Good evening everyone and welcome to our fourth meeting in two months. We're making this thing happen really quickly for our community safety wellness task force. We are going to get started right away here. We do have a quorum. I thank all of those who are here with us. I thank those who've been coming, who've been thinking about this, whose thoughts brought this task force to pass and all of the work that's been done so far to get us where we are. As a welcome, in way of welcome, I do want to mention that our Fuse fellow, our support man, Dr. Duane Campbell and his Vice Sandy, had a son a little over a week ago. So we want to congratulate the Campbell family for and just in thinking about their new son, instead of a moment of silence, could we just share a moment of a silent moment of gratitude for Ace and all of his peers who are going to grow up in a safe and healthy dorm. Thank you for sharing that with us. Marsha, I guess I'll share my screen with the values. Marsha, are you with us? Can't hear you. Sorry about that. Thought I was unmuted. Good to be with you all. Good evening. As you know, we begin all of our meetings with a reflection of our values and would just like to invite you to reflect on the values that we have shared on how we stand together as a community and ask if anyone would like to share a value that is not listed. Also how we stand up for ourselves and others. It's beautiful. And if anyone has an additional value that they'd like to add this evening, I invite you to offer it and how we stand towards others with our foundation being, our foundational values being patience, inspiration, and love. Do we all agree that these values will hold the center of our time together? How we think and feel and reflect. Thumbs up is great. Okay, good. Thank you so much. It is an honor to be in this meeting with you all. And it is my pleasure now. We'll just get started with our first agenda item, which is so exciting. It is my pleasure to introduce you to someone I'm sure you know already, Mr. Ryan Smith, who is the director, the manager of the strategic initiatives manager of the city of Durham's office of performance and innovation. Sounds like a theater troupe. But a good one. And it gets things done. So with that, we are going to talk about, Ryan's going to share the good news, the very good news about a new department that's coming. Hopefully to us will be formed and funded called the community safety department of the city of Durham. So, Ryan, thank you so much for spending this evening with us and look forward to hearing your presentation. Thank you very much, Marsha. And thanks for others for having me here today. Let me say on the values page that I come very much in the spirit of collaboration tonight and also with gratitude for the leadership and service that you all are reflecting here tonight. I've been very excited for this group to form. I've watched every meeting live and I'm glad to be here with you tonight to explore ways that we can support you and your important work and also how we can collaborate. I'm going to share my screen real quick. Can you all see my slides? Yeah, great. All right. Well, Marsha, thanks for that introduction. Oh, how do I stop that? Give me one second here. I apologize. Sorry, one second. Sure. All right. Let's all work better. All right. You can see my slide still. Thank you. Apologize for that. Appreciate your patience. No problem. Go back to the start. So the purpose of tonight's presentation is to provide a very high-level overview of a proposed new department, a community safety department, and also an overview of the 911 Call for Service initiative. And the purpose of these high-level overview is really laying the groundwork for ongoing collaboration with this task force. And again, I've said I've been very excited. I think I'm very proud that this task force exists. I appreciate all the work that you are doing. We could spend several hours talking about the content in this presentation. Instead, we're going to try to do 10 minutes. And what I am committing to you upfront is I'm really ready to dive in to be a support to the roundtable that will form around Call for Service to dig in and answer questions about the reports. Tonight is really laying the groundwork for that. And I appreciate the time and opportunity to be here. So let me first talk about a new department. I'm sure many of you, maybe all of you, have heard about it. City Manager Wanda Page and her budget that is currently before City Council in it has created a calls for the creation of a new department, a community safety department. The purpose of that department is to enhance public safety through community-centered approaches to prevention and intervention for alternatives to policing in the criminal legal system. So let me just, the current status of this department as part of the budget is currently being considered by City Council. The City Council will vote on the existence of this department as part of the budget process and that vote will occur on Monday evening, June 21st. And if approved, that department will officially begin and there will be funding to support it on July 1 with the new fiscal year. The staffing, so the manager's budget calls for an initial staffing level of 15 full-time positions. About half of those positions are going to be dedicated to call for service, alternative call for service response pilots. And I'll talk about those tonight. So these will be positions like clinical social workers, nurse practitioners, other trained civilian responders, but they may not be clinical trained responders. So I'll talk more about that, but that's that. And then the other part of the positions are the positions that are necessary to support that work, to plan for it, to support this task force, which I'll talk about, to manage contracts and all the other various work that it takes to run a department. And there is the possibility, based on conversations that council have had in public meetings, that this department could grow over the course of this year as staff come back with recommendations based on time to plan more for staffing that we may need to expand alternative response pilots. The department's going to focus on three main areas. The first that I'll dig into here in a second are piloting alternative responses to 911 calls. The second is collaborating with community and specifically a real priority on collaborating with this task force and being a support to the task force, both in supporting your work that's not related to calls for service work, but also in collaborating with you on that work to identify new approaches that we haven't thought of to be supportive of your work and research that we might be able to help support and conduct to help you collect data that is of interest to you, all of those things fall under that. And then the final is the department will manage a number of contracts that have already existed in the city that will be pulled into this new department that fit under it and the staff will be charged with managing those contracts, evaluating them and making recommendations back to city leadership on those types of where the work is being done by other organizations, either other government organizations or community partners. So I'm going to start with our first focus area, which is our 911 call for service initiative. I think that this area is clearly, I'm sure of interest to you all. It fits under your bylaws. And let me just start at the very top and say that I think there's a real opportunity that the city is clearly committed to this work and the city's also recognizes that in order to do this, we need to do it working closely with our task force and with the community. And I'm excited to figure out how to do that with you all. I'll talk about the work that's been done to date. So this work started back in August. And a lot of the work to date has been focused on understanding current operations, understanding the status quo. And it has had, you know, several parts to it. I'm going to share this report or this presentation with you after the fact it has links so you can go read all the reports directly. And again, we won't have time to dive into it all tonight, but I'd be happy to come back to the round table that will form in this area and bring other people who've been doing this work so that we can talk about it more in depth. Over the since August, we have analyzed a million calls that came in through the city of Durham's 911 call center from October of 2017 to October of 2020. We have also done this work in collaboration as part of a cohort with other cities in North Carolina, including Raleigh, Kerry, Burlington, Greensboro, and Winston-Salem. And this analytical work of looking at the data has been supported by RTI International. I'll talk a little bit more about that in a second. We have also conducted a use of force analysis, again, looking at the same three-year period. With those million-plus calls, there were 174 calls for service that were connected to a use of force record in the top three call natures.  