix i forgot to mention the csg racial disparities and of course there are a list of proposals um and recommendations beyond uh relating to drug offenses which i know the legislature is dealing with right now in house judiciary in h505 but there were also a bunch of other things so um and and so a suggestion is that perhaps if there are enough if there are people interested here in our last half hour to consider subcommittees on these subjects to sort of rally around what has changed and and come back next month and report back on what each subcommittee uh suggests um as to those sub sections and i think i think that's an excellent i my screen is doing something very strange i think that's an excellent suggestion um others what is going on i think one of the members was spotlighted so i unspotlighted the person okay thank you so i'm liking the subcommittees and that so far we have three right the one on that is more concerned with the human rights commission the public complaint process um we've already i think answered the weather to institute and rather now it's more where it should be do we still think it should be the human rights commission so that subcommittee would be doing what is in your vision rebecca where did you want to go with that well perhaps the subcommittee could could get a right i don't know if it's if it's trying to reach out with tabora or try to collect relevant information for updating see if there's some consensus of where the next move is whether it's getting bored as part of the next agenda or whatever it is and report back i don't know keep it flexible and organic okay i don't know if others have some more specific suggestions i'm interested in working with evan on the part with the subcommittees of the council rebecca are you interested in working on 6a no i was going to sign up for 6b okay rebecca is working on 6b what was 6a i'm like all i'm trying to pull it out 6a is the complaint process okay what i thought yeah 6b is the racial profiling and penalties right right yeah i certainly don't have any objections to uh to subcommittees but i want to be mindful of a discussion that we had um when we had the subcommittee for the uh what's now the division of racial justice statistics and the fact that you know and also chief steven's comments earlier about the time commitment and feasibility and the fact that you know some people are effectively paid to be here and others are not and you know um i i just want to be mindful of that and not not taking so much on to our own agenda that you know the people who are interested in each of these topics don't feel like they have the the time or the ability to participate in them so i just want to be mindful of that and i i don't think we have to tackle everything at once even if we recognize that they're all important issues to tackle so then let's leave it where we have it now that's that's certainly fine with me well rebecca's all lonely here so hi shila sorry i'm so dark i'm not supposed to be on screens anyway so i'm just gonna throw off my camera and keep my um speaker on um so i think it's a yes and conversation i don't think that i think both of us do the parallel so i don't think i i appreciate both comments first of all i appreciate the subcommittee work and breaking up to a and b and keeping it moving on what we're trying to do and i really like that and people who feel like they gravitate towards one subject or other can do that um and i really appreciate your comments too evan because um that's exactly right and i think that maybe that if there are point people who are able to have more resources to take point on a and on b and then our very um work with those with what we'll call a subcommittee to be informing and engaging and providing that information so it's inclusive i think that that's an equitable way of doing it i can't honestly see like well we're going to consistently come up with this concern or issue of what evan was talking about so it's like how do we get some creative solutions and so i don't ask myself who can only commit so much time do it does not necessarily not want to have subcommittees and have somebody lead i just wanted to be inclusive to have my voice and be heard and part of the process when i can be so if we have people who are willing to step up such as rebecca if you are willing to step up and if you are saying you'd like to step in up in even a point um person for a subcommittee to do that and bringing people together to sort of lead and inform and get the information you need to bring back to the whole group i personally feel comfortable with that based on the relationships that we've built here and based on how we've worked together before on subcommittees now other people who are new might not you know might be a little dicey or might not necessarily have that same trust or those same relationships and i want to acknowledge that but i will say that i have been really um fortunate to sit on a few subcommittees that i feel like i went very well and there was a great form of equity in regards to how all of us could show up in different ways and contribute so i want to thank you to those who did take leadership in those ways and that allowed me to lead in other ways and contribute in ways that were meaningful for me cool do we rebecca my i'm i'm