And I call this meeting to order. It is 6.09 p.m., October 26, 2021. And I guess I jumped ahead of myself. We do have a full quorum here, all seven of us. And so with that, I'll take additions or modifications to the agenda. I will start on this. I'm looking to table 6.03, BPC Communication Protocols to our next meeting. And my rationale behind that is as I started to compile this together, it kind of grew a little bit of scope into more of a play-by-play as how things happened, which we might need to be able to do as a commission. And seeing how we're going through this grievance process, I want to include that in this. And so until we finish that up, yeah, I will be ready with this communication protocol. So if I could have a second to scratch that from the agenda. Seconded by Commissioner Hart. Any discussion? I'm sorry, can you tell me what item this is? 6.03, BPC Communication Protocols. Basically what we discussed last meeting was kind of like, basically how the commission responds to requests from the media, how do we get things out to the public, et cetera, et cetera. So I had a second from Commissioner Hart. All in favor, raise your hand to say aye. That passes unanimously. And I will entertain any further amendments or additions to the agenda. Commissioner Grant. Thank you. I would like to add an item, and that is to do a review of the workflow document that we've been maintaining, just to make sure that certain items are on it and that we just are on task with making sure we're moving forward with certain things. So not a full-on discussion. And it'll probably also kind of flow into what our upcoming agendas will be. All right, I second that. Any discussion? All right, all in favor, raise your hand to say aye. That passes unanimously. That will take the place of the former 6.03 on the agenda. And are there any further? I circulated about an hour and a half ago to the commission members' resolution that we wanted to bring up today. And we're not going to vote on that today, but we are going to, I would like to at least discuss it and then in hopes of putting that on the agenda for next week. So yeah, basically it is. Sorry, just a quick point of order over here. Which agenda item are we on? We're still on 1.03 additions and modifications to the agenda. I was trying to, well, if I finish it, it should be clear for all of us to see what we're trying to do here. Okay, so essentially I circulated a draft resolution that would make a resolution about certain quota asks for the hiring for BPD. And basically we're not going to vote on the resolution, but I do want to speak, I'll talk about it. And then we will vote on this at a future meeting. Is that all right? So I think because this hasn't been publicly warned as part of the agenda, you would, I mean, I would advise that you amend the agenda to discuss it now and then make sure that it's posted before the next meeting. So if members of the public want to weigh in, they have an opportunity to do so before a vote. But I would advise that you formally amend the agenda if this is going to be a topic of discussion. All right, thank you. All right. Well, if I might just comment on that, I appreciate your comment, but this is just a, this motion is around recruitment. It is an advisory motion. It's not a policy change. And in that regard, while I support Chair Gommash's decision to vote on this at an upcoming meeting, it would not be appropriate, it would not be inappropriate to consider that motion and vote on it this time, given that it is an advisory motion and it is also time sensitive. But I would certainly go along with Chair Gommash's recommendation that we vote on it as soon as possible as the next scheduled special meeting. Certainly, whatever the commission decides to do, I'm just advising that you amend the agenda, vote to amend the agenda to include this as a discussion item tonight if you're going to have a substantive discussion about the circulated resolution document. My understanding, Chair Gommash, is that's what you were proposing? Yeah, I was getting there. Thank you. Awesome. So with that, I'd like to amend the agenda for 6.04. I propose that we just have a subset discussion on the recruitment resolution that we'd like to hand over to BPD to have a second. Seconded by Commissioner Comerford. Any further discussion? I am not seeing or hearing any. All in favor of this amendment, raise your hand and say aye. That passes unanimously. I'd like to propose another amendment to the agenda and it's to briefly discuss the process for reviewing the complaint policy. Is that, oh, oh, sorry. Okay, I second that. Any further discussion on this amendment? All in favor, raise your hand if we say aye. That passes unanimously. All right, are there any further amendments or modifications to the agenda? Seeing or hearing any, I then motion to approve the amended agenda. Seconded by Commissioner Hart. Any discussion? Not seeing or hearing any. All in favor, I'm sorry. I just wanna say that I'll abstain because I wasn't at that meeting for the vote. Oh, that's for modifications to the agenda. Oh, so sorry. All in favor, raise your hand to say aye. That passes unanimously. And moving on to the agenda item 2.01, which is approving the minutes from the regular commissioner meeting on the 28th of September, 2021. Do I have a second for those, sorry, I just wanna kinda quiet this all together. Approval of the minutes of 9, 28, 20, 21 and the approval of the minutes from the special commissioner meeting on the 6th of October, 2021. Do I have a second for approving those minutes? Seconded by Commissioner Grant. Any discussion? None. All in favor, please raise your hand to say aye. That was all in favor, minus Commissioner Saguina who abstained from not being here for those meetings. Do I need to do a roll call for that then? I think technically you should because you have someone who's remote and you have a non-unanimous vote. All right, thank you. Starting with our remote commissioner, Commissioner Garrison, are you in favor of approving the minutes? That's a yay, commissioner Grant. Yes, commissioner Hart. Yes, commissioner Herzach. Yes, commissioner Cumberford. Yes, and I vote yes. And Commissioner Saguina. Abstain. Abstain. We'll be next to agenda item 3.01 which is a public forum. Anyone in the public or anyone logged in via Zoom? Now is your time to speak if you'd like. If you're zooming in, please raise your hand and the clerk will acknowledge you. All right, I'm not seeing anybody in Zoom. Make the announcement one more time. Oh, Brian Corey is actually presenting with us tonight. Oh, okay. Welcome. Anybody in the public, I'd like to speak. I'm not seeing or hearing anyone so that concludes agenda item 3.01, public forum. Seeing how we have Mr. Corey here with us right now, I wonder if, would you mind starting now or would you like to wait till 6.30 to start your presentation? Well, thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm happy to go ahead and start my presentation now. I'm at your disposal. All right, with that then, we'll move up the time certain agenda item to right now, 6.20 p.m. And with that, I'll let us introduce Mr. Corey for the public. Thank you. So Brian Corey has been generous enough to share his time with us. He's been on the board of NACOL, the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement. And in our previous discussions with him and talked about his background with regard to trauma and policing and was generous enough to agree tonight to speak with us. So thank you so much for taking that time. Well, you're very welcome. Thank you all for having me.  I have a couple of videos. I will kind of play it by ear and just see how the time goes if I can squeeze the videos in or not. But again, I'm very glad to be here. As you've heard, Brian Corey, I actually just finished nine years on the NACOL board a couple of weeks ago. I was the immediate past president and there was a new president. So I am no longer on the board, but I'm still involved. And my day job is that I am the director of the civilian oversight agency in Cambridge, Massachusetts. So that's where I am right now. And I'm just happy to be a resource and very glad that your commission is taking the time to learn a bit more about trauma. And I will say that in this presentation, I will say a bit about what trauma is and sort of definition and some basic understanding. And then talking about the impacts of trauma, kind of the nature of traumatic response. But then I want to talk more about how trauma affects everybody, community members, police officers, people who've been victims of crime and everyone else. And then a bit about sort of resiliency and what are the protective factors? So I am not a trained social worker or clinician, but I have gotten a number of different trains in trauma and do a lot of work around trauma here in the city, including the city of Cambridge, part of responding to traumatic events that have an impact on the community. So with that, I am going to try to, let's see, this is always fun to do a presentation and try to share my screen at the same time, so let's see if I can make this work. Okay. All right, so hopefully you're seeing my screen, the title slide. Can anyone confirm? Yes, we are. Okay, perfect. Thank you. And so as I said, really, the goal of this is to provide some information about the nature of trauma and all these other things. And I want to do it in a way where, my goal is to kind of push through this and then do Q and A at the end, but if someone has a burning question, please don't hesitate to interrupt me and I may not be able to see you, so you may have to use your outside voice to let me know. But moving on through the presentation, I do want to say for people attending the meeting in person or watching this later, that this session will include discussion of a range of traumatic incidents, how they affect people, including discussion of violence and deaths, and some people may find it disturbing. I won't read the whole slide, but do take care of yourself. If you need to step away, turn off the screen, please do that. And again, I want to make sure people have this. If you need to talk to someone about ideas of self-harm and someone you know is suicidal, there's a National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at<PHONE_NUMBER>, and you can also send a text message to the crisis text line at 741-741. Both of those programs are free. They're available 24-7. So please do, if you need to take advantage of that, do so. And with that, let me jump into the presentation. So trauma, what is trauma? It's a word we hear a lot these days. There are a lot of different ways that people talk about things being traumatic, but in this context, I'm going to give you a couple of definitions. So first, I'm going to use the general definition that I've been taught, which is trauma is any event or series of events. It may not be a single event that shatters an individual's sense of safety in the world and overwhelms their capacity to adapt and cope. And so that can be a range of things. That can be physical. It can be emotional. It can be historical. I'll say a bit more about that. And so traumatic responses, or more specifically traumatic stress responses, are normal reactions to abnormal circumstances. And I really want to emphasize that because trauma is an absolutely normal, human, biological, evolutionary response. It's a reaction to abnormal circumstances. And those reactions can vary greatly. Again, I'll say more about this, but they're very much influenced by a person's background, their socio-cultural history. And so you may have three people that from some perspective may seem all the same, who will have completely different responses to the same event for any number of reasons. And so it's important for people to remember that because one person doesn't seem to have an impact from something traumatic, others may and vice versa. There's no right or wrong reaction. I also want to share this more specific definition. This is from the federal government from SAMHSA, that individual trauma results from an event or series of events that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or threatening, and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual's functioning and physical, social, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being. Now, that's a more specific, a bit more clinical definition, but again, just to give you a sense of a shorter, but I would say accurate definition, and one that is a little longer, but gives you more of a sense of the nuance of it. And so trauma-informed. This is another thing we hear about all the time. And in fact, sometimes I hear more about being trauma-informed than actual trauma. It means lots of things to lots of people, but in this field, again, I'll show this a couple of times, we talk about the four R's. You are realizing the widespread impact of trauma and understanding the potential paths to recovery. You're recognizing the signs and symptoms of trauma in clients, family, staff, yourselves, police officers, anyone involved with any system or process. When you're responding, you respond by fully integrating that knowledge about trauma into your policies, procedures, and practices, and you are resisting re-traumatizing people.  So those four R's kind of a quick, easy way to remember, but you realize, you recognize, you respond, and you resist re-traumatization. So again, we talked a little bit about individual trauma. There are these much broader categories of trauma, and these are all very real. They have a real impact. Interpersonal trauma is often what people think about when they can go beyond physical trauma.  