And so of the 174 calls for service where there was use of force, and the detailed report here talks about the kinds of force, which I think would be of interest to this group, the top three were calls for domestic violence, disturbance, and trespass. And all the calls are listed in the report. I'm just flagging that for you. And then the other part of it has been understanding the experiences of first responders. So there was a focus group with the Durham Police Department. And there was also a survey, both first responders in the police department and in fire to understand the services they were referring to, their perspectives on alternative responses, all of this work is again available here for you, and we'd be happy to dive in more with you to talk about that. The other thing I may just say is, I should have said this by way of introduction, I've taken over the call for service, the lead on the call for service work as of May. Prior to that, this work was led by Monica Shaparo, who was my boss and has since moved on to be an assistant city manager for another city. And I just want to recognize Monica's significant contributions here and that I've taken over from her work. So we'll just talk a little about the data. Again, this is just a quick snapshot to give you a sense of what's there. So these are some of the call natures that are in our computer-assisted dispatch system. That's the data mechanism where a lot of this is housed. So over a three-year period, there were in that system 10,000 calls that were designated mental health. Now let me just say right off the bat that we know that that is significantly undercounted. And one of the things that we're looking at is how to get a more accurate understanding of the volume of calls that are associated with a mental or behavioral health need. It's really important for thinking about resource allocation. I'll talk a little bit about that. But 10,000 calls over a three-year period that were listed that way, these took up an estimated 16,000 hours of response time. And you have here the top three call types that were crisis and voluntary commitment or suicide threat. And then let me say a little bit about these close codes. So if something's coded with resolve without a report, it means the only record of that is what exists within our computer-assisted dispatch system. It means there was no additional report, incident report, or otherwise filed by an officer. That means there was no citation or no arrest. And again, there's a lot more detail behind all of this. I just wanted to quick orient to some of this work. Another area of calls or quality of life calls, there are at least, I think, 16 different call types. I put here the top two ones of trespass and loitering and noise complaint. These represented 53,000 calls over a three-year period. The initiated by public means the calls can either be initiated by public or they could be initiated directly by, say, an officer out in the field. So you see the percent here that were initiated by the public. And again, how many 37,000 hours spent on these calls over a three-year period? I'm going to go over just two other areas because I think they're of interest in some of the places we're interested in focusing and may be of interest to you. So traffic represented 74,000 calls, 84,000 hours, and the top two call types were motor vehicle accidents and traffic hazards. 73% of the motor vehicle accidents were resolved without an accident report and an additional 15 without an additional report. And then the final, which is one of the bigger areas is general assistance. 263,000 calls, including 31% of those are hang-ups. So in this data includes a call that would where the person hung up. 101,000 hours spent on those calls and you see here the top three call types of a call being coded as an assist person, a follow-up or an attempt to locate. And we can talk a lot more about those in detail. Let me talk about the work ahead because I think these are opportunities we're very interested in collaborating with all of you. The folks who have been working on this have identified six areas of interest that we have committed to advance over the next year. So the first one, we have these first three that are grouped in things that are potentially related to remote response. This first one is actually foundational that most of the work that we would do moving forward and that's having new protocol in place that would support alternative response. So if a call comes in and we want someone other than a police officer, other than EMS or FIRE to respond, we need protocols in place to appropriately identify and redirect those calls. But also to do a better job of collecting the appropriate data. So Council was certainly noticed and wanted us to think through why we are undercounting mental health calls and we have a group that is looking into that and trying to understand how we could better understand and appropriately estimate that. I've seen some national estimates that 10 to 30 percent of calls and it certainly could be more, but we're working on that. Another area is utilizing our current remote response capacity. So the city does have some ways in which 911 calls are responded to by telephone. There's online reporting. We think there are opportunities to expand that in ways that are appropriate for remote response. And one of the ways that we want we want to expand it within our current capacity, but we also want to think about adding new capacity. So if we embed a nurse practitioner or a mental health clinician into our 911 call center, does that give us new capacities for remote responding to some subset of appropriate calls instead of having an in-person responder? Police or otherwise? The next bucket here are in-person calls that are non-critical in nature and thinking about alternative responses there. So I mentioned traffic. There are examples of two cities in North Carolina that have non-sworn officers responding to minor traffic incidents, both Fayetteville and Wilmington have gotten special exemption from the General Assembly. We're pursuing that and interested in thinking about alternative responses for a subset of traffic incidents and abandoned vehicles. Currently, we're not allowed to by legislation. And then also looking at alarms, there were 50,000 calls for alarms. Many of them false. Many of them resolve that or report. And we want to think about how can we continue to shift the onus for verifying alarms on alarm companies, but also what are opportunities to think about an alternative response there for calls that are unverified? Again, this is all going to take a lot of planning, just kind of naming the lanes that we are interested currently in working on. The final one is really the big one and the big opportunity. And that's drawing on inspiration from communities like Eugene Oregon with Kahootz on Denver