just worried i i don't know why i'm suddenly having this like anti yeah go ahead so when evan said when evan acquitted that subcommittee suggestion to the summer subcommittee i i immediately also wanted to roll back because i didn't i didn't actually mean to us that kind of intense time because i can't do it but actually and i should have clarified what i envisioned what i what i was willing to to participate to contribute on that b was for next month compile sort of a list a quick list of like so we know what we added to that 2019 b i was going to pull the csg recommendations the the i don't know just like x y pull it what we've since learned and and see if others can think of other places to look at um and just do a bullet list and maybe a link of where i got that string from right uh so not not a lot of heavy lifting not trying to write any pros not any not many independent research really just sort of compiling the loose sense for us to then have the beats topics in one place and we could get it out there at some point before the next meeting for people to consider and evan that i would say the same thing for you and i as well that we could get stuff out there before the next meeting for people to consider which means there'll be a little bit of homework before the next meeting gang so um but we will get that to you in a timely manner i guess is everyone all right with this i'd love to hear somebody who wants to go you dumb idiots no one's looking i mean chief is looking like he's got something up his sleeve and i don't even want to know i don't and con and i i i appreciate everyone on here i'm just saying is i am one person that supports our entire null hegan nation and i don't have time i just don't have time i i will input and throw in my two cents but like last report i didn't have time to work on it uh consistently so i'm just making people aware that i i mean i appreciate those who can um and i don't mind giving my two cents on this panel but i don't have a lot of expendable time to be working on uh some of these issues so i just wanted to be upfront and at least fair so that's all i'm not i was going to keep that to myself but you called me out so then i had to i'm sorry i i'm okay i'm honest right at least i i'll and she you bring a lot whenever you're here so please um all right i think we have some direction here um that rebecca evan and i are going to go in certain directions and collate some reading material frankly um around six b and around our obligations our statutory obligations to the council and we will get that material to you before the next meeting and then we will be discussing that for the next meeting hey ten yes ma'am sorry to not be addressing directly what you just said but i think coach is having trouble uh i think he's been wanting to unmute or speak up teams has been given i'm not sure what the error is but there is an error oh dear lord thank you i i don't know what i i'm seeing i'm seeing him in the participant list that says he's in the meeting i see him now too um great yeah i'm not sure how to intervene here but i'm trying uh i'm working on it keep talking i mean anyway um those were the two suggestions that seem to have come up in the last hour and a half plus i think that it's also well said that what evan and chief don have sort of put together around we don't have to do it all right now um i think that's useful can coach call in by phone um god am i the wrong person to ask um i'll send him the calling information thank you susanna i it looks like it tried to unmute me now finally oh there you are yes oh wow uh sorry about that guys i i not to intervene at this point but when you are asking about that historical information about uh the hrc that's when i was going to that's when i would that's why the screen was getting all weird and stuff that was me trying to answer the question it was a message from beyond yes all right uh did well did we get there or this there's stuff that you'd like to add coach well well what the original uh because we put a bill in uh at that point in time requesting additional staffing for the hrc and the and the additional staffing included uh the director of education and outreach and one additional litigator and the purpose for the litigator was to relieve the pressure that you know people felt would give bore the time to support these other efforts because technically she's our litigator in the cases that we bring forward in that direction um so in the last at the in the last half of this biennium in order to kind of placate all of that uh concern about the litigator what happened was we were given three hundred thousand dollars as a fund to hire contract attorneys now that you know what does that really accomplish for the commission it helps a bit but it doesn't give her the flexibility of having a staff member who could also fill in in any of the other areas necessary within the commission and and it's a difficult you know uh juxtaposition when you think about the role of the commission because sometimes we find ourselves litigating against the state right you know so it's almost like so we're going to give you money so you can hire somebody to you know uh i i said that out loud but uh every once in a while you have to say it out loud but but anyways we're still we're still