That's traumatic for most people, but there's also interpersonal trauma that can happen physically, it can happen emotionally. Terrorism and mass casualty events. Living in Cambridge, when the Boston Marathon bombing happened, it was right across the river. The people who were convicted guilty of the bombing were from Cambridge, Cambridge officers were involved in the shootout, a very traumatic for terrorist mass casualty event. I would also say that for many, many people, the COVID-19 pandemic is a long-term, slow-motion mass casualty event, and it's traumatic, and that's part of why we're seeing so many societal disruptions. In addition to economic and political effects. Again, I won't read all these boxes and go on about them, but human and natural disasters, human-made natural disasters, oppression and marginalization, and historical and community trauma. I really want to lift those up because people often think, well, they're terrible things, they're wrong, they're immoral, but these are truly types of trauma, and they're types of trauma that people experience that they pass on generation to generation through stories, through lived experience, and then of course, vicarious trauma. Again, people are more familiar with this, this very often affects people in what you can call helping professions, doctors, social workers, teachers, police officers, firefighters, EMTs, people that work in civilian oversight as professionals. All of these people can experience vicarious trauma, and again, I'll talk more about why that impacts different people differently. Some of the specific experiences, and this is not an exhaustive list, but again, to give you a sense, things that people may go through, abuse, physical, sexual and emotional, childhood neglect. I think people involved in social work and caring for young people often recognize that neglect is seriously traumatic for most people, but it may not be thought of that way. It's not something that was neglected, it's too bad, but it can have a huge impact. Substance abuse in a family setting, sudden unexplained separation from a loved one, whether by death, divorce, other things, war, poverty. Poverty is an experience that can be deeply traumatic for many people, although not for all. Racism, discrimination, oppression, and of course violence in the community, war or terrorism. So again, I'm kind of repeating things, but I want people to have a broad lens for the types of trauma that people can experience and how it affects people, affects of trauma. So there you'll see on one side of the screen, there's a document that's from a guide that I'll give you a link to that was developed in Cambridge. Don't try to read that, but I will make it available to the commission as a PDF and I'm sure it'll be publicly posted, but you're not gonna read it on your screen. But what I will say is that trauma has many different effects. Again, those five point physical, emotional, cognitive, behavioral and social. Those effects may be present from time to time. They may be long lasting. They may be aspects of a more long-term, post-traumatic stress disorder where they could be immediate. And that affects things in terms of how people behave. The classic in the moment, people freeze, flight, fight or flee, freeze, fight, flight. I always have a problem with all those little words put together. But again, it's not just fight or flight. The first thing is to freeze. And all of these have biological reasons behind them, which I won't get into. That's the whole other training. I can do some of that. There are people who are excellent at that. But things that can be affected include, you know, people not seeming present, people dissociating, people having behaviors that don't seem to make sense in the moment. They behave in a way that seems out of proportion or where they may behave in a way that seems numb. Thinking can be challenged. There can be random emotional releases. These are all types of effects of trauma that people can experience and that people may see. And if people aren't aware of trauma, traumatic background and traumatic responses, they may misunderstand those. They may think if they're dealing with someone who's been a victim of a crime that they're behaving very strangely for someone that X, Y or Z happened to. So moving to the next slide, ACEs. This is a concept that comes up a lot. And I have a couple of slides here. I just kind of put this together today so they're not quite in the order I was expecting. But ACEs are adverse childhood experiences. This graphic shows a number of general categories. Again, abuse, neglect, household dysfunction, but almost every person has experienced at least one adverse childhood experience in some way. And 55% of adults report experiencing at least one. So they're consciously aware that one of these things happened. One in five report experiencing four or more. And so a person with four or more ACEs, the term of art, that person is 12.2 times as likely to attempt suicide. They're 10.3 times as likely to use injection drugs. And they're 7.4 times as likely to deal with alcohol addiction. Now, again, that doesn't mean that everybody that happens to, but these are things that can really have an impact coming out of childhood for anybody. And there are definitely things that contribute to that, how much you have in terms of family pressures and maladaptive coping strategies, how much resiliency you have, how much agency you have in terrible situations. So this is an important concept as we think about how different people are affected differently and that we have to remember that's something that is not particularly traumatic for someone, maybe highly traumatic for someone else. And it's also, so again, with the slide says, although trauma can occur at any age, it has particularly debilitating long-term effects on children's developing brain. So it also has biological impact. Again, that doesn't mean they can't be overcome or worked with, but it has a long-term impact. And as I said, they're often referred to as ACEs and this is common across all sectors of society. It's not limited to class, gender, racial or ethnic background part of the country. These happen to people, no matter what their backgrounds or identity. So this is where I'm gonna try to show a video and we're gonna see if it works. I won't show the whole thing, but this is a video from Nadine Burke Harris who is currently the Surgeon General of the State of California. She was not in that role when she made this, but again, it's on YouTube. You can see it's a TED Talk. I won't play the whole thing, but rather than me talk the whole time when I give you someone a little more interesting. No, and I realize I don't know if I chose share volume. And it looks like I may not have. I love doing these things. So I'm gonna skip this video. This is why it's down the front end. I may or may not skip things. So I will send people the link. I recommend watching it. Basically you get about, if you watch the first three or four minutes, you get a great kind of lay person's description of why ACEs have such an impact. And without trying to replicate what Dr. Burke Harris says, she talks about if you wake up every morning and there's a bear outside your door, the first time it's scary, but over time, even though it's always scary, it starts to have a different impact. All right, so moving on to the next slide, I've learned to just try to roll with it. Again, some of these things about ACEs, how chronic these things are, how severe they are, how often, and whether they're spiritual, physical, mental, how they kind of break down your sense of what would be normal. They can impact relationships. And again, I'm not gonna read through all these graphics. This is from a wonderful website about trauma-informed care. And the link is down at the bottom. There, you might be able to see it. But again, I recommend it. This is from a clinical perspective, but some very, very helpful information. And again, why am I going on and on about ACEs? Because this is part of what can play into how people react, why people react differently. And reactions that often may not make sense from anybody, whether it's someone who is making a complaint about a police officer, a victim of a crime, a general community member, a police officer, all of these things have an impact. So what are some of the risk factors? As I mentioned, when the younger someone is, the more likely these things are traumatic events are to have a deeper impact on the person, the relationship. Part of what can be so traumatic is when there's a relationship that there's a level of trust and that trust is broken in a traumatic way. So you can imagine many situations where the relationship to the perpetrator being one of closeness and trust actually makes the trauma that much greater for many people. Again, I just mentioned how chronic, how severe, how frequent the duration of the trauma, a history of prior trauma, and the impact of gender. People of different genders generally have different responses to trauma because of all the things that come up in socialization in life, not from a biological cause, but because of the sociological differences that are imposed on people based on the gender they're assigned at birth and the gender that they carry throughout their lives. Also, it's important to note that these ACEs do have a unique impact. And again, if you think about the way that children in particular have less power, there's a way that children are kind of in that moment. How do I survive? How do I get out of danger? There's less understanding when you're young of why things happen with something your fault. Did you cause it? Are you bad? And the developing brain is particularly vulnerable to the neuro-physical impacts of trauma. And again, people in helping profession may have various experiences with trauma. This is anecdotal, but my experience is that very often, people who go into jobs and roles where they want to help others may be exercising agency, which is an important aspect of resiliency when you have some sense that you have a bit of control, that you are not completely at the whim of some horrible thing, whether in the moment or afterwards. And again, because you're being the police commission and you both are the commission for the police department and exert that civilian oversight role, trauma affects oversight practitioners and police officers. And again, all of those types of trauma, including vicarious trauma. The good news is that there are protective factors. As I mentioned again, agency, that ability to take action on your behalf or on someone else's behalf.  The sense of agency makes a difference. The level and quality of external support that you really have people that listen to you, that take care of you, that as soon as possible help restore that sense of safety to give you back that sense that's been shattered by the traumatic event, providing that stability, knowing what's going to happen next, not feeling like you're just in some process or some system where you don't know, you're just waiting.  And so that's a hard thing to deal with. And having those opportunities to exercise agency, thinking about someone who's experienced a traumatic event and you're working to help them, whether it's investigating a crime that was perpetrated against that person or something else, doing your best to provide opportunities for that person to exercise agency. And this can be small things. If you're interviewing someone after a traumatic event, where would you like to sit? Is this a good room? What, offering people options, giving people just that bit of sense that they have agency. And then of course, their preexisting internal capacity, which is built on a whole range of things, but really comes about from that innate sense, those experiences and the ability that just varies from person to person for reasons we don't know, just like every child seems to be born with a personality, people have their own preexisting internal capacity. All right, so let me keep going here because I'm making good progress probably because I didn't get to show that video. One of the things that I like to share is that Cambridge, again, where I live and work, has for about six years now been working on this trauma-informed law enforcement initiative. And there's a specific training that relatively large URL is a training guide. And then some of the images you're gonna see on the next few slides come from that. So in that guide, there's this whole explanation of why train police on trauma. And I think a lot of people might think, well, of course we should train police on trauma so they understand how they traumatize people. So they understand how people they deal with may already be traumatized or, and that's important, but it's also important for police officers to understand how trauma has an impact on them. Because we know when people have experienced trauma and are having traumatic responses, especially if it's a long-term, sort of PTSD situation, it has real impact. And so in the city of Cambridge, we developed this program originally in 2015 and have spent the last six years really refining it so they can serve the entire community. It was developed by a combination of people who are trainers and specialists in psychology and psychiatry, people who are advocates for victims of domestic violence, police officers themselves, police leadership, and others like me from the community or from the city government who've been looking at issues of trauma and traumatic response. And when we developed this program, the focus was really on I think three key reasons. Now, police are often in situations where they may experience trauma, which can lead to high rates of depression, post-traumatic stress, alcohol use disorders, and in fact, suicide. Police are frequently responding to individuals who are experiencing trauma due to domestic violence, sexual assault, street violence, poverty, people who are unhoused and other serious incidents. And then more broadly and very importantly, communities, communities of any type, ethnic, racial, neighborhood, communities may have suffered or are suffering trauma themselves due to significant events or various injustices. So these are all some of the reasons that Cambridge did this work. And so I do want to just take a moment, again, thinking about your role as the police commission. It's important for people also to understand some of the impacts of trauma and law enforcement. Working with law enforcement, we know that often general things sound good, but police officers want facts, they want statistics. And so these specific things, they all have references, but there's a higher risk for sudden cardiac death. There are higher rates of depression, PTSD and alcohol use among law enforcement. Law enforcement officers are more likely to die from suicide than they are to die in the line of duty. And those with 15 to 19 years of experience have the highest rates of completed suicide. Very, very important to know and to be aware of. They also are at higher risk for developing diabetes, obesity and metabolic syndrome. It's not simply because there are these stereotypes people have about officers eating donuts and drinking coffee, but the physical impact of trauma actually puts you at higher risk for developing those conditions. And this is a study from about 25 years ago, but, and you'll see different versions of it, but police officers life expectancy is seven to 10 years less because of the work that they do. Now I say all this again, recognizing that we're in a moment in society when people are focused on the trauma that police impose and inflict on people. And that's deeply important. And that's part of this training. And it is also important to recognize the role that trauma has in the lives and work of law enforcement officers. There are a whole range of reasons, both very human reasons, but also understanding what kind of training officers need, what kind of support officers need and all those other things that go with it. So back to Cambridge, the goals and objectives, I'm not gonna read through all these things. You can sort of see them here, again, well, if some are tiny, I will make them available. But this kind of training is really important to help the department create better policies, better training, better support for staff, both sworn and non-sworn, because I've been saying a lot about police officers, but also if you're a crime tech, if you're processing photographs from crime scenes, you also are being put in harm's way in a way that many people don't think about. And so this training, this program has really worked to improve the experience of policing for everybody in our city here in Cambridge. And this manual that I mentioned, which they created, it's again, that's goals and objectives at the page of the manual, is really to help spread the work, but also the lessons learned. And speaking of lessons learned, again, it's a little hard to read. So I will say that for this training, the city of Cambridge also contracted with a professor from Simmons College School of Social Work in Boston. And that professor, Anjuli Fulmbarker, did a lot of work to really look at what happened and what are the takeaways. So between her assessment and the reviews internally talking to staff, here are some key lessons learned that for this kind of training and thinking generally more about being trauma informed, the leadership team and the department has to not only be supportive, but actively involve, they have to communicate that support to the department and be present at those trainings. They have to be dynamic and include a variety of methods. You really have to look at proper adult learning techniques. And as we all know, I won't say as we all know, probably many of us know that police officers undergo regular training and like a lot of continuing education for a lot of adults, it can be kind of boring, you check off the box. And this has to be something