that had a star program that was inspired by Kahootz. Thinking about an alternative infield response for critical calls and also non-critical calls that would dispatch, for example, things like teams of a medic or crisis responder or clinical social worker to respond on scene in lieu of an officer to connect residents up with services and better meet their needs. And I think the spirit in all of this is to make sure that we are appropriately responding to the needs of residents in that moment of crisis and sending the right personnel. We are learning a lot from other cities in this. We just had calls last week with Eugene and Denver will be continuing to learn from others. There's a lot of interest across the country in this. A quick pivot quickly here too. So that's the call for service work. And I'll talk and you might have some questions about that. The department is also going to be, it exists on the city side to be a resource for this task force. The city is creating this as the place where there will be city staff dedicated to being a real support to you without any agenda for that support. If you have research questions, we're here to either help answer them or find other folks that can answer them. If you have data requests, we're here to help you collect that data. If you need help analyzing data, we're here for that. If you have ideas that you want to advance and they're ready to move to the city, we're here to help with that proposal development process and moving them through so that they can be considered by council and all those ways and others we're really here to support you. And Dwayne who I know you've met is kind of our lead point but we will have other staff also behind the scenes who are ready to support you and providing whatever resource you might need if we can so that you can be successful in your work. And the other thing that I mentioned is really some of this work that the department will carry forward it will not own. That work will be led by others either community organizations or other government agencies. And so that will be contractual work. We'll be managing those contracts helping evaluate them, et cetera. And these are the current contracts that will live in this department. The city, as you know, has invested almost a million dollars in expanding the Bull City United Violence Interrupters program is one example. And that is so those staff will not be in the city. Those are going to be in the county where the county is leading that effort. And then our job will be being a good steward of the city's resources in that and managing that contract and making recommendations back to city leadership. So I'm sure there will be growing things like that. Some of these things are going to be evaluated that have been around for a while and to determine if they continue to make sense for the city. And I'm sure that this task force may identify other opportunities where the appropriate way to move it forward if it if it lives within the city is to contract with other organizations. So finally, finally, let me say what I tried to say at the beginning that we are really committed to ongoing meaningful and proactive collaboration with this task force. And I've put on here in the spirit of being proactive what some of those things might look like. But what I really want to say is we're very open.  We really want to collaborate with you on the call for service work. You know, that might be engaging with your round table closely that's going to be working in this area. Attending listening sessions that you organize, which I'm excited about thinking about how we might engage in co-design sessions with community members on some of this work, thinking about what it would look like to have community accountability and evaluation of 901 call for service work. All this, all these things are things we're very interested in. And then there are this other bucket that have nothing to do with call for service, but the work that is that you are leading. And I'm just, you know, we're saying tonight that we're here to support you in whatever way that can be. And, you know, Martian Xavier are reach out to us. Dwayne's going to be here listening. We'll be watching, but I just want you to know that we appreciate you. You have a very difficult job at hand and we want to support you in whatever way we can. And I'll stop there. Thank you, Ryan. That is so encouraging. I feel like I've been waiting 30 years to hear that that we're actually investing in new ways to respond to people's needs and harm. Hallelujah and amen. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And to have that kind of I was like intimacy with the city on this kind of issues of safety and crisis response is just fantastic. It's Marcia, if I just might say one other thing, I mean, I just want to note that there are also important county partners in this. So we are working closely with EMS working closely with the criminal justice with CJRC and others. And also, you know, the community will be important in this. So, you know, the city, the city is I think leading some of the call for service work, but we are doing that understanding that the only way to succeed in this work is with a lot of collaboration, including collaboration with this group, collaboration with the county and important agencies that we have there. So I just want to, I wanted to name that out loud. Thank you. Beautiful. We don't have a ton of time, but we got to take questions. We just got to. Right, Xavier? Okay, great. Absolutely. Yeah. Y'all, any questions? Wanda. So this looks really good and I'm excited about the future of what this looks like. Our current situation where 911 calls are being routed to Raleigh right now. So I'm really excited about what we're planning to do in the future. And I am just wondering how this process or what is benefiting what we're seeing now in terms of 911 calls being routed outside of John. That's a great question. I'm not sure. I don't want to dodge it. I'm not sure I'm the best person to answer it, but what I'm happy to do is to have the right person come back and answer that question for you, either in writing or to come back to the task force. I will say that my understanding and caveat that I could be wrong because this is just that it's a separate department. My understanding is that the that outsourcing of calls to Raleigh is an issue that is either resolved or is going to be resolved in the coming week or two and that they have a number of plans in place that are that are addressing that need that I know that we've all been paying close attention to. So thank you for lifting that up. And I'll be happy to have Deputy City Manager Bo Ferguson or Randy Beaman and 911 to provide to this group a written response. And if you have follow-up questions, we can we can answer those two, but thank you for looking at it. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yes. Were there other hands? And I see that just for those not reading the chat, maybe watching Mayor Pro Tem said that's correct. 