working you know like like on it okay you keep you know you keep beating on the door and a psychologist told me once eventually you'll see cracks in the door so so we'll keep beating on it okay aton i have a quick question now the coaches now the coach had mentioned this wasn't one of the issues we wanted with the human rights commission to be able to have some dedicated staff to uh minority type cases because they were being spread around or being dropped or or being people were pleading out because it was taking so long so that was one of the recommendations was to try to get dedicated staff and didn't the human rights commission say they didn't know if they could do that because it might show favoritism or so i can't remember that whole conversation but there was something around that whole issue and that's why the litigator was needed but also the staff to actually manage it right to manage who gets what and where i i'm just trying to see that that was boar's role see the the thing is right right now uh at that point in time um there was a um we have three staff attorney investigators and they actually do the investigations of each of the complaints and and it's it's it's pretty interesting that a lot of them sometimes they don't get to the point of having to go before the commission sometimes they're settled prior to that point you know and and that's good especially if the outcome is positive for the charging party uh you know it's not so good for the respondents sometimes but you know uh that's that's why they're there uh but that seems to be you know the the case but where you start drawing the bandwidth is when you have to go to court you know and and that's where you're finding all of the time necessary to do that you have to allocate you still have to allocate just like all of us you know there's only so many hours in the day sometimes but but that's uh what we do um so that i think that was how that conversation went in that direction chief i i'm still coach thank you first off and good to see you i was i was here you know i was just kind of hanging out in a corner you know in a little box um it was a great discussion you know and i'm really you know proud of the work that you guys do uh you know because it uh if people knew what you guys do they it would blow their minds but uh you know it's pretty cool thank you thank you so then rebecca do you need someone to help you with the compilation that you're going to go through i throw that question out to the panel is there anyone who'd like to help me i'd welcome it um so please sign let me know oh great wonderful thank you susanna so susanna and rebecca evan and i anybody else who wants to join in let's we will get stuff out to you to read to consider please also if you haven't really look at the report from 2019 really look at it i don't want to be too much of a college professor right now but i'm getting the feeling that a lot of people didn't do the homework just saying anyway please do the homework for next month plus the little bit of homework that's coming down your way for from this meeting to get a sense and i'm being i'm joking but i'm also serious in the sense that we need to get a sense of what that report literally said and where we're going with it now okay jessica brown added her name oh great i see nothing because i don't know what i'm doing thank you coach jess brown if you can hear me what where do you want to switch college committee did you want to sign up for that was in response to uh helping you rebecca uh i also texted you so i'll help you i'll work with you and susanna great thank you i i thought you guys would appreciate hearing that you know uh i saw that look on your face see that's the teacher in me i'm watching expressions on faces you know it's just like yep i can tell so i think that's where we're gonna go um susanna yet the link to the report that i sent out last week is that what you're asking for man are you never mind that's all right just thought i'd ask that's all all right um i think we have some direction here that makes me feel good anybody else want to um add in some stuff here this would be a good moment but i feel positively at the moment about the direction we're going in uh with work that's already been done as david share would say protecting our work product anyone else okay then new business i have none anyone else i love this part of the meeting this is always fun anybody else no we just want to go home shut up man okay our next meeting is on the eighth of march of uh yes 2022 obviously um and before that as i've said now three times you will have a reading assignment it will come to you um and that is all that i thought we really needed to discuss this evening and if anybody else feels that way there is that lovely possibility of making a motion hey uh aton could you send out a reminder a reoccurring message on the meeting because the last one i i clicked on today had the cancellation one and then there was a new one just to make sure we have the right thing here no sure i just want to make sure if you could send out a reoccurring message for the new ones i'd appreciate it i make a motion to end does anyone want a second second all in favor scream hi hi all posed all abstaining god bless everybody have a good one talk to you all next month stay away from the virus and from the snow and the ice talk to you later bye bye