that's really engaging. It's also really helpful that officers get this training as early in their career as possible, ideally partly at the academy and as soon as they get on the job if they haven't had more training. And one of the things in Cambridge that was deeply important was to have community collaboration, community collaboration with agencies and organizations who support survivors and others in the community because that helps with diversity in the training, in the planning efforts to create the training. And it really adds to the experience for everybody. And then the big takeaway from that as it sort of says a little time around the screen is that it has to be more than the one-time training. Implementing this into a department has to be part of understanding officer wellness and it requires a shifting culture. And it also needs to be something that is part of the broader culture for it to really be effective. It can't just be, we're gonna make sure the police get this trauma and form law enforcement training. It's gotta be more broadly about people in the community also understanding how trauma impacts them and those around them and those that they deal with. So this is where I am gonna save some time. So if I had things set up properly, I could go to YouTube and show this video. It's sort of a long video, but you may remember about, I guess now six years ago, there was a pool party and it was in McKinney, Texas. It was a situation where what people probably saw, if you saw a clip about or read about it, was a 15-year-old black teenage girl, her name was Nigeria Bekton, in a swimsuit, grabbed by a police officer, thrown on the ground, and you also may have seen the officer, as you can see in that image, his hand is on the weapon. He actually pulls out this weapon at one point. This was caught on video. This is, of course, it was caught on video, posted on YouTube by another teenager at this party. Within hours, millions of people had seen the video. This officer, Corporal Eric Casebolt, so he was a corporal for those of you who are not totally familiar with policing. That means he was a supervisor. He was not the person who just comes in from the academy. And he was placed on administrative leave. There was an investigation that was going to happen, but he resigned. And it certainly led to protests around the country, but very specifically in McKinney, Texas. And so if there were a video, what you would see quickly is a bunch of police officers responding to an incident and there's a million tech problems that used to age restricted on YouTube as well. It didn't used to be. I understand why it is. And basically there were about 100 teens that showed up at a pool party. And mostly they were African-American. It was in a gated community. And that's what was. There was a pool party, a bunch of kids outside the neighborhood crashed it. And so at the beginning of this video, you see the officer literally roll out of his cruiser like he's trying to evade fire. I won't go through all the details, but he starts screaming and yelling at people. It goes on for quite a while. He's yelling at kids. He's grabbing kids by the shoulder, telling them to sit down, yelling and screaming. When he runs after he rolls out of the car, he drops his flashlight, not paying any attention. And there's other officers around. This is about 12 officers altogether. And until the moment when he draws his weapon and starts to raise it and point it towards some kids, none of the other officers does a thing. So many people, now again, if I had shown the video, I would ask you these questions, but many people see this video and what they see is an officer out of control. He's probably racist. It turns out, then I won't go through all this right now, because I'm talking, you can see the screen and you can't see me, that he had been on his shift for about an hour and 15 minutes. So he was pretty early in the shift. He had started at 6 p.m. In the hour before being dispatched to this call, he had responded to two suicide calls. One, which was a completed suicide, an African-American father who had shot and killed himself full-side. And front of his family and others. And this corporal, corporal Eric Casebolt, was part of securing the scene, photographing the body and collecting statements and consoling the grieving widow.  So he then shows up at this pool party and what happens is what happens. So, yeah, I've jumped to the next slide. Thanks, I'm gonna go back for just a moment. So if you think about it, he should not have been on that call. After the first call on his shift, he should have been taken off duty for all sorts of reasons, but he wasn't. He went to another call and then another call. So it's not to absolve him of blame. It's not to say that he didn't do things that were absolutely wrong. And it's to say that the department that was trauma-informed would have had policies in place so that someone who had just experienced what he had would not then go to call after call after call. And this is part of being a trauma-informed law enforcement agency. So again, these four are part of this. And I'm almost done, I'm at almost the last slide. So people, we can talk or whatever. Being trauma-informed is realizing the widespread impact of trauma and you understand the potential paths to recovery. Recognizing the signs and symptoms of trauma in community members, complainants, families, officers, staff, and others involved with the system. Responding by fully integrating knowledge about trauma into policies, procedures and practices and actively seeking to resist re-traumatization and to support recovery. So those are those four are. And the last thing I'll just say, this is kind of an image just to remind people that all of us, all of us in this work, whether we are sworn law enforcement officers, whether we are volunteer police commissioners, city staff, others in the community, activists, all of us, especially in this time we're in living through the COVID-19 pandemic. To be resilient, we have to practice self-care. That looks very different from different people. So I'm not gonna say what you should do, but I really wanna emphasize that part of this work, part of what anyone who is involved in any aspect of this work needs to do is to take care of, excuse me, yourself so that you have resiliency, so that when you do encounter something that's potentially traumatic or is actively traumatic, you have more resources to recover, to bounce back because that is the goal. Trauma occurs, trauma has occurred, trauma will occur, but our ability to bounce back, our ability to take care of ourselves and to take care of others and to see the impacts of trauma in others and respond appropriately is vitally important for everyone in this work. So with that, I'm just gonna put this last slide. I don't know why, I figured you pried my email address, you can reach me, you can find me, but with that, I'm going to end the slideshow and go back to normal zoom view. Okay, we are back and so I am now at your disposal to discuss, answer questions or listen to you, talk about it as long as you would like. I hope that was helpful, I know it was a lot and I blew off my videos, so I can share that with people as well, but again, just really appreciate the opportunity to present to you and look forward to questions, comments, thoughts? For example, for commissioners to ask questions. Thank you so much for that, that was really great. Would you be able to send us that PowerPoint and would that be appropriate for us to post it on board docs for the community to see? Absolutely, in fact, I already made a PDF, it's a little weird because we've got those videos in there and you can't, but they may even have the links, I'm not sure, but yes, I'm absolutely happy to send that to you and it's totally appropriate for you to post it as I've shared it in the public meeting. Thanks. Just make sure you speak in the mic so you can hear you. The mic is on. It's on? Okay, thank you very much. So it's- You're welcome. Go ahead. He said you're welcome. Start again. It sounds like in a way what you're saying is that there's at minimum a kind of a two-pronged approach. One is being consistent with accountability with the police around issues that they should be accountable to. The other part of what you're saying is that it's also really important to continue to build the resiliency and the resources of individual police officers through kind of a wellness approach. Would that be fair? I would say, I don't know if that's everything I said, but I would say that that is accurate. And I think this is my personal opinion from the work I've done in Cambridge and other places. Not everything can be explained by traumatic response, but I think a lot of times when you see these videos and you watch and you're thinking, what was that officer thinking? In many cases, there are aspects of trauma and traumatic response involved in that. And that's also true for many people who are engaged with the police. In fact, it's often more true that police officers are not understanding why is this person reacting this way? Why aren't they following my command? Why are they doing these strange things? Again, it doesn't mean that thinking someone has experienced trauma is a free pass for anybody, but it can help you understand what the person is going through, but also how that person might respond and how to effectively work with that person. And so the same is true with police officers. And I think if you think about blind supervisors and internal affairs, part of that is understanding what are the aspects of trauma that have an impact? And hopefully it's not after some terrible event, but that you're doing that work on wellness all the time. You're working to ensure officers are as well and healthy as they can be for themselves and for the community that they serve. So it's not as if there is necessarily just one singular event. Well, there might be that one event in one day, but it's a constant diet of very challenging and traumatic kinds of experiences that police officers endure and encounter on a daily basis. So it's more of a consistency across time, which means it's even more important to really focus on the wellness aspect of their professional lives to somehow sort of meet the trauma that they're constantly. Anytime the police officer is involved, in most cases, it's a trauma for somebody. Otherwise, the police would not be there. So the police are taking that in kind of on a regular basis. I guess what I'm really kind of spinning around in my, I'm a social worker, by the way, so I'm a social faculty member. So what I'm really thinking about is just the incredible importance of an emphasis for all police departments on wellness and on educating their staff on a regular basis, not a one-off about how to take care of yourself, what trauma looks like in your work life and then kind of building a culture that supports an officer to be at their best whenever they're engaging in a new situation, which is a trauma for the person that they're actually meeting. Again, yes, I would agree with that. And I think my kind of overall with that would be that one of the things around those dual concepts that was really important when Cambridge developed our training was to basically start with the nature of trauma and then talk about how it affects people that officers may encounter and then kind of in all that work and as you go through it, also having officers understand how trauma impacts them. And that's part of why there's such an emphasis on ACEs because when people think about that, again, almost everybody has some kind of traumatic event in their life and people in helping professions often do more. It's really important to, it was really important as a way to help officers to look at that. Again, there's kind of a stereotype, but in general, police officers are not, the culture around policing is not one of like examining your psychological weaknesses and it's about being tough and being strong and being brave. And that can be a barrier to understanding how trauma impacts you.  So it's just, to me, it's multifaceted because you understand the trauma as an impact to you as an impact goes around you, your colleague. It's being from a law enforcement perspective and you also understand how it impacts the people you're dealing with in whatever capacity whether you're interviewing witnesses, you're talking to a victim of a crime, you're just walking down the street and encountering people in the neighborhood having that awareness of trauma is deeply important. Can I ask one more question? Then I'll relinquish the mic. How does race fit into all this when a white police officer engages someone of color? What are the implications there? I mean, that's such a huge question. On some level, I mean, I would say there's a generalized sense, right? That you think about power dynamic, police officers have various types of power in authority including weaponry and people in the community may or may not depending on the situation. Race, as we know it, there's no absolute but in general there is a hierarchy of race in our society and we know, again, this is the importance of looking at historical trauma and not just people kind of hearing stories but the real impact on communities of all sorts of that historical trauma. So race definitely plays a role in that. And in any given specific situation, it's hard to say. If I'm having an interaction with a specific police officer who's white, what exactly does that look like? Does that mean that by definition, I'm being oppressed? It's hard to say. So there's the general perspective which is absolutely true. And at the same time, we have to be very conscious that each individual situation is individual and that's challenging, right? It's like implicit bias. It's there, it's real, it's not an excuse for anything but we have to find ways to mitigate it. And you don't know in any single encounter you can't see inside people's head but we know general trends and we have to be aware of that because even if we approach something with all the best intentions, we also have to be conscious of the impact of our approach and what we're doing on the people we're interacting with. Okay, I'm sorry. I have long, like long winded answers to all your questions, I'm sorry. Thank you so much, appreciate it. Awesome. You're welcome. I believe Sherene's next with a question followed by Chief Mirrod. Hi, Brian, thank you for giving us your time this evening. What I'm wondering about is your experience in NACL and trauma-informed civilian oversight. So for example, and forgive me if you said this but I've been digesting a lot of this and so I'm trying to play catch up with the trauma guide in case that you have, is that aimed at, who is the audience for that? That's actually, so that's a guide based on the training that was developed and it's a guide for communities that want to develop their own trauma-informed law enforcement training. So it talks about the process, the history, the components of the training, the lessons learned. So I think it's about, I just actually had it up. It is, how many, 20, it's 36 pages including appendices and some of those appendices are about the assessment that was done by Professor Fulham Barker. So is that a good jumping off point or a group like ourselves, civilian oversight, civilian volunteers just looking at this issue and trying to be more informed and how we approach what we're doing? I would recommend it.  