911 calls are no longer being routed to Raleigh. So thank you. Thanks. That's great. Nori. Yes, sir. Yes. Okay. I want to thank you first for putting that presentation together. That was very informative. This is more so a question related to your department opposed to the 911 calls. I'm just kind of wondering who is in charge of sort of leading that process of hiring folks? And then sort of, what are the requirements for my understanding and correct me if I'm wrong, but this was, you know, sort of lobbied by Durham beyond policing. And so I'm kind of wondering if they have a part in hiring folks. And then also if you could just like go into detail sort of the requirements for the folks who will be hired. I know that there's like some like, you know, they may need to know some like basic things, but sort of their commitment and sort of their, and I don't know if this is a question that can be asked, but like if they sort of their belief in this or support in this. Great question, Nori. Thank you so much for asking it. So a couple of things. First, the department doesn't exist yet. And I say that because they until the city council votes on the department, you know, there, the city manager has not yet chosen leadership for department. Whoever that is will certainly have, you know, some thought on how the hiring process rolls out. Not all the positions are going to be posted right off the bat, because especially for the for the nine, for the ones that are going to be, you know, the clinical social workers, the nurse practitioners for those positions, we still have planning work to do. And I think this, this is an additional way that we could think about engaging with the roundtable working on nine one call for service and make we want to make sure that we are hiding the right people for the pilots. And right now, because we're still in early phases for planning those pilots, we know these are the kinds of positions that we will likely need, but we need to shore up some of our planning before I think we finalized job descriptions for these things. So there's still room to figure that, that out. And again, we're still in this kind of awkward place where the department doesn't officially exist yet. There are lots of decisions that the manager will make upon city council voting to officially approve it. And so I think an opportunity to continue to engage with this group and conversations like that. I think they're important questions. Thank you, Nori. I think we're getting close on time, but another question. And yeah, Jennifer. Thank you. So a question I have and I apologize if you covered this already and I missed it. Where in the city org chart is this going to be housed and what city manager is going to be in charge of it? Specifically, I'm wondering what the risk is and or what protections we are already planning for to prevent a community safety department whose purpose is to create police alternatives from being co-opted by police leadership as is so often the outcome in these efforts. And in addition to that, I'm curious what has already been done to include directly impacted people and behavioral health care consumers in the planning and prioritizing of this department? Let me answer the first question start. So this department will be part of a public safety portfolio. It will be a department on its own, not under the police department, not answering to the chief of police. The department would answer to deputy city manager Bo Ferguson who would oversee other public safety departments. You know, I think that leadership in this office will not be sworn officers. So I understand your question and again something that we could continue to discuss, but that's the the most direct answer to where it will where it will sit is my understanding the intention. Would you just say your your second question? I apologize. Yeah, thank you. I'm sorry. I gave you a string of questions. The second question was how individuals who are directly impacted, so people who are arrested at traffic stops or who are themselves, behavioral or mental health consumers who might be met by a CIT team during whatever RTI coded as a crisis are how are those people being involved in setting the priorities for what alternative response should look like? Excellent question, Jennifer. And the direct answer is that we need to do a lot more in that. And I think that one of the things that we have been excited about is this group forming. I think that we need to do a lot more engagement with individuals directly impacted. And so we're committed to that and ready to do it either on our own, but would love to do it in collaboration with this group. You're absolutely right. I fully support that. And that's my direct answer at this time. I think initially a lot of the work has been focused on just understanding where we are at today. And as we begin down the path of these general pilots, we have a lot of opportunity and time to be engaging and what they actually look like. Right now, these are just broad areas where we think we need to be focusing some attention. But there is opportunity and a real commitment on our part to be engaging exactly the individuals you're discussing and thinking through exactly what shape it takes. So there's a lot of room still to figure out here. I hope that I appreciate your perspective. Thank you very much. Thanks. Thank you. I mean, it's clear when I look at our task force and how this new department can actually make its way into the to the people. I can see in the questions that were asked that this is going to be a great collaboration that we need each other and we can bring forth. I think this a great vision realized. So thank you for your openness, for your, you know, for your vision, for all your hard work. It's really exciting. I can't imagine what's going to be at the end of this, what might come forth. And with that, as we build this task force and and thank you again, Ryan, as we go forward tonight, we need to learn how to best meet and operate so that we may serve not just the new department, but all the rest of the aspects of our mission. And so I'm going to pass it to Xavier. And before we move on to that area, I did want to acknowledge Muffin had her hand up as well. Oh, I didn't see that. I think I've got half screen. Thank you. Yes, Muffin. Thank you. I had I just sent it to Ryan in the chat, but I wanted to know what would the deliverables have to be in order for this new department to continue? Like, what are the expectations? I appreciate that. I mean, I think the expectations are at least in the first year or two. To take these alternative response pilot areas and to demonstrate that we can do that work and that we can appropriately meet the needs of residents. And so, you know, I think thinking through how we evaluate that, but I, you know, I feel that the department will be under there'll be a lot of scrutiny and expectation to deliver on this work. And we need to do that. And there will also be, I guess, realistic expectations that we want to do this well. And we want to do it in a well planned way. But the expectation is that we start doing the work and we do it in collaboration with others. And that we show results and that the most important results that matter that our residents feel that they are well served by these alternative services that they feel safe, that they want to connect to these services. Things like that are really going to matter. And I guess matter most. But, you know, we do have, I know at least one or two council members on this call and I'm sure that they could also talk about that. Thank you. And if that's not exactly the response, I'm happy to continue to engage on. Thanks. Thank you, Ryan, for bringing us a presentation on the department that does not yet exist, but there's great hope. I appreciate all of the work that's gone into taking it to this point and the leadership coming from our elected officials to bring this to a point where it can be brought into a budget, hopefully within a few weeks. Also, I appreciate the great questions that you've asked as well as the comments in the chat. I do want to mention before we go into a discussion about how roundtables intersect with open meeting laws and so forth. On our last meeting, we did talk about just some shared language and when we talk about roundtables in this setting, we're talking about committees who are gathered around a specific area of interest. And when we talk about listening sessions, we're mainly talking about town halls. So whenever we say roundtables, think committee, when we say listening sessions going forward, just think about a town hall that will invite members of the community to come in and really listen. And even on those roundtables, and you'll hear about this a little bit later also, even with the roundtables and again, we'll say it over and over. They have been populated by with the two or three, maybe four, task