APC national chairman Abdelahi Adam, who faces battle to remain the party chairman and suspend all actions on Mr. Mann says that reps to jam. And this is plus politics. I am Mary Annacolle. Following his disapproval of principal officers of the National Assembly, announced by Senate President Goswyl Aquaville and Speaker of the House of Representatives in Abbas. And on Tuesday, there are strong indications that the National Chairman of the All Progressive Congress, APC, Senator Abdelahi Adam, is facing a battle to remain the party's chairman. And it was also gathered that the president is currently shopping for Adam's replacement and will make his position known when the party holds his National Executive Committee on July 11. Joining us to discuss this is Tunji Abdul Amid. He's a legal practitioner and also joining us is Subway Eli. He's a legal practitioner and is a member of the All Progressive Congress in River State. Thank you so much, gentlemen, for joining us. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you for having me. Good evening, Subway. So, I want to start with you because you're a member of the All Progressive Congress and there have been subtle rumblings within the party over the past few months, even before the 2023 general elections. We saw, even when it came to the selection of certain officers who were going to lead, in fact, the Senate President and the Speaker, we saw some rumblings and grumbling within the party. We saw people who kicked against what the party had called its anointed fellows for the position, the likes of Senator Abbas. It seems that right now there's some sort of trouble in Paradise for the chairman of your party. It could be time for a shake-up in the APC nationally. Subway, can you hear me? Okay, Tunji, I'm going to toss that question to you until we're able to get Subway back in. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, Subway, go ahead. Yeah, it's unfortunate that we have to start the 10th Assembly with crises. One would have told that the party will remain supreme for all times. The party had taken the position, I had the emergence of Senator Fabio as the Senate President and the right-of-the-bottom General Abbas as Speaker, of course, with their respective deputies. Now, such a fifth of the constitution provides for election of House officers by respective members, members of the Kim Yanis. However, even though some people kicked, I can only let the party for being able to pull it through. And now for this whole strand of officers, Majority Leader, Deputy Majority Leader, Chief Weep, Deputy Chief Weep and all that, with both houses. One would have also thought that the same discipline would allow the party to take the lead to continue. And if I have my facts right, what National Chairman Adelaide Amun Senator is simply sitting on is the party should hold the reins, the party should call the shots in every constitutional democracy such as ours, where parties are the platform upon which we will run elections. This is expected. I do not know how anybody gets in the office. Suddenly, just since the Supreme Supreme of the Party, the right-dependent candidate for God's sake, the party would, I'll tell you my 12 times, work towards strengthening the position of the party and giving strength to the government that's better. So I think, respect to whatever legislations are rising, whoever thinks that the removal of the party chairman would be a recipe for the problems that are trying to avoid is going to exacerbate the crisis. The opposite party, the PDP, is already in a mess because of same leadership issues. In a democracy such as ours, one can never say, the moment you have this high turnover of National Chairman of the party or the members of the National Working Committee, you create a crisis environment. It will not be long. Everybody will be at back as drawn. And then the government itself will be distracted because you start to fight too early in the day. Don't forget, it's a four-year journey. I see what you and others have to settle down and deliver what the party has promised Nigerians. For me, the National Chairman was elected at the convention and the party constitution is clear about how to remove him. If removing him in a manner that suggests a subversion of the constitution, whether elected or not, where it comes from, they say, every good to dog has an owner. And the owners of the dog are good to not be happy that you're slaughtering the animals. For you, it might be a bit, but for them, it's their pets. So it's important that we realize that it's not too early in the day. I think the president should intervene. President, people who are showing the capacity for leadership that had perverse generations. Adelaide Damu happens to be a member of his class of 1999 governors. When he was governor of legal, Adelaide Damu was governor of National House states. To that extent, their contemporaries are everywhere. It's not be too hard for him, therefore, to reach out to him and smoothen the edges. There are any rough edges, imagine. The second government happened in two, Ejio Nakume, also Senator, also called for the same class of 1999 governors. So it's easier to navigate through the whole maze and get