There's lots of pictures. I think it's one of many things that can be foundational to thinking about your approach as you look at those issues. And I think again, the other thing I would just say is thinking about your role as the police commission and what does that look like? What is your role vis-a-vis policies and training? All of that thinking about, and from my point of view would be how can you support the police department in doing even more? Because I'd say in Cambridge, we've been doing this for six years and we're constantly warning things that we have to do better as a city, things that the police department has to do differently and better. We're like every place else having conversations about reimagining public safety and some of these conversations about trauma and who's best suited to respond to trauma and what kind of response should there be to different kinds of calls and what happens when you show up at the call and you thought it was one thing and it was something else. All the things that come up that again, first responders deal with on a regular basis but looking at how do we do that more broadly? I think that's looking at the role of trauma in policing and law enforcement, public safety is really important. So are there other resources? And I think the other thing I would just say to you which you didn't quite ask, I thought you were going to ask is, increasingly, and I've been one of the proselytizers in the NACOL community for this, we're seeing people that do oversight focus more and more on this for their own staff. Perfect example is New York City. So New York City has probably more police officers than Burlington has residents but their civilian oversight agency has about 100 investigators. And so, they've gotten multiple trainings on trauma-informed investigations, on trauma-informed care for themselves. I've gone down to do a training for their staff on trauma. So, again, they're a big huge outfit but that recognition that within civilian oversight we need to understand how trauma affects us, how it affects complainants, how it affects witnesses, and how it affects police officers. If we don't, we're doing everyone a disservice. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, Mr. Chair. We actually met in Detroit in 2019. Yes. The presentation had a great conversation about what was going on in Cambridge and including some of the stuff that you've just alluded to. I guess one of the challenges and for somebody who knows Russian lit, the issue is that all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way, right? So how do we figure, how do we determine who's got trauma from what? And then the second question, which you alluded to in your previous remarks just now, is who's best to respond? Because that's absolutely something this community is wrestling with right now and we've developed some things to try to address that, some new kinds of positions and roles. We're working on creating new ones and additional ones as well. But how do we identify whose trauma is appropriate for which kind of response? And I think that's a challenge. Obviously just learning about it at all expands everybody's understanding of it and it has to be the starting point. But what comes next if you have any insights into that? Yeah, no, that's a great question. And I will just say, yes, I definitely remember meeting you very specifically and because I think I came up to you after you've done a very good panel presentation. So I appreciate that. And I mean, that's obviously a huge question.  And so the idea of being trauma informed is less about sort of trying to identify the type of trauma and the best response, but more of those general principles about how to work with people who may have experienced trauma. And so in a sense, it's kind of what you want always to be prepared for that. And as one of the commissioners said, if you're thinking about encounters between members of the community and the police, I would, certainly not all of them are fraught and traumatic, but certainly many of them are. And so to the extent that everyone is kind of prepared and ready to look at things through the lens of traumatic response, I think that's important. The other piece, and this is, you know, again, I'm not a law enforcement officer. I feel like there are people that come directly to have law enforcement who could answer a couple of those questions better. But I will say that I think part of it is less about trying to figure out who's got trauma and making sure that everybody, it's kind of the same thing I said, I guess a minute ago, that everybody has the basic training and understanding and framework so they can recognize it and that they may recognize it in themselves. They might recognize it in their partner. They might recognize it in someone that they talk to after work. You know, being able to see those things, not to blame someone or to put them in a box, but to be able to empathize and if appropriate, offer support. You know, part of that is really having a robust wellness policy and system so that people are taking care of their physical, mental and spiritual health. Their psychological wellness is deeply important but so is their physical wellness. And I'd say the other part of that is just, I feel like I've got such long answers, is helping everybody to have relationships so that people don't see each other as separate and in different camps. It's not always easy to do but finding ways for people to have authentic connections. I know in an era of chronic staffing shortages and too much overtime, it's a hard thing to do but for police officers, being able to give them the ability to actually interact with people when they're not on a call, when they're not responding to a call for service, when they're not in some dangerous situation. And for members of the community who are desiring that, it's not every member of the community would, for them to have opportunities to interact with police officers. And things like national night out, coffee with a cop are great but things are more organic. How can people have those encounters and build those interpersonal relationships in their day to day life? Because otherwise there can be real isolation and misunderstanding. And then if you build that on a foundation of people with unaddressed trauma from all different aspects, it's very, very challenging. So not totally specific but long answer to your question, Chief. Thank you very much. Thank you again for being here, really appreciated the information that you're sharing is really important. And for me personally, something that I think about and the things that you just said are, they're so on point because I feel with, when you were talking earlier about societal disruption due to COVID, and I just never thought of that perspective, but that is exactly what's happening. And I feel there are things going on our city and we're really suffering because we didn't have the type of positive engagement before. So now everything's even more stressful. And unfortunately sometimes I feel there's us versus them agenda, which is hurtful to the community at large for everyone, for people in the community, for our officers. And just the recognition of trauma and the recognition of the community that you serve is so important. So I think you've given us a lot of things to chew on and look at from a slightly different perspective and I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your kind words. I appreciate that. And I'm glad that any of this is helpful. I really am. And as I said, I'm an evangelist for looking at the role of trauma in just about everything. So I'm glad that it resonated in that way. Thank you, Brian. I wanna see if I can connect some dots for us and share these thoughts with the fellow commissioners too in particular, the comment on the question about how would we as a commission utilize this information and how would it affect our work? And what comes up for me and what you said and what Commissioner Hart was referring to is that it actually is really important for us as well. We review videos. So viewing behavior through a trauma-informed lens is important. For example, we talk to witnesses. For example, it's important to have that lens when working with them. And if we do have investigators to ensure that our investigators have that kind of lens as well. So I've kind of laid out a few things I think are important. You think that there are any other areas other than for example, also reviewing policies that we would be having a trauma-informed approach would be important for the work we do. Yeah, that's a great question. And I think you touched on most of the things. I'd say very specifically one of the big aspects of the Cambridge training for law enforcement that's not limited to law enforcement is trauma-informed witness interviews. And that's something that a couple of people of Utah have taught us a ton about. Donna Kelly, who's a prosecutor and Justin Boardman who's a now retired police officer are both, well, we're huge resources in part developing the training in Cambridge, but really looking at that for, again, everybody. A lot of their work is really focused on victims of sexual assault because it's such a traumatic crime that, and for so long because of issues of gender, specifically in our society and not believing victims, the ways in which people have approached victims of sexual assault have been re-traumatizing. Looking at them as not being truthful because they don't tell a linear narrative, which is a hallmark of response to trauma. I mean, all of those sorts of things are going on too long. So I'd say those things are very important. Anything around witnesses, but also you mentioned you view videos. I don't know what the videos are that you see, but again, taking care of yourselves, that self-care that looking at what sort of support do you get as commissioners for vicarious trauma and trauma that you may be experiencing based on what you're seeing in the videos, your own personal histories and experiences. And then as you mentioned, I just really emphasize, I think, from my point of view, supporting the police department in terms of looking at training around trauma, looking at how they're doing interviews of witnesses, the victims of crime and others and whether there's that trauma-informed lens. And then, are there policies in place to really support that officer wellness, physical, mental, spiritual, whatever that looks like? Again, resources are often not what people would desire, but those human resources are key. And if we don't take care of our people, that leads to problems. That classic thing about hurt people, hurt people. When you think about that through the idea of trauma, it becomes that much more important to make sure that our systems, our policies, our procedures and our practices are truly trauma-informed and doing everything we can to avoid re-traumatizing people but also recognize and understand trauma and its impacts on people. Thank you if I might just follow up on that. A couple of things. One is, if perhaps you might, when you send us the PowerPoint, maybe able to point us to some departments that do have trauma-informed policies or policies around trauma that we might look at for our own city, for example. If you could do that, that'd be great. And the other thing, just to comment, you know, I've been on some ride-alongs lately and one of the things I observed was how impressively the police have been dealing with domestic violence and understanding the impact on the victim of domestic violence, which is, you know, the person is in a traumatized state where I think we have a ways to go is in the police recognizing racial trauma on the people that they interact with. And we've seen many videos, not necessarily here in Burlington but in places in which when the police interact with the suspect, the suspect runs the suspect of color, which, you know, very often that is related to racial trauma, especially around policing. So I think we have, we've made progress, you know, as a country, not just in Burlington on domestic violence and trauma, but we have a long ways to go with regard to race and trauma. Yeah, I'll just comment very briefly. That's a great point. And then they kind of said before and answered another question. It's also more challenging because it's less direct. And yet it's vitally important. So, you know, thinking about that trauma both kind of historically, but also just the trauma that individuals go through in their communities, the trauma that individuals who are racialized in our society undergo on a daily basis, separate from law enforcement. So again, trauma can be an overused word, but it's a very real thing in this case. And so I think that's a really important point, not always easy to do, but I think it's very, very important. Thank you. Thanks. You're welcome. Any further questions for Mr. Cora while we have them here with us? Not seeing or hearing any. Brian, thank you so much for this. This is extremely informative. And I know with some of the things you said here, we'll be revisiting a lot of our policies here and try to get a more in tune with the trauma informed as we're moving forward. So thank you very much. And I know we'll certainly reach out to you if we have any further questions or ever need your help. Thank you so much for this. Really appreciate it. You're very, very welcome. I'm very glad to do it. And again, I will follow up with the PowerPoint. I will search for some of those policies. I don't know if they have topped my head. And look forward to working with you again in the future. I really appreciate the fact that you do this work and that you're really trying to reach out for effective practices, best practices, different ways of looking at things. So thank you for inviting me and I hope you have a good rest of your meeting. Thank you. Thank you. Have a great night. So that concludes agenda item 4.01. And that moves us on to agenda item 5.01, which is the chief support. So with that, I give the floor to your chief mayor. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thanks for having us tonight. I think Shannon's gonna work on pulling up the presentation, which I don't need immediately. We've had some, I think some good weeks in the BPD over the past since we last met. And some of that preceded our last meeting. I thanked all of you at the last meeting for the assistance and the support with regard to headcount issues. We have seen a move by the city council to approve unanimously incentives for recruitment and for retention. That was very important. We saw a recognition of the value of our participation in equitable sharing. We have seen the CNA report finalized and brought in. And I think there's a lot there that we can work with. Certainly a component of it. I think the single thing that people were sort of waiting for most was the headcount issue, but there's so much more to that report and so much more to work on. And then as a result of the report, we've had a change in our headcount, which is tremendous and really, really important. It is the greatest PowerPoint that has ever been created. It's really amazing. And if we end up getting it, then the one that you see will not be the one I'm describing now because the one I'm describing now is absolutely perfect. It talks a lot about, it's got some data points for us about where we are with regard to crime, where we are with regard to certain kinds of categories and incidents overall, and then gets into some information about staffing, including some demographic information about where we currently are, where we have been over our entire hiring process over the past 15 years, and actually more than 15 years, and has a strong picture about 25 years, actually, has a picture of what we've been able to do and what we haven't been able to do, and some plans for what that is. Oh, I see it. So I can at least describe it. We can play those cave and I can try to tell you what... You could also send it around to us if it's not a confidential document. No, it's absolutely not. It was going to be posted as soon as we were done. There we go. So if you can click through. I always begin with this simply because it will ultimately be posted, and so any new visitor to our transparency site, which we've been working on a lot lately, and I invite any member of the public who's watching this to go to the City of Burlington website, the police department page of it, and on the police department page we have a transparency page, which has a ton of different information, including these presentations that we create. They're linked to it as are every single use of force in the reports that Deputy Chief LeBreck creates as are the reports that we create, used to create in-house with our analysts. Now that analyst is a part of a city agency, but we work with them to make the annual report, et cetera. All of that's linked. This is to, and this is just a baseline for incidents. Next please, thank you. So here we are with incident volume year to date, and this is as of yesterday. What we see is that, again, incidents are down. We've been very clear about that. They've been trending down over the several years. They're down this year. They're down about 11% this year, but what's really striking is that from June to October 25th, they're actually up. They are up. We have seen a real upswing in volume returning us closer and closer to numbers that we've anticipated in the past. We've stacked about 15% of our calls under the priority response plan. That is, it started lower. It's stabilized at this number and thus far has been basically hovering between 13 and 15% pretty steadily. That may increase if we see additional changes either in incident volume or in changes in staffing, but for now that seems to be where we've reached a little bit of equilibrium. I do wanna point out that when we look at that change from October 17th in the right hand column in the top row of June 1st to October 25th of 2017 versus June 1st to October 25th of 2021, 57% of that decrease comes just from reductions in foot patrols and traffic stops. We have done a very small number of foot patrols this year. We have increased that recently. We have been through Deputy Chief Lebrex he's been able to post for overtime, created a couple of good time periods that have allowed us to get officers on and we're also requiring officers on shift to get out and be on foot. But we do so to the detriment of other parts of town because we are therefore not doing active patrol in the south end or the new north end when we're on foot on Church Street. Next slide please. These are priority one incidents and as you'll see priority one for 2021 is actually the highest it's been since 2017. So it's threaded there, it's the black line and it's threaded up with the top two. And that's indicative of the kinds of incidents that still require officers and a number of them. We don't see a real change in that. We've talked about that before. Next slide please. This is use of force. Use of force for the, I know that all of the commission knows this for the public that may be watching. Every single use of force is available for review. This, that has happened this year is available for review at that transparency page that I talked about. Deputy Chief LeBrecht does a huge amount of work every month getting the narratives, the descriptions, the demographic information of the participants involved in that use of force and the subjects of those uses of force and puts them up available for the public. But what we see here is that although we just crossed over last year's number, we remain very much lower than in previous years. And our goal really is to reduce the need for use of force and we've had a lot of success at that. We have been diminishing the use of force a lot over the past several years. And although we're a little higher than last year's, we're still much, much lower than previous years. These are selected incidents trends. The ones in red are ones that I wanted to highlight a bit. We do see that aggravated assault and simple assaults are both up. Simple's not so much from previous years but more than last year, aggravated quite significantly, very significantly. Burglary is up a lot. The highest it's been in five years from five years ago. And that is something that we are watching. We're trying to work on some plans for that. We see also mental health issues, that's something that this body has talked a lot about. This body was able successfully to have the city council make a resolution for a summit on this topic. I commend the commission on that. I think it's great, we do see an increase in that. And the number next to it is a component of that because frankly substance use disorder is a component of mental health as well and often masks symptoms or is co-occurring. And we've seen a tremendous increase in overdose. The other statistic that is very alarming is stolen vehicle. I am cautiously optimistic that we are going to see that number start to slow down. And that's because a location where significant numbers of stolen vehicles have been brought is being addressed. And that is this year's lane encampment. And I think we're gonna see that number change. These are overdose drug tips and found needles. And this is in part in a prelude to some of the things that are gonna be discussed in the next agenda item. I think that what we see is real increases in found needles. We see real increases in overdose, obviously. And then those found needles reports are through C-click fix. So that data is purely from C-click fix for found needles. For drug tips, those are drug tips that come in to us through the same kind of portal as the citizen complaints that you all see. But they come in as a drug tip. And we've obviously seen a real uptick in those over the past two years. And overdoses are, as we know, we respond to overdoses. Those are not fatal overdoses. I believe that the, I don't know the total number of fatal overdoses for Chittenden County. We don't, it tracks in a, it's difficult to track. And this is something that Comstat has had challenges with in the past as well. I believe that as of June or July, there had been 25 fatal overdoses in Chittenden County. But we have had, as you see there, you know, a hundred, a great number of overdoses here in Burlington just year to date. Now we can talk a little bit about hiring and where we go. So some of those challenges that we've seen in those other pages are driven by an inability to address them the same way that we have in the past owing to staffing challenges. And so that's our next challenge. Our next challenge, and it's going to be one that's going to occupy us as a community for the next several years, is getting back to a posture where we have the correct mix of officers and unsworn personnel who nevertheless have a public safety role in order to address the challenges that our community has. This is our sworn hiring from July of 1996 through October of 2021. The total number brought in, the total number who are still employed, those who are separated, the percentage that's separated at the Vermont Police Academy or field training level, percentages of males, females, and then by demographic, by race. This is from 2015 to 2021. Currently, this is about as far back as I can go because until I can go back farther than 1996 with hires, I can't adequately determine how many people were leaving or coming in in any given year. And so this is about as far back as we can currently go with regard to being able to balance these two columns out of in and out. And then the net change on that far right column. Until just a few weeks ago, we were at zero in the 2021 in column, right? We just hired our first officer at the beginning of October. That officer began at the Vermont Police Academy yesterday. That's a huge new step for us. That hire occurred before the changing of the cap because we had fallen below even the 74 by quite a bit, we had fallen below that number. And so we were able to onboard an officer, actually a person who had been a street outreach worker and came to us from the street outreach team. We also unfortunately took another street outreach worker to be a community support liaison, one of our CSLs of the three that we were able to hire, also a former member of the Howard Street Outreach team. So we have sort of robbed their Peter to pay our Paul, which is unfortunate, but I'm very happy to have these new positions on board. Especially this first officer in quite some time, that's very important. But that 17 out and the 12 that preceded it without being able to equate it is really concerning because what we see here is really a pattern of general headcount homeostasis where we're actually able to sort of achieve an equilibrium that is maintained and we have lost it in the past two years pretty severely. We lost it in 2018 too, but this is our headcount and actually this is as of November 1st, simply because each one of these dots is the headcount on the first of a month. And you see that it bounces around, it oftentimes those steep upticks coincide with onboarding recruits for the police academy, which traditionally has a class that begins in February and traditionally has a class that begins in August and normally we hire in January and hire in July in order to get officers into pre-basic training here with us before we send them down to the police academy. But there's also bumps that we see with regard to lateral officers, officers who've come from other localities in the state or other states and have been officers previously. That obviously drops off pretty precipitously starting in June of last year, but we have that uptick and that in that uptick is a little bit of hope. We're not gonna see that uptick for long. That's the one uptick we have and we will lose officers before we are able to bring more onboard in time. Hopefully knock on wood, we will bring officers on board for the Winter Police Academy. Normally, as I said, it begins in February this year because there's an October Academy, which is unusual. The next one will probably begin in March, maybe April. We're very hopeful to be able to have officers in that academy and that will be an uptick, but I fully anticipate losing other officers in the meantime and I believe that we will probably lose somewhere between eight and 10 prior to next summer if not potentially more. Bringing in new officers is gonna be the key to that. Whether those are new recruit officers for academy classes or whether it is laterals who we can hopefully entice with a combination of those incentives that the city council approved, a combination of what we're doing here as a city, how we're working together and doing innovative and new things and then just the selling point that is Vermont and Burlington, Vermont, which I still feel every time I go out on the bike path or look at the lake or stroll on Church Street. Next slide, please. This is another picture of those demographics and the far left column, well, the far left column is the category, but the next column in the left is the total since 1996, then is the current and then the far right column is what BTV is with regard to these. And then you can see how we're measuring up or not measuring up to our community. What do we need to recruit effectively? To recruit effectively, we have a recruitment officer, she's doing a very good job, she got the new candidate in, has been instrumental in hiring three CSLs, two CSOs, we have two additional CSOs who are in background, we have other CSO candidates who are coming in, so we're close to being able to get the six that we were allotted for the first half of this fiscal year that ends at the end of December. Well, we have all six hired, probably not, but we will probably have six identified and strongly in process by that point. We already, as I said, we do have two hired. She's doing a great job, that recruiting officer, but we need a professional as well. We need a professional civilian citizen, excuse me, civilian non-sworn recruitment officer with a budget who can contract with an agency to do additional work, who uses modern HR best practices who can find its diverse candidates that comport with our future goals and leverage community engagement to make that happen as well, so that we are getting people from this community who have roots in this community and want to be members of this police department, whether that is for CSO positions or for officer positions. To do that, you've got to have somebody in graphics who's capable of taking and making video, photos, graphics and is capable of making social media and printed collateral material that is in support of both that recruitment goal and then the final goal, which is a PIO and communications role, which is recommended by the CNA report, a strategic communicator who has media contacts, can do media requests and can also deal with shaping internal and external communications and messaging campaigns. All three of these positions work together, have to support one another.  Thank you, that one. Yeah. That is a huge, huge cliff. And for us to get back to where, just below where it was, just below where it was is, we've never been able to do that and maintain those numbers. We bring in six at a time and in some instances, usually fewer, but sometimes six at a time, we don't maintain all those six. Some of them drop out of the Academy or the field training experience. We lose other officers in the meantime. For us to be able to climb that high over the next three, four, seven years is going to require a different kind of effort than we have ever had with regard to recruitment and that includes a number of other things other than those positions. And one more, please. Thank you. And actually click again. I guess these are, one more. I didn't realize there were animations on it. So here's some things. We're working with the 30 by 30 plan, which is, we were a very early adopter of that, signed up among the first agencies in the state to sign up for that. The goal is to have 30% women recruits by 2030. We have had done a very good job of recruiting females over the past several years.  