force members with the intent and hope that those task force members will bring others into that roundtable from the community. So we're going to lift that up. We'll be saying it quite often, but we do want to move forward to the presentation from my city attorney's office. I'm not sure who is bringing that, but please, I meet yourself and the floor is yours. Hi, I'm Sophia Hernandez. I'm one of the senior assistant city attorneys with the city of Durham. Thank you so much for having us here today. Really appreciate and admire the work that you are agreeing and committing to do. So we are here. Myself and Andrew and I am actually going to let Andrew take the helm, but I did want to introduce myself real quickly and also just emphasize that like Brian, we're here to support your work. And so this isn't a you have one shot with the city attorney and that's it. We're going to introduce you to some information. A lot of it may be new and bulky and legal. So definitely sit with it. And as you are developing your work and maybe changing focuses or developing new focuses, please feel free to reach out to us and ask any questions that come up. A lot of the analysis about open meetings and public records law is fact specific. And so I just wanted to say the door is open. Welcome questions along the way. And with that, I turn it over to Andrew. All right. Thank you, Sophia. I guess I will share my screen. This is the first time I've driven a PowerPoint on Zoom. So Sophia, you're the only person I can see. Are you able to see my screen? Okay. Great. So like Sophia said, my name is Andrew Franklin. I'm a legal intern here at the city attorney's office this summer. I'm a third year student at Campbell Wall School in Raleigh. Hey, Andrew. Sorry to interrupt. We can't hear you very well. That's not just me, right? If you could maybe just get closer to your mic. I think that would help. Sure. Are you able to hear me better now? It's a little better. Okay. Let me see what I can do. Thanks. Is this better? Yeah. I turned up the volume on my microphone. I don't want to... Yeah, that's a lot better. Thank you. Okay. I don't want to blow anybody's hair back. I don't want you to be unable to hear me either. All right. So now that everybody can hopefully hear me, my name is Andrew Franklin. I'm an intern here at the city attorney's office this summer. I'm a third year student at Campbell Wall School in Raleigh. And like Sophia mentioned, we're going to take some time this evening to discuss open meeting laws and public record laws. These are obviously very relevant sets of laws to board and commission work. And so while I'm sure that there are many of you who may have been exposed to this before, not knowing everyone's familiarity, we wanted to provide a general introduction. So if this is familiar to you, just bear with us. Hopefully you'll learn something new. But for those who haven't heard anything, this is meant to be a general introduction. Like Sophia said, a lot of things are fact specific. But we'll get into that as we move along. So the first topic that we'll discuss tonight is open meeting laws. And then we will go on to discuss public record laws. And this is a good time to say that open meeting laws and public record laws sort of exist separate and apart from one another. So they act as sort of two filters. So while you might be in a situation where open meeting laws may not necessarily apply, the public record laws may still apply to the product that you're producing in whatever meeting that you're having. So it's going to be aware of both things that they exist and that both are operational. So we're going to open meeting laws first and then we'll go into public record laws a bit later. Before we begin, the primary sort of public policy behind open meeting laws and public record laws has to do with transparency. The General Assembly is very interested in government being open and transparent and for residents to have access to government work to see what happens, to have input. And so that's sort of a current that runs below all of this. And it's good to keep in mind as we go through it. So the first thing that we'll discuss are public bodies. Like Sophia said, this is a very term-heavy area of the law. There's a lot of words and not just words, but words that have legal significance. So these are important words. If the word is slightly different, then it can change the meaning of the statute. So terminology here is very important. Public bodies are elected or appointed by a body with the authority of the city of Durham, by the power given to it by the General Assembly. In general, public bodies consist of two or more members and depending on the duties and functions, they can exercise or they're authorized to exercise. As you can see, policymaking, quasi-judicial, or advisory functions. In this context, the Community Safety and Wellness Task Force is operating in an advisory role. So in that sense, this task force is a public body as defined in the general statute. So next we'll give a little bit of a general overview of open meetings of boards, committees, and commissions. These are also abbreviated as BCCs. As you can see here, official meetings, which is another defined term that we'll discuss at length. And you will hear me repeat the definition of over and over again because it's an important term as we discuss open meeting laws. Official meetings, assemblies, or gatherings can occur at any time or place with advanced notice to the public. Notice is another concept that we'll discuss a little more in depth later on. The meeting itself, the communication between members of the public body can take place in a meeting room, a phone conference, or as we're all extremely familiar with by now, video conference. Hearings, deliberations, and actions of public bodies, which we just defined, must be conducted publicly. Groups that are required to hold official public meetings include state and local government authorities, commissions, committees, councils, other similar bodies, i.e., this task force. So again, this sort of provides the context for where you all are positioned in the grand scheme of this. So this is that big term that I mentioned a moment ago. What is an official meeting? So while it has a lengthy legal definition, I'll try to give you the meet that you need for your purposes. So it means a meeting, assembly, or gathering together again at any time or place by a majority of the members of a public body to conduct hearings, deliberations, or voting upon business within the jurisdiction of the public body. So essentially, an official meeting is when a majority of the members of a public body come together to discuss, vote on, conduct the public business. So that's the definition of an official meeting. Again, it'll be important as we go through. You'll hear me reiterate it. But from this, we can gather that there are two ways to classify meetings under this definition. One is a meeting of the public body itself, where a majority comes together at the same place to conduct or discuss the public business. The other would be a purely social event where even though a majority of the board is present, the members refrain from talking about or otherwise transacting the public business, that would not be an official meeting. And for that sort of thing, no notice is necessary. And the open meeting laws say as much, they say that a social meeting or other informal assembly or gathering together of the members of a public body does not constitute an official meeting unless it's called or held to evade the spirit and purpose of this article. So those are sort of the two classifications. Again, an official meeting is when a majority of the members of a public body come together to discuss, transact, vote on the public business. Very important term. So now that we've talked about what an official meeting is, we can start to talk about the different types of meetings of which there are a few. For our purposes