to some kind of approach more. I think that it's too early in the day to start a fight. And if APC goes into this kind of battle at this stage, it may not come out better. I foresee a situation where if I'm not careful what happened in 2019, what happened, we came off in the back of the victory in 2015 against the PDP. And no one's immediately removed. Is that so? Sorry, John O'Digga, you go. I don't assume you came in. The turbulence that follows, the APC at the end of the day in 1919 lost five states. Includes Afarrawa have lost everything. I thought I won everything. I think that that's a red flag that we have right now. What can I afford to have another crisis with PDP itself? If you try it this time, I might lose again in 2023. In 2017, I beg your pardon. Okay. Let me push you a bit further because many would say that this is not the first time that this has happened. So, just as you clearly stated, we've had the Oyegun situation and then, of course, we had it strongly and now we have a double. But let's look at the president wading in on this matter. There are those who are saying that the president should hand us that this is purely a national assembly matter and it should be dealt with by members of the national assembly as opposed to the party interloping and getting its hands dirty. Hence the people calling for the head of the chairman of the party. I mean, you're on one hand calling for the president to wade into the matter because you think that he might be able to solve it. But many are saying that the president should hands off and that this does not concern the president and either doesn't concern the chairman of the party. That's not correct. I would not go with that kind of reasoning. Every member of the national assembly was elected on the party platform and that's why, apart from the consistently organized offices of the senate president, deputy senate president, speaker and deputy speaker of the House of Representatives, the House rules and senate rules were right for other presidential officials of the respective chambers. Now there is a majority office, an office of minority in the opposite. So the party positions are along those lines. Now if you don't moderate the tensions and say the party should stay away or the president should stay away, the president himself is elected on the party platform. So how would he ask him to stay away? There must be moderation in the forces otherwise it's going to be everybody goes a dagger's drawn and then there'll be price everywhere. My calculation is that the APC are not fully matured into one single jail. In 2015 we came as an amalgam of different legacy parties. So the first shock that came, I had a 2019, we almost collapsed. It's said that in the past they did not have a candidate at all. It's that for a lot of candidates who won elections everywhere, they had to lose everything by judicial fiat. Who lost all your states, who lost Bakhti state, who lost about five states in a whole that were in a firm grip. We might need to consolidate in 2023. Now let's not also look at the fact that the PDP also can rebound. If the PDP does not rebound, member parties only show some strong promise. For me, it's too early in the day to have this crisis and I want to urge the president and not just to come to a round table to resolve this issue. Thankfully around the president, all the key players are street politicians, famous by Javier Mela, two of the staff, comes to the huge pedigree of experience, that's assembly. So you can't wait in at the level. Here's the president's political text. It should wait in. The second of the government federation is also a former senator who was at some point a governor. So it comes with a complex experience from the executive and the respective arms of government. The president himself was a former senator. His wife is a senator. So all around him, there's experience that should help him navigate through this process. I don't think that anyone that says the president should be aloof because it's a party matter, it's not a party matter, it should answer. No, internal affairs on assembly can cause a disabilization at the end of the day. We need to have a focused regime. We need to have a focused house. And the level can be focused on having a stable parliament where the president's policies can be driven through without care of some kind of incomes. Okay. All right. Let me go to Tungi. Tungi, you're a member of the People's Democratic Party. This is not new to the PDP because we know that the PDP at some point had its own fair share of chairmanship drama and inter-party drama, which one way or the other many would point to as a reason for which your party lost out in the 2023 general election. So again, as an outsider looking in, what do you make of this drama? Did the Senate president jump the gun? Yeah, being that the National Working Committee of the party had quickly disowned the announcement of those workers as opposed to what the party and the National Working Committee should have done because they're saying that this should have been their duty as opposed to Senator Acquavio jumping the gun. For me, firstly, let me say, I want to first of all disagree that PDP is in a mess. PDP is not in a mess. It's just a crisis, not like APC and other parties are going through