I don't know where we are with retention right now. We've lost a few of those women as we've lost others as well. But that is definitely a goal. We have those $15,000 incentives for new recruits and lateral hires. I am talking with partners like AALV. I have a meeting with the Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce to talk about how we can leverage assistance both in the local community through AALV, in advertising, not just for the BPD, but frankly for all the agencies in Chinden County with the Lake Champlain Chamber to try to bring in new candidates. Right now, Vermont is stealing from itself. I mentioned robbing Peter to pay Paul with regard to the Howard Center, but Vermont is doing that left and right with regard to law enforcement. I am going to be losing a number of officers to the Vermont State Police when the Vermont State Police does its Academy in March. Those officers won't go through the Academy again, but they'll join the new recruits of the Vermont State Police for the pre-basic that just sort of initiates them to the way in which the Vermont State Police is different from other agencies. I'm gonna lose them. These are great officers. There's one of those officers who has expressed his intent to go to the VSP. He was a valedictorian in his Police Academy class with us. He's a US Army officer. He has a very comprehensive background. He's an EMT in medic. He doesn't want to leave the city, but he is concerned about what comes next. And even these new motions and forward momentum is not necessarily enough to forestall that. When a young person is looking at a career and saying, either risk staying here or I say, okay, I'm only two years in and I can get those two years back fast in an agency that I'm much more certain is gonna be there and thriving and still around and I can make my way to a major or a colonel or what have you, for an ambitious kind of talented officer. That's a challenge for us. Right now the state is cannibalizing itself with regard to officers. Robbing Peter to pay Paul. This department takes this. We've lost two to South Burlington. We're gonna lose more to the VSP, the Vermont State Police that is. How do we stop that? I'm hopeful to talk with the Chamber of Commerce about that and try to get some plans together with other Chittenden County agencies too to start, if anything, either bringing in new recruits or better yet bringing in already trained officers and robbing other states, you know, Peters to pay our Paul. That at least is a little better than we are or incentives, you know, the full array of getting those kinds of things to make an attractive city would include all these things. Housing assistance, moving expenses, childcare, educational offsets, student loan forgiveness. I mean, that's what we have to think about and think about out of the box if we wanna get candidates into this department in any number of roles, not just into the sworn officer role. And that's it. So thank you very much for the time and let me do this. We will obviously post this and send it around. But thank you. Floors open for any questions of the Chiefs with Regressive's report. Chief, I was interested in your discussion around use of force in which you indicated that use of force has fallen over time and that you've made an effort to do that. Can you tell us like what the efforts have been and what you attribute the success in the decline to? Sure, I think that it was set in motion by the adoption of ICAT. I think that that had a lot to do with it. Emphasizing de-escalation in training, emphasizing de-escalation in policy are now, our policy, the policy that we wrote together, this body and we at the police department wrote together last summer has been replaced by a state policy. So the one we wrote is no longer extant. There's a state policy that is mandatory for all agencies to follow. It's available online, it's also available on our, we've posted it on our site. It borrowed liberally from ours, quoted sections, cut and pasted sections. So that is good and I think speaks well of what we created, which I still believe is the most progressive and comprehensive document of its kind in the state, if not in the region. That is a method of it, is talking about that. We are very clear about the need for de-escalation, for other kinds of opportunities, for as many off ramps between the idea of compulsion and the actual use of force as possible. And that's demonstrated on a day-to-day basis with regard to tactics and with regard to even strategy when we approach different kinds of operations. When you said the state policy, were you referring to the state use of force policy of which de-escalation is a component or is that a separate de-escalation policy? No, it is, it's a use of force policy of which de-escalation is a component. Do you take any measures to review incidents, to see where there are opportunities that may have been missed to de-escalate and do some further training on that? Well, we do review every single use of force and invite the public to review every single use of force as well. And they can do so in their totality and just this week I have sent and hope to have it, it was mentioned on one of those slides. We have a redaction specialist job description that is now created. It will be graded by HR sometime this week and I'm hopeful to be able to get that out there before our next meeting with this body and say that we are actively recruiting for that position. So once we have that redaction specialist, not only will people be able to read the reports of the uses of force and see the demographic data about the uses of force, Deputy Chief LeBrecht puts such time into creating and collating, but we'll be able to put the video of them out as well. Yeah, I just wanted to say my question was more about what your internal process is with regarding to sort of monitoring the use of de-escalation and whether there are critical incident reviews to determine whether in fact there could be some improvements in the use of that. That was really my question. As I said, we review every single use of force for the propriety according to directive and according to our training. I believe that every single incident that we've seen has involved de-escalation. I think that is something to which Deputy Chief LeBrecht is that basically accurate and it's noted. Yeah, and what is it that determines whether it's a big incident as it were? I'll follow up on Stephanie's question. I think what I'm interested in is when you say, Chief, we review it. After the we, whoever the we has reviewed it, is there a next step where you work with the... Obviously, you got to be quiet. Move the mic closer. So my question is, and it's a follow-up to Stephanie's, so there is a we that examines whatever the tape is or the incident is when use of force occurs. Is there then right next to that a training of the officers that were involved and other officers, so we learned from those experiences? That's the kind of, that's what I think she was asking. Deputy Chief Sullivan is one of, is the final reviewer. So we have use of force instructors who review and then Deputy Chief Sullivan reviews. When the use of force is not out of policy, then no, that kind of, there's, it's not something that we review or use as a instructive period. But when there are issues, they do get rolled into both use of force training and into patrol procedures training because that's what we use to the best of our ability, actual incidents in order to inform the scenarios that we use for our scenario-based training. Do you want to add anything, Matt? No, I would just say that as a team, if a team of officers is involved in a more critical incident involving a large number of officers, usually they debrief that incident themselves in the next roll call. Certainly if in the review process, if we recognize any deficiencies, those are addressed both by use of force instructors and myself, if I am reviewing that incident or if it's called to my attention. So there are multiple layers to this. There is no easy answer. I would say as far as de-escalation goes though, I mean, every single use of force incident involves de-escalation to some degree. My officers are always using verbal skills. They've been taught that from the very beginning that their interaction verbally is their primary use of force skill rather than engaging physically. So that has been emphasized for many, many years since probably the early 2000s. So I would to answer that question, I would say every single incident involves a degree of de-escalation. And not only is it necessarily verbal, but also sometimes again, there's two different types of de-escalation. There's verbal de-escalation and there's physical de-escalation. And sometimes a little bit of physical interaction goes a long way to controlling the incident and results in less force ultimately being used. So I have another question. The other question relates to the 30 by 30, but I think is really a great thing. Given the change in complexity of our community, do we have something like a 30 by 30 for our officers of color? So we don't, and there's no, to my knowledge, national organization that does that. There certainly is, there's noble. There are other agencies that talk about ideas for that, but I think part of the issue is that every single police department is understaffed with regard to women in proportion to their population. And that's not necessarily the case for every community with regard to any number of various races. So the 30 by 30 is recognizing something that afflicts the entirety of the profession and is also something where there's a demonstrable, final goal that is uniform. I don't know that there is a uniform final goal for, because different communities have different numbers that they're trying to seek if they are desirous of looking like the community they serve. And that certainly is BPD's goal, is we want to look like the community we serve. Chief, you mentioned three positions, the PIO, graphics and marketing for hiring. What is the status of those? Are those wish lists or are those? Those are wish lists. One of them has a certain amount of, I think, momentum in a very, very incuit new way because of the CNA report, the PIO position. The other two are, those are wish lists. Those are portions of a program that I put together in late 2019 called Vision 2020, which talked about an internal review of the police department that was participated in by officers of all levels and also external partners and other department employees, important members of our non-sorn staff were integral parts of Vision 2020. It was predicated on the idea that if I won a lottery tomorrow, I would hire those positions possibly through the police foundation or what have you and be able to, I believe that that would have significantly affected where we were even in 2019 before we found ourselves defunded and with the staffing crisis that we're still in despite the great news of having those numbers changed. So that was where that came from, that Vision 2020 process and it remains something that's a goal. So how do you do this recruitment without those failed in order to find folks with more diverse backgrounds who better represent the community? Yeah, that's a very tough question. And so obviously we, as I said, I talked with one of ALV's directors this past weekend and have exchanged emails now to try to dig in a little bit for that community with regard to CSOs and with regard to officers. That community group, I mean that entity to help leverage contact with parts of our community. The Chamber of Commerce and that discussion that I'm having later this week, right? I think on Thursday is a way of trying to do some of the work. It's just, it's frankly too much for me to do alone. And the idea of having those three persons who would be one of them would be full-time dedicated to that and the other two would be assisting with it while doing other kinds of things as well with regard to storytelling and some of the communications efforts that other commissioners have mentioned as being necessary is a goal, but it's a wish goal. And can the department rely on the city's HR in any respect for that to help with diversity hiring? Director Durfee has been incredibly helpful at every stage. The things that she is doing within the city government are really remarkable. And I think there's been a lot of change in the city with regard to reclassifications, with regard to roles being reevaluated, new roles. She's tremendous and puts her department at our disposal for these kinds of roles. But ultimately, no, I ultimately, I do think that to climb back up that cliff that we have experienced over the past two years in anything other than a decade is gonna require something different. Thank you. Hey, Chief. You mentioned that the officer are leaving to go to Vermont State Police. As the leader of the department, how do you feel about the officers who want to leave the department because of the direction the department is heading? Quite certain. You mentioned that officers, like that individual officer, you mentioned that, you know, he might go to Vermont State Police. And I guess my question is, as a leader of the department, officers are leaving because of the direction the department is heading. How do you feel about that? Certainly, I'm not happy about that. It's painful to see any officer leave. Watching officers depart this department, especially those who have given long periods of time to this city. We've had detectives with more than 10 years on who have left that's unprecedented to have them leave both this department and in some instances, the profession. Those are people who should be quote unquote pot committed in here. And what's changed that over the past 18 months has been just incredibly stressful, stressful time period. We discuss sort of trauma. I think that there's certainly trauma involved in the external conditions that have been felt very, very keenly by the men and women of the Burlington Police Department, both sworn and unsworn, because this is something that all of our unsworn employees have had to do as well. They've had to go through protest groups in order to get into their building. They've had to be able to sort of understand, to feel whether or not what parts of the community are or are not supportive. I think we're changing that now and I'm really happy that we're changing that. I sense that there's some element there of asking about whether or not it's whether I take that as a blow to the way in which I'm leading the department or not and I don't and the reason I don't is because the exit interviews are clear that that's not what's at issue. It is not what the department is doing. It is not the directions that we have taken and embraced with regard to internal reform and trying to remain a progressive agency. The things that we've done to stay ahead of the curve nationally with regard to use of force de-escalation, other kinds of things, that's not what they talk about in their exit interviews. This is not just a Burlington Police Department issue. The state police themselves are down over 50 troopers. If you look in the state and the chief has given some reports, statewide and country in this entire country, the number of people going into police work, law enforcement is down. So we're not only battling in the state like basically just trading officers that are already certified but we're trying to find other officers from other states to come in the same problem. So it's not just Burlington Police like our officers look at the dwindling numbers and they realize that at some point we may have to take our detective bureau and take officers out of the detective bureau to work the road. So what future does an officer who's been there for five years looking at a 25 year career just working the road? They have no career advancement. The one thing the state police do have is sheer numbers. And so an officer going there has a much better chance of being able later on their career to become a canine officer, work with their detective services, work with their crime scene services. So we are not that large. We don't have that luxury. Without that luxury, without that, where's my career gonna go? You know, we don't have anything. So it's not like, oh, it's a BPD thing that all these officers are leaving. It's statewide. The number of officers who've left law enforcement in this state in the last year is unprecedented in the history of the state. So it's not, I wanna make that clear. It's not our department, it's like somebody's fault within the department. It is a whole multitude of different events coming together. I just wanted to make sure that was clear. It's not just Burlington Police Department, it's South Burlington, it's Winooski, it's Colchester, it's, yeah, it's everywhere. Ours is steeper, though. What's the percentage of those who've retired out of that number? One of the slides, I think, sort of gave a sense of how many were retirements versus resignations. I can get that for you, commissioner. I don't know it off the top of my head. I wanna say that it's probably about 40, 60 retirement versus resignation. We did have a spate of retirements, but we also got retirements, seven, seven retirements this year out of those 17. But we also had retirements from people who very clearly stated, I would've stayed longer. The more you stayed, the bigger the pension gets. There were people who would've stayed till 25 in order to bunt that pension higher, and they chose not to. What is the department work through the challenges of community demands for re-imagining community safety? And without sort of hacking off the