here and an advisory committee, the most important will generally be the regular meetings and the non-regular meetings. Typically emergency meetings and closed sessions will not be applicable to an advisory committee like this. So I'll just spend a moment talking about the difference between regular meetings and non-regular meetings. So regular meetings do not have to have a meeting scheduled, but if they do, they must keep a copy of the schedule on file with the clerk or the secretary, the city clerk. The schedule must show the time and place of regular meetings. If the public body changes the schedule of regular meetings, the body must file the revised schedule to the clerk within seven days of that revision. And in the event that a public body recesses, it's meeting and announces the time and place for the continuation of the meeting, then no further notice is required. So you don't have to provide notice again. So that's a general overview of regular meetings. Non-regular meetings occur when a body meets at a time not on the schedule. When a non-regular meeting occurs, the body must make a written notice giving the time, place, and purpose of the meeting. So a written notice of time, place, and purpose for non-regular meetings. The public body must post that written notice of time, place, and purpose on the principal bulletin board at City Hall and through the city clerk's office 48 hours before the meeting occurs. So that's sort of the approach that needs to be taken for non-regular meetings. So next we'll discuss something that's very timely, electronic meetings and broadcasts of meetings as we are sitting in an electronic meeting that is being broadcast to the public. A public body may hold an official meeting by phone or other electronic means such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, other electronic face-to-face mediums. So long as the body provides notice detailing a location and means of where members of the public may listen. The example that's provided here is emailing a Zoom link or posting the YouTube link detailing the time and purpose of the meeting. That would meet these standards. So again, we're all intimately familiar with this from our experiences over the last year. It's also important to note that any person can use photography, film, or any other method to record any part of an official meeting to prevent undue influence with the meeting. And that's something that I'll discuss a little more in depth later on, but it's just something important to note in the context of electronic meetings that are easily recorded. For instance, I believe this meeting is being reported. So now I'll talk a little bit more about notice it might be a word that you've heard me use throughout the start of the presentation. So the Durham Clerk's Office handles the administration of notices. The meeting notice must have the following information. The name of the committee, the board, the commission, or the subcommittee. So that might be applicable to these roundtables that I've heard you all discuss in the meeting up to now. So it must include the name. The meeting date, the location of the meeting, and the time of the meeting. For virtual meetings, the links allowing for public access to the meeting must also be posted in the meeting notice. Excuse me. Meetings must be advertised to the public for a minimum of 48 hours prior to the meeting taking place. Failure to meet the minimum notice requirement is in violation of open meetings law. And I would also introduce to you all or remind you all that the Clerk's Office does have a handbook that provides more information about notices. So it would be helpful to get a copy of that handbook to get a more detailed understanding of notice and notice requirements for your meetings. Next, we'll talk about minutes. So do public bodies keep minutes of official meetings? Well, yes, every public body is required to keep accurate minutes of official meetings, including meetings that take place in closed sessions. Again, closed sessions are not necessarily something that would apply to an advisory board, but minutes are required even in closed sessions. The purpose of the minutes is to provide a record of actions taken by the board. Minutes of boards will list the members of the board present, staff present, and guests of the board present. The order of events that occurred during the meeting and the details of the events of that meeting. All motions or actions in the meeting will also be recorded. Board's minutes are available as public record. Again, public record law is sort of separate from this, but the minutes fall under the umbrella of a public record law, and we'll talk about that momentarily. And they may be recorded in writing, audio, or video recordings. Again, the Clerk's Office provides a handbook that provides templates for keeping official meeting minutes. So if you need more information about that or have more specific questions, then that handbook from the Clerk's Office would be a good place to look. Okay, well, that's a lot of information, and I know there's a lot of words on the slide, and I'm using a lot of legalese and all this stuff, but that's the broad overview of open meeting law. So next, I want to address some of the specific questions that we received from you all as it pertains to your board, specifically the roundtables and the listening sessions that you all are planning to implement. So we'll take a moment to address those, and if there are questions that you have that we don't address in these few questions that we got, then we can address those at the end of the presentations. So the first question was, are roundtables public or private? And like Mr. Kason said right before this meeting, the task force is planning to treat these roundtables as committees, and so some of the definitions and some of the terminology that we've already talked about, you can see how it would apply to the roundtable as a sort of subcommittee of this larger committee as a whole. So it's always a joke that a lawyer's favorite answer to a question is, it depends. And in this instance, that is the best and most legitimate answer to this question of whether roundtables are public or private. It depends. This is an extremely fact specific sort of question. We already know that official meetings are meetings where a majority of the members are present and conduct, discuss, vote on the public business. And we know that official meetings have minutes requirements, notice, these sorts of things. But the way that the roundtable is set up will often dictate whether or not they are public, private, what requirements there are for that specific meeting. So again, as I mentioned, I would advise you reach out to the city attorney's office, contact your staff liaison, and if you have a certain question then they'll be able to provide an answer there. So the answer to this question is it depends. As frustrating as that is, that's the most direct answer. So the next question we've got are do roundtables need to take minutes, record their meetings, provide public notice, meet in a public building? So the requirement to keep full and accurate minutes depends again, again, it depends on whether the meeting is an official meeting. As we know, an official meeting is a meeting where a majority of the members are there and discuss, transact the public business. And so your minutes requirements will be based on what sort of meeting there is. With regard to reporting the meetings, recording meetings is not explicitly required outside of minutes requirements for official meetings. But the open meeting law provides that any person may photograph, tape record or otherwise, excuse me, reproduce any part of a meeting required to be open. So again, this recording of meetings will depend on whether or not the meeting is required to be open. Is there a need for public notice? Well, if the roundtable is an official meeting, then the roundtable will need to provide notice