the same crisis. All parties go through crisis. The only difference is that APC were able to, before the election, manage their crisis in a way that they were able to bear results. Thank God they don't have people like Governor Wiki, former Governor Wiki in their midst. Probably they would have been the same soon, like PDP. So let me just say that, look, it's only in Nigeria that where you see somebody will be a member of executive and he wants to also be part of the parliament. They want to control the parliament. They want to determine what happened in parliament. It's only in Nigeria where they will tell me the president will determine who becomes a president, who becomes a leader or should determine the leadership of the party, of the National Assembly. It's only in Nigeria where you see them, they say, party must be the one to determine who becomes a senior president or those who become the leaders of the party. It is where party democracy is necessary. In a democracy, that's what we call separation of power. There is National Assembly, there is executive. They all have their own role. The party has its own role. First I'm concerned, the role of the party and that of the president should be an advising role to them, not to tell them this is the people that should be, or they should be the one to determine who and who should be the leaders of the National Assembly. National Assembly is a separate outcome of the government and by section 50 of the constitution, they are giving the power to elect their own leaders at the National Assembly. What we see today is the institution whereby the president will have to determine who becomes the senior president. The president will have to determine who becomes the deputy senior president. The president will have to determine who becomes a leader of the National Assembly. You see, we can't have a system that will work because we will be having a system whereby the executive will determine and dominate what happens at the National Assembly because when you have a National Assembly that is choosing or that whose head is chosen by the executive, that head will be loyal to the executive and that is not what I'm not saying. They are talking about having a good leadership, but sometimes this leadership is not that leadership. The leadership of anything goes. They don't care what they have, that good leadership or rapport. Whatever you bring, they will pass it. You can't even look into it. You can see what happened at the National Assembly whereby the president said, whenever the president brings to them, they will approve it even without looking at it. And that was why a contract agreement was brought to them that was written in Chinese and it was passed by them without even knowing what is the agreement. So I don't want that conversation. At first I'm concerned. I recognize the right of the party to be involved or to be constructed or to be given information as to what to happen. It's not for them to dedicate to the National Assembly who and who should be the leader. Same detail to the secretary and the president. The president should not be the one to take the energy. Like I said, we often, our loyalty is to the president. And that's why we are not getting in this country. There is no loyalty to the country. The loyalty is to the president and to the party. Once the party is looking for a particular team, you must go in that direction. Do you want the party is not looking, is not going in that direction, you must, you know, cannot go there. The president, if he's not interested in a particular line of action by the party, that chairman must follow the president otherwise he will go. So I, so the system, we're having the system. Might I ask, because, you know, many would be, I'm trying to open the minds of a couple of people and not just because I'm starting standing in the gap for the APC. I mean, so the ACS speak for himself. And if the tables were turned, it's the same thing that the PDP would do because many would say that just like the PDP, the APC is, and, and, and, you know, vice versa. And this is the same thing that would happen if the PDP were in the position of the APC. These political parties seem to always exalt party and, of course, members of the executive above the people and the interests of the general public. Can you say that the PDP is totally different from the APC in this regard? As much as I'm not talking about PDP or APCA, but you see all the things that I have said, I talk about what should be, what how it should be, what should happen. I mean, whether PDP or APCA, I'm not saying that. And that's not to say that I admit that PDP would do the same thing or they would do worse than what they are doing now. Are you admitting or you're not admitting? I'm not admitting. They are not admitting. They are not telling you, I'm not admitting that that happens. That's their assumption. Because what we have now is APC. APC is in vandal. So let's see what they are doing. If we have APDPs in charge, we can say okay, but now they are not in charge. That would be everything I would say would be in the name of assumption and the presumption. So as far as I'm concerned, I'm not even talking about as APC or PDP. I'm talking about what should be obtainable in democracy. In democracy, the National Assembly