side of understanding we have a change in complexion in our community, I have there was racial distress there for hundreds of years. And on the other side, trying not to take it personally, and being able to thread the needle of, that's the best way to say it, I think. I think that's the dilemma that we're facing as a community right now. The real and the true concerns of community of color in terms of how people are treated by the police, not all the police and not all the time, but enough that it's significant. And helping the officers learn what they need to learn, do the examination they need to do that every white American needs to do in order to sort of meet the agenda of the police in terms of an equal approach to justice in the community, and at the same time, not take it completely personally because it's every white person that is struggling with the same things and needs to struggle with the same things given our history. That's a very good question. That's a very good question. I think that's something that we talk about every day with regard to just keeping officers motivated and focused on mission and understanding of the support that they have in the community and the desire of community members for them to continue to do the work they do and yet always do what they've done before, which is seek improvement and seek to be more responsive. But policing is a very responsive entity. It's a very responsive entity. And both here and across the country, I think that we've seen a profession that responded in a way that is not unreasonable. Vast swads of our country said that we don't want police involved in things anymore or as many things. And the police responded by not being as involved and we've seen outcomes from that in places where there are fewer officers by actual headcount such as Burlington or in places where officers have withdrawn but even though there wasn't literal defunding, that withdrawal has had an impact. It's had a real impact on crime across the country, particularly violent crime and homicide particularly. But how do we combat that? I think the issue in Burlington is that that withdrawal is not, that withdrawal is coming merely from headcount. It's not coming as much from officer attitude or from officer choice. It's coming because we literally have fewer officers. Austin, Texas, which was significantly defunded went from 1,800 to 1,500 officers because of choices by their city council in that city. That's 17%. We are down 32%. And as far as officers available for patrol, it's closer to 45 or 48 now because we have numbers at the airport and in the detective bureau that we have to maintain. And as a result, the road suffers. So we are drastically down in ways like that. And again, I hear very much, I hear the talk from the city council, from other members of the community, that, okay, we've talked about the headcount, we fixed it with the number, okay. And that's true, we fixed it, that's great. I want us to be able to move forward with that, but those charts there show that it's going to be a very long time before we can. And so in the meantime, how do we maintain a sense of possibility and also optimism and also shared responsibility for where we are without having some of the, what you're talking about. That's a great question. I don't know the answer entirely. I think that's something that I feel like the police commission should be talking about with you all and brainstorming and having people share their own experiences so that you might use some of that to address at least that aspect of it. I know from a friend who was on the police commission three times that BPD has always lost police officers because they get their training here and they go someplace else. That's a long standing kind of a tradition here. And I would imagine, if I was a police officer, I can only imagine this and there's a lot of negative energy coming toward the police as a whole as opposed to particular people that would be hard to handle as a steady diet. And at the same time, there's legitimate complaints that are coming from the community at large and the community has shifted and changed and the whole country has changed, thank God. So I guess these are things I think that would be really nice to have a deeper dialogue with the administrators of the police department about and brainstorm and work together about those things because they're not gonna go away and you're gonna keep losing people unless we can figure out some way to address these issues on an ongoing basis as opposed to like a one-off kind of a training. I don't know what you guys do in this area, but police department's important to all of us. I live in the South End, so you know what's been going on in the South End? I do. And I guess, you know, it was in my mind, it was unfortunate that the move to sort of rethink policing in some different ways given the change in complexion of communities but also living in 2021. It was unfortunate, it was called defund the police, really unfortunate because I think if you had a different kind of reimagining community safety provides entry points for everyone and defunding police didn't do that. But I think we have an opportunity to get work together, you know, to talk about these things at a deeper level so that there may be some possibility of some change and we wanna do that. Thank you. Thank you. So a few things, there were just some statements that made that, oh my gosh, I don't know quite where to start. I feel that there were discussions that were going on prior to the reduction in the cap and prior to this momentous movement that we've seen not only locally but nationally and worldwide about people really saying that we can no longer wait, we talk, talk, talk, excuse after excuse, we can no longer wait, we need substantial change. And having been part of conversations or encountered people who didn't wanna be part of conversations that needed to be had, you know, one of the things that we keep coming back to and I know it's ad nauseam but the issue of engagement, when you have a department that is primarily full of officers that don't live in the community so they don't know the community and they don't have these important relationships in the community, I think that's what's led to a lot of resentment on both sides. And if that's not something we can approve, I think we will continue to see turnover because it's not just the protests, it's just having an investment in the community. And if you don't live here, that's harder to do. So I won't go on much about that but just talking about some of the use of force incidents and really trying to have an understanding of reviews of incidents that occur and what is learned, what can be learned from some of them because we've had a number of executive sessions reviewing a particular incident and there really is a feeling that, you know, when you talk about a critical incident involving like a large number of officers or a large number of people, I guess I would have a different definition of what critical is. You know, we've certainly seen a critical incident that didn't involve a lot of people. I feel that the department needs to move forward and be really honest about why some things are happening and I continue to have a concern as we have to push for certain conversations to be had for there to be frank, honest conversations, the amount of pushing, you know, begging for empathy. I mean, how long can we continue to do that? You know, and talk about vicarious trauma. I'll just leave it at that but these are just things that I think about a lot. Thank you. Any further questions or comments from the chief? Not seeing or hearing any. With that, we shall move on to agenda item 6.01, which is an overview of narcotics operations by BPD. And with that, I'm not sure who will be speaking, but we're welcome to take the podium, sir. In my poll, is that I don't know your name so I can refer up. I'm Mike Belevo and I'm a Burlington resident and I'm the detective sergeant that oversees the narcotics unit. And I've worked there since May. I guess, I don't know if you have any more to say before I start talking. No, I was looking, I think we're being here and yeah, being here with us in this capacity. Yeah, my pleasure. So I've been with the Burlington Police Department since about January of 2013. Again, I just took over the drug unit sergeant spot this May, so I don't have too extensive of knowledge, but I can give you kind of how the community could best support our operations from your end. And then I guess if you have any follow-up questions from there, feel free to ask away and for the Chief, we'll have some answers as well. So the Chief touched on the tips that have come in and that's something that we regularly review. There's a detective that is in charge of reviewing all tips that come in through the online reporting system, as well as the tip line, which is a message system. Both are available on the Police Department's website. It's actually right on the main screen. You go to Burlington, vt.gov, slash police and you can see there's a drug tips submit tip online link. You click on that, it's very straightforward. And then pretty much fill in the blank, what you see, who you are, if you wanna leave your name, you don't have to. You can request we call you back for more information. And then there's a phone number attached. It's 540-2420, 2420, kind of clever, I think. I don't know if we thought of that, but. What we ask is patience but persistence from the community. Tips are up right now. This year alone as of today, we're at about 160 tips for all of 2015. We're at 142, 2016, 120, 2017, 83, 2018, 41. So there's a big dip there and now we're back up on the rise. So as of today, we're at 160 tips. I currently have one active detective. Another one's deployed and then we do have a vacancy. Thankfully, the department has allowed a temporary assignment from patrol to assist our operations because quite frankly, with one detective working drug cases, we're just not functional. What I ask the community is essentially see something, say something. So what we look for and what might be something that is actually easily recognized by people that live in this community is high volumes of short duration meetings, whether by cars or foot traffic, people coming and going from houses or specific hotspot areas that are short duration in nature. Be a good witness when possible. I'm not asking anyone to put themselves in harm's way or expose themselves to take a photo of somebody. However, if there is surveillance footage that exists, that's very helpful for us. We use that regularly when we can. Description of the people that you're seeing to the best of your ability, extremely helpful to include the vehicles that people are coming and going in. But again, we currently have one full-time detective and a temporary assigned officer that is reviewing those cases. And again, the persistence part is where this tip line information comes in because we're trying to evaluate that information, essentially for the credibility of what we're seeing and how fruitful that information could be. We do have to prioritize cases that come in. And I'm gonna tell you right now, my goal is to target the people that are coming from outside this community to take advantage of those people that may have been traumatized and are now addicted and suffering from substance abuse disorder. That's where I prioritize my officers and detectives. I don't have too much to talk about the community and what they can do to support us other than please tell us what you're seeing. It might take us some time to get back to you, but when we're seeing repeat tips about the same people, that grabs our attention. And if someone wants to be persistent and have patience with us, oftentimes those are of interest to us. I open for the four questions for Mr. Bellavue. Thank you for that. I've had several community members reach out to me about drug tips and concerns about their neighborhoods. And so I wanna ask you about the patience and persistence part. I think, of course, people want an immediate solution. I wonder if you could help me understand the patient's component of that. In other words, the maybe timeline it takes for you to be able to solve a case so that I can better understand and explain to people why there might not be an immediate resolution. And just a small point with regard to persistence. When you say persistence, are you saying people repeatedly see something they should call you about the same people and incidents? So if you could just explain that also. If you're seeing ongoing drug activity and it's not someone that's immediately using or overdosing, I mean, that's an emergency call, right? But if it's repeated drug activity, the most effective way to combat that from a police perspective is a lengthy investigation. Because sure, we can go after those people in the moment and potentially get a possession charge. But a quick drug investigation for us is about a month long. That's quick. How long? A month, that's quick. Especially with the resources we have. So we need to have people in place to help us with surveillance and to do paperwork and to file warrants and to file reports and affidavits. And the investigations can become very complex. Even just trying to figure out who somebody is. A lot of times we don't know where they're staying or who they are. So again, a timeline, it varies depending on the case. It depends on how big the network is and how many people are immediately dealing to us. But again, in the moment, we can go after possession and that's not gonna stop that operation. Thanks. Thank you for being here, appreciate it. Just have a couple of questions. So I too have had some outreach from some community members about some activity that's actually been going on at a particular house for some time now, but is really starting to escalate to a different level to a point where I think they're, what they're describing sounds to me to be some possibly organized trafficking because they're talking about the large amount of out of state vehicles that are now coming to this particular house. The hours of night, these vehicles are showing up. And just some other activities that are going on. So we have, this house that's very close to a school is next door to a building that has after-school programs. And so we're subjecting a lot of children to behavior that really shouldn't become normalized for them. So I feel that there's a little bit more of an urgency with this particular location and they have been providing a lot of information. And I guess how can, in terms of getting to a point where it's prioritized, they can do surveillance. They have a room in one of the houses where they live that looks down on all of this activity. They're planning to put in some cameras. How best, are there any materials the department can provide to say if they organize, do a neighborhood watch where we get people willing to cover shifts so that all of 24 hours we have this constant surveillance, we're tracking all these cars, we're tracking people that are coming in and out. At what point, given the limited resources, at what level does it become, can it become a priority or can it involve a federal investigation if there can be sufficient proof to show that, A, there might be a trafficking issue here? Like what gets it on the map? Because it's been three years and in the last year it's the activity is really escalating. Sir, are you asking me that if the community forms a neighborhood watch and builds this case against a drug dealer? At what point are we, the Burlington Police Department going to prioritize that drug dealer? Right, well prioritize the location, prioritize what steps can be taken to, one of the homeowners, one of the neighbors was attacked by one of the people who came into