consistent with the open meeting law. Again, the city clerk's office handbook detail provides more details about notice requirements. And finally, do roundtables need to meet in a public building? So roundtables do not need to meet in a public building. This is one where the answer is not it depends, but there is a caveat. They don't need to meet in a public building, but there does need to be public access to the building. So you can't hold a meeting in a private building that you don't allow members of the public to access. So that's sort of the answer with a small caveat there. Doesn't need to be in a public building, but does need to be a place with public access. The next question, the answers to the next question, rather, are very similar to the answers from the roundtable question that we just talked about. The minutes requirements will depend on whether or not this is an official meeting. Recording the meeting again, it's not required outside of any meeting, or minute requirements that apply, but any person may record the meeting if it's a meeting that's required to be open. Again, notice requirements must be consistent with the open meeting laws, depending on the type of meeting that's taking place. And the answer to meeting in a public building is the same. No need to meet in a public building, but wherever you meet, there does need to be public access. Finally, we got a question about closed sessions. So in general, North Carolina law provides a limited number of instances when a board or commission is permitted to meet in closed sessions. Going back to one of the very first things I said, there's a public policy interest in having open and transparent government, and so closed sessions are sort of limited to specific instances, including a closed session to consult with an attorney to protect attorney-client privilege, a closed session to discuss personnel files, things like that. So again, it's very unlikely that an advisory committee would ever have an occasion to meet in a closed session, but again, reach out to the attorney's office if you have any questions or feel that you may be in a situation that requires a closed session. Finally, confidential communications. This was a question that we had specifically about email communications, and it is a perfect segue into our short presentation about public records. Excuse me. So I'm going to switch my PowerPoint very quickly to our next slide or our next presentation, public records laws, and we'll jump right in. So the Public Records Act mandates that public records compiled by the government are the property of the people and are obtainable by the people at their request. Again, this goes back to the public policy interest and open and transparent government. Because public records created by boards and conducting public business are public records, that's a tongue twister for sure, the city needs the help of board members and ensuring the appropriate maintenance of the records. Proper maintenance will aid the city in fulfilling these duties. And the possible ramifications of non-compliance are that it can create legal remedies for people who have been denied access to public records, and it can diminish public trust and generate negative publicity, which is just not something that any board commission committee aspires to do. Nobody wants to diminish the public trust or generate negative publicity. So public record laws in that sense are very important. So this is the big question. What is a public record? And again, this one has a fairly straightforward answer as well. All material made or received through the transaction of public business, depending on its content and disregarding its physical form or location. This includes meeting minutes, text messages, video, chat, email, documents, these sorts of things. And it's very important here to note that that clause that says depending on its content and disregarding its physical form or location. So it doesn't matter if Andrew Franklin sends a message to Sophia Hernandez from Andrew Franklin's personal account. If it's something that involves public business, then that's a public record, even though I sent it from my personal email account. So it's, again, it's about the content of the message and not the way that it's conveyed. So the same thing applies to text messages, voicemails, videos. So that's an important thing to keep in mind. And it could get sort of confusing, but as long as you remember, it's about what I'm saying, not the medium with which I say it. That should help you sort of grasp the idea behind public records. So all public boards receiving create public records while conducting regular business. Board members often create public records with the creation of audio, video, minutes, and electronic communications. For instance, if you communicate with another individual in your official capacity or exchange information about matters under your board's purview, you may create a public record, even if you use your personal email, voicemail, or video recording to transmit the information. And that's what I was just speaking to a moment ago. Sorry, whiplash there. Board members also have a duty to maintain materials that they receive in their duties, including materials created by private people or companies and submitted to the boards. So we'll move on here to the takeaways. These are sort of the bottom lines, the easy takeaways. I like this slide because it's one, two, three simple. All chats, texts, instant messages, and other written communication become public record if they address the transaction of public business. So again, that's what I said at the beginning and that's sort of the bottom line. If there's a question about whether materials should be maintained, it's always better to err on the side of maintenance. You would rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it, right? So those are sort of the main takeaways of public records law. Not really as complex as open meeting laws, but still crucially important. And it's necessary for committee members and boards to have a grasp on. So with that, I believe that that is the end of our formal presentation. And I'm not sure who I pass it to, but I guess we'll take questions at this point. And I'll stop sharing my screen. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you so much. Yes. And I wanted to add to Andrew's great presentation when we talk about whether the meetings can be in a public building or not. You know, they don't have to be, but then we talk about public access. And access in this case can be virtual. And so it doesn't have to be in a public building, but the public has to have access that doesn't necessarily always mean virtual. It can be, sorry, physical access can be virtual. For example, I think our city council is looking at, you know, in the future doing some hybrid meetings where the public can attend virtually. And so that's something that you could consider as well. So we're happy to take some questions. I do want to reiterate that regarding the listening sessions and roundtables, I think we're going to need a little bit more information about who makes up these roundtables and who makes up these listening sessions to be able to better evaluate do they fall under the open meeting requirements or public records, excuse me, public records law. But anyway, any questions that you have and also feel free if we don't have enough time to email them and send them our way. I think we have Mike has a question. Thanks, this might be more a question for Amber than you guys and I had two, but you answered the one you anticipated my question about allowing public access virtually apropos of Amber, the survey she sent out about, you know, are we going to return to in-person meetings and we certainly would want the public to be readily available or have them readily accessible. But would it, it would seem like it might facilitate our keeping of the public records if we were all each able to create an email account specific to Task Force business. So we wouldn't have to use personal email accounts for communication. So I guess more a question for Amber, is that a possibility that we could, I mean, it's easy for us to create our own, you know, Gmail, another third Gmail account or whatever, but Amber, could we have a Task Force email account created for us? I know that we have our own lists or an email account we could use or an address we could use. So I do not have the answer to that. I'm happy to inquire with our technology solutions department about that. I don't know the extent to which our city server can be used in that way, but I am happy to ask. I mean, we certainly have other ways around it if that's too cumbersome to do. I will ask. Council Member Caballero. Thank you. I just wanted to share a couple things because it can sound really overwhelming. So there are lots of folks who have like listservs or servers and that's the only way you see their response come through. You don't see their private email in that response.  