should be independent. It should be able to do and do its program on its own without any cost to the secretary. They are a party man. They can have free cost to their party or to the secretary at five or consultation. Not for them to say, look, we need to get elected from the president. We need to get elected from the chairman of the party. That's what has been happening. I'm not escalating PDP in that regard too. While PDP was here, the same thing was happening. The president of the time will become the leader in the house. If you are not in line with that, there was a problem with the Senate assembly, simply because the president is going in tune with Dr. Bukalasaraki. That was why you saw all those prices at that time. Not because he was not performing, not because he was not doing his job, but because the president don't want him. They want different persons to become the president of the state of Nigeria. As far as I'm concerned, for other movements to grow, National Assembly, government should be able to operate on its own. Executive should be on their own. Why most executive want to influence whatever happens at National Assembly? If you have a good project, you want to bring to the policy or whatever you want to bring to National Assembly, not be them. Talk to them. They don't want to just say, want to put out just fast whatever you bring. Nobody will fight you. Everybody is fighting for Nigeria. The interests of those at National Assembly, what they are looking for is the Nigeria development. The executive are also looking for the same thing. So if you are bringing policies that will develop the country, they will pass it. They don't have to bribe them. You don't have to come and say, I need people who are my own.  They don't know what you are bringing, whether I write or not, they approve it. And that's what they are looking for. And that's why they are more concerned about having their own as leader at the end of their affairs of the National Assembly. It is not done. Before I let you go and bring something in to finalize this, so we have made mention of the fact that the APC has not necessarily ripened to a point where it can stamina it's two feet, being that there are too many things that make a hole and they yet to get to that hole. Can that center of the APC hold right now up until the end of this first tenor? Or do we see a deterioration from here on? I want to agree with him that the APC has not gotten its foot wet because I see today, you see that those factions are sitting, the APC faction, sorry, the ACM faction, the CPC faction, the last regime, that is the presidential majority, because of those in the cabinet are CPC Khakos. Today what we see today are those ACN, old ACN Khakos, those are the people that will populate the cabinet and around the president. So I want to agree with him that they are not standing well as it is today. They are just a couple, just come together to grab power and they will be able to grab the power. They are one, they are not united. So wait, finally, because we have just a minute to go. So if the National Working Committee continuously insists, because right here, the National Working Committee is saying, we didn't give approval, we haven't given any list, we are only hearing, what we're hearing now is just rumors and they're saying they're calling a meeting and then whatever comes out of that meeting is what will obviously be heard in our news on the newspapers as to who would be the principal officers. What should we be hoping for? Fingers crossed? Subway, can you hear me? Subway, can you hear me? Are you there? Yeah, I can hear you, can you hear me? Yes, in one quick minute, can you can you help us wrap up? Yeah, the National Working Committee should be very, very circumspect. We should be retrospective as to what had happened before in the past. Let's not understrike at one spot twice. Whether or not this issue can be resolved, but I agree very mentally with Tunji. You can't have the party to bear a roof. If anything goes wrong, they'll call the APC as a party. So everything right now falls to the party. So the party leadership, the president himself, must be involved in one person and assembly. Even in advanced democracy in the United States, why did the Democrats lose momentum as soon as they lost elections? In the mid-term elections? Why does it look like the Democrats may not get it right? Because they've lost the general control of the Congress. So the party must take interest in what goes on in government. The party is independent of the government and not responsible for the party who started a Lufa watch. Because Daniels would soon throw out the blame if the party failed. They must make it fair not to control and tell me what happened. Okay, gentlemen, we have to go. We have to go, unfortunately. That's our time. I want to say thank you, Tunji Abdulameed and Sawaya Eli. Our both lawyers, Tunji is a member of the People's Democratic Party, while Sawaya Eli is a member of the All Progressive Congress. Thank you so much, gentlemen, for speaking with us tonight. Thank you for having me. Thank you. All right. Well, we will take a break. When we come back, we'll talk about the general control of the sea. We've messed up and what the National Assembly's position is on the map to stay with us.