these buildings so they've been advised by the department to stay away, there's been some unfortunate, I think it's out of frustration for being so short-handed, people are sometimes insulted because of where they live, right? If you live in a certain area of the town then you should expect certain things. Someone described it to me as a certain geographical discrimination that they feel that's happening. I don't believe that's the intention but that is the perception and it is how people are feeling when they work hard to pay for their homes and they pay property taxes and wanting to have a level of responsiveness and for calling in certain things that should be type one calls and not getting a response, such as someone being dragged, screaming into a car, things like that are happening. So it's how much, how long and how much information would the community members, what would they have to do? I guess I'm looking for information that gives them a solid plan to follow and then they can say, here's what we got to help you make a case. There's not a lot of specifics. I do hear what you're saying about being patient and persistent and they're certainly willing to do that but what exactly do they need? I think I guess I need more specifics to help say, hey, this is a plan that we can make to work with the department. Sure, so the persistence keep filing those tips. As Commissioner Sigrino asked earlier, yes, I wanna see tips whenever you see a legal drug activity. It depends on what kind of investigation you're looking for though. We work with confidential informants and they can't buy drugs from everybody, right? So if the community gives us the support and resources to do interdiction based investigations then that is something that we can explore. However, that is just the tip of the iceberg when you're starting a drug case and that is even longer than a typical informant based investigation. Thank you, and what do you mean by that? When you say the state needs to have the community gives you like certain resources, what? Support and resources. So essentially you're asking how would I infiltrate a drug operation that an informant couldn't because an informant can't buy from everybody? Right. That's just how it is. And the support I would be looking for is or the resources I need people or officers to conduct surveillance that are trained to do so and then that would lead to a potential traffic stop and then based on a pretext reason to stop the car, working our way into car and finding drugs and then interviewing the person and then potentially flipping them and then getting them to turn them into an informant. I mean it's just the tip of the iceberg so to speak. Right, so if they're doing a certain amount of surveillance on their own, how best can we get community members education on how to do surveillance in a way that is helpful to the department to prioritize their location? I guess the difference there is the officers are sworn and they will write up an affidavit and swear to it and testify to it. I don't know the extent that our department has thought about educating community members to do so. I don't know the chief has anything to add to that. I think there is a lot of training and experience that goes into actually recognizing drug activity for drug activity and many of the things that get sent to us by members of the community wouldn't pass muster with regard to being evidentiary and they are indicative sometimes of long standing frustrations that then turn things that are observed into things that they're not. We see a fair amount of that. Our threshold for what we would consider to be actionable narcotics activity is very high and usually involves being able to actually make buys off individuals. It's not about observing what appear to be near hand to hands in the street or exchange of currency for items. It's got to be much more specific than that to pass legal muster and it normally has to be the use of an actual transaction that we monitor the entirety of and not merely a photograph from a window that people say this is what it shows and maybe it does. It's certainly they're convinced that that's what it shows but that's not sufficient for a court case nor is it sufficient for any kind of fourth amendment intrusion. And so those are the things and I am concerned at times about encouraging tips is great. We want tips and the sergeant's clear about that but I'm concerned about encouraging people to undertake certain amounts of surveillance and things. I frankly think that it sometimes can encourage an unhealthy obsession in neighbors for what their other neighbors are doing. And I think that we need to be cautious about that. That's not to say that there aren't instances in which neighbors are experiencing horrible things from neighbors or recurring conditions that are unacceptable and that become to a certain degree all encompassing for them. That's the nature of quality of life issues. The quality of life issues diminish your quality of life and they eat into it. And at some point when you have noisy upstairs neighbors you can't hear anything but the noisy upstairs neighbors and you hear them every single time. And sometimes it's because they're really really noisy upstairs neighbors and sometimes it's because that's what has come to occupy you. And I do worry about encouraging people to really dive into that but I also wanna balance that with the recognition that we want to be responsive to our neighbors and we also do want tips so that we can know when some location is turning into something or when there's increased patterns of certain kinds of activity at a location. So this particular location is, there's real stuff going on. So it's not just oh yeah my neighbor is annoying and speculation, they can clearly see use. So use isn't going to get us into a narcotics investigation. Well that's what I'm trying to determine chief. What documentation does the department have or can provide that gives community members that are in this situation so it's been happening for a while and now it's gone to a different level. It's gone to a level now that's unacceptable for the people that live in that area and is unacceptable for a house that's that close to a school and once again next door to a building that has an after school program for elementary children. It's at a different level now. So what are the, and they've been providing tips like when I talk to some people already at the department it's like oh yeah, like they know the house. As soon as they hear the address and I don't wanna say the address here but if we talk afterwards and I give you the address I'm sure you'll be like oh yeah you've heard of this address. So it's more or less that there's this feeling of just desperation because they can't get anything done but they're willing to do something themselves and they are in addition to the cameras they have a room that directly looks down at all the cars that are pulling up at people that are using in the cars. What do they do? So I think we're going like I don't wanna say round and round in a circle but what are the resources that give people information? I mean obviously they don't wanna do anything that's gonna put themselves in physical danger because they already had an incident where it got physical but they can surveil if since the department doesn't have the manpower to do that but we would want them to surveil in a way that's useful to the department. So if you can perhaps think about that and let me know, I'd appreciate it. Can I just add something quickly? Yes please. So I believe Sergeant Bellovo touched on this already but really it's the information gathering that we need assistance with in addition to the fact that these investigations require a lot of resources. My experience has been in running the drug unit many years ago that we would oftentimes require as many as five officers to engage in surveillance at a bare minimum and so it is very labor intensive and so really as far as community members go what we're looking for is being very cautious about interacting with people because again, a lot of times if it is a major distribution a lot of these individuals are armed because they are carrying large quantities of drugs and money and many people are aware of that. So we would be very cautious. I would say do not interact with them directly at all and the thing that we need is really information. So Sergeant Bellovo touched on the fact that if you can record registrations on vehicles if you can describe the vehicles as they come and go that is the primary information that we need and then perhaps we can build a case at some point resources allowing us to actually engage with this individual location. It seems that when you have children involved I know there's a limited number of officers and I think given the limited number of officers we have now we need to be creative about what's the priority in terms of these kinds of incidents and it seems to me especially when there's children involved and there's a school right there it should rise in priority. So I want to make that comment and the second comment I want to make is I was wondering if there's something on the BPD webpage that describes the kind of information very clearly that people need to give when they want to make those kind of complaints. So when you click on the drug tip line it pretty much outlines everything that you can it's labeled essentially your name the suspect name, suspect vehicle description, address type of activity you're seeing, type of drug that might be involved it's all labeled as far as the suspicious activity that we're looking for. I touched on it a little bit earlier it's the short duration meetings where you're seeing people coming and going from a specific location. I don't know if that's detailed on the website or in some kind of document. I would have to see it. But unless you realize that a tip line is where you get that information you might not find it. I'm sorry are you asking about the type of suspicious activity that correlates with drug activity? The whole piece. So there's a tip line but is there a place that actually says if you're concerned about drug activity go to the tip line? It's on the front page of the police department's website but I'm not sure. I can't see it from here. Yeah there it is. So this is the police department's home page. You go to submit a tip that's for drugs only. Perfect well done thank you. Would you like to be contacted if you know the individuals, the location that you can give dates, vehicles involved, what you suspect the drugs are and then there's a big space for any further information. Thank you helpful. Apologize I couldn't explain that better without the visual error. This is perfect. We still have that problem of low number of police and some significantly serious issues. And as the chief mentioned too not having people and you also mentioned being careful because these are very dangerous situations and I'm wondering how when you put those three things together you know what's the solution when you have a school involved? Thank you for this. I was just gonna burn one thing. I used to live next to, well I still live in the same apartment but there was some tenants of another apartment in my building that were not great and a whole lot about drug activity and whatnot. They were luckily evicted but I remember one of the reasons why we didn't report anything to that because we were scared of disretaliation from them. I mean we could hear our wealth or so if they knew we could hear every single thing that was going on upstairs. And I mean I guess my question is is there any kind of really good ways to present tips? Well I guess for that we're kind of really putting yourself at risk I guess because that was like the big reason why my wife and I just didn't, we were like just we got together here. Like we had to live in the same doorway to get into our apartments together and yeah we wanted to do more but we were very concerned about our own safety and trying to intervene. I completely understand that. This online tip form does not require a name or address, it's not linked to you in any way. Same thing with the phone number that's listed there. You don't have to leave your name, you don't have to leave your phone number, you can call in from a blocked line and we will still document the tip. You can still request us to call you back if you wanted to have a conversation we, they might ask you for your name, you don't have to provide it or you can even provide your name and say you want to remain anonymous and we'll keep the tip anonymous. But yeah. Any further questions or comments? Will we have Sergeant Belivy with us? Can I, thank you, a brief comment. I think that was really helpful. I really appreciate it. I think I have a better way of responding to community members when they raise this, understanding a bit more what your process is and sort of your threshold for being able to build a case. So thanks so much for that, that was helpful. Thank you, thank you much appreciated. I'm moving on to agenda item 6.02, review of DD-1302, DD-1303 and DD-33. I'm actually gonna make a motion that we table this discussion. Well, for a couple of reasons. One, we could easily spend an hour on each one of these department policies and it is 842 as we speak and we have a couple more things on the amended agenda that I think require our time right now for that. In addition to partially some other things that Brian Korber said with regards to using trauma-informed thinking when we look into these policies and make them better. But yeah, that's just a couple of reasons why I think we should table this agenda item till next meeting. So I would entertain a second and if anyone wants to comment on that floor is yours. I think, sorry, I saw her hand up first for, is that a seconding? No. That was not, that was a comment? Okay, I'll take the second and then I'll take the comment. So as I was reviewing the language, some of the language is pretty antiquated. I think we should talk to some folks who practice in these areas and have them have a look and just update the language so it's more current. And I won't take responsibility for doing that. I think you had a comment followed by, sorry. Yes, I agree. And I think also as part of reviewing the CNA report which has input on some of the directives and updating some of the language and moving some of the directives as recognizing that some directives are good but they're not directive one so they're not a rule and things like that should be part of that review process as well. Thank you. I think it would also be helpful to have work with Nicole. We have consulting time with them still to help us do a review of these as well as with our attorney Robert Appel. And so I think it would be helpful to have a process for this in a timeline. Three may be a lot to do in one month and perhaps what you wanna do is assign responsibility for a particular policy for a commissioner to get input on and then bring it to the table. Makes sense to me. So do you wanna talk about a timeline now? Yeah, I'm happy to discuss timeline. It's like an idea. Sorry, be my guest. That's an idea. How about if we try to put one of these on the agenda for the next meeting and for a commissioner to perhaps commissioner, Comerford had mentioned she'd take responsibility. Maybe you could select one of these that she seems as most appropriate. Or actually perhaps you could assign one to each, one to all three to one commission or one each to one commissioner and schedule one for next month and then see how that goes and to see schedule the other two reviews later on depending on how rapidly we can do the first review. I do see 13.02 and 13.03 is being very similar. I almost feel like those ones could be combined together and then have DD33 as a separate on