So there is some protection if you're worried, which I think is a legitimate concern about your private email being out there. Secondly, this is why having Amber here is amazing. When you have staff liaisons, they will help navigate the round table saying you're not going to have to, you know, there are several commissions and boards that have, you know, committee meetings that they notice them and they release it. And other than maybe the chair of that board having or the committee chair coordinating with the chair of that board, other members don't have to carry that burden. So I'm just sharing that with you all because it's a lot of information and I want individual folks going, oh, good Lord, how do we negotiate all that? That is why city staff is present. That is why often it's important to, you know, choose a chair for that committee so that or rotating roles or however folks do it just so you always have a point person and you know who's doing what. Absolutely. Any other questions? Sophia, we did have some questions in the chat. But I was going to defer to you on those because my time in the city is short, you know. You'll be the contact. Sure. I did provide my email address. Hopefully it went through. Oh, I sent a direct message as well as the clerk's handbook in case you haven't gotten it together. Those documents should have most of the information that you need. But again, feel free to reach out to this amazing staff liaison that you have in Amber as well as us with follow up questions. I know we're out of time, but I do want to address that regarding the roundtables and listening sessions. You mentioned when you hear roundtables think committee and so to me that means almost like a subcommittee of the task force, right? And if you're thinking of it as a subcommittee or it is in fact a subcommittee and the members of that subcommittee will be the same people consistently, then those roundtables do have to adhere to open meeting laws because that subcommittee exists only out of the authority granted to you by city council, a public body, year public. But if the roundtables are going to be, let's say, two or three task force members and a rotating four or five other people, then you don't have a majority of task force members, nor do you have this consistent subcommittee body that has to follow, that has to notice and advertise and do many minutes for their subcommittee meetings. So that's sort of like a nuance that again, to the extent that we could get more information in particular about the roundtables and listening sessions via email or phone call, I'm happy to meet with Marcia and Xavier to discuss further.  I just wanted to mention that I reached out to Amber and we've been in conversation about setting up a listserv for all of us, just an internal distribution listserv and Amber has generously agreed to do the archiving. So I don't know if that kind of erases the need for us to each have our own individual email address because she would already be archiving everything that's related to the task force business and it would make it just a little easier to reach out to all of y'all because instead of pressing reply all, we would just type in germ community, safety and wellness task force and go to everybody who's part of this, everyone you see on your gallery view. And just to be clear what Monju means about archiving is because I'm a city employee. Sorry, go ahead. No, I just want to clarify that what Monju means by me archiving is that because I'm a city employee, all of my emails are automatically subject to public record. And so if I am on that email address, they're sort of automatically being archived in that way. Well, great. I think that that's a useful tool for you all to have. And then I would say, look at all the different categories that Andrew's presentation included as far as chats and texts and other things because in our current world, it's easy to then just pick up the phone and text, hey, what are you going to vote on this or whatever? And that would be problematic. So anyway, you have my contact info. Thank you so much for having us here today. We're so eager about the work that you're embarking on and very happy to assist in helping make that easier for you. Oh, I see a question, Jesse. It's less of a question and more of a, I guess, clarifying comment. I appreciate all that's come up. This has been helpful because I know there has been some confusion. And that makes perfect sense. That's what I was imagining in terms of our round tables and our listening sessions because they're going to be under quorum at maximum imagining like four or five task force members, but even six or seven is still under quorum. But I think in the spaces where we do have a majority of folks together for, I would say, non-official business or informal gatherings, like those don't need to be as subject to all of the legal expertise that we've had. And I know that's been some part of the confusion. But I know for me, it's felt really, really important for us to just get to know one another and be acquainted and build trust because a lot of us didn't know one another before this. And this isn't really important work. And it's kind of impossible to do it if you just don't know people. Now, I knew about half of you all before we started. So I felt comfortable, but some of you reached out to me and were like, what else? Who are these people? And some of them think that for the first time on the Zoom in the pandemic, I haven't even met in person. So just wanting to encourage us all to participate in the informal gatherings that we have, that I think will contribute to what we do formally and publicly. And we won't have to worry about any legal issues when we do the won't be public business that we're conducting. Yes, please hang out. Please hang out. Okay. So I think that that is way above and beyond our time for today. But thank you again for having us and giving Andrew and I your attention. Feel free to forward questions our way. Good luck. And thank you for the work that you are committed to do. Sophia and Andrew, thank you so much for being here and giving us that guidance and information. Today's meeting really is about let's make sure that our task force members have what they need when we adjourn to go forth with the round table. So we just got a little more organizing work to do. But understanding the quorum issues and how we can gather and who we gather with, that's been really helpful. And we've been talking about this thing for a while. So this has been really helpful. And thank you for giving us your information and knowing that we can continue to count on you and call on you because believe me, we will. And thank you for all those. It depends on you. I love that because that's life, right? It really does depend. We're going to segue now into just a few minutes to just kind of go back over how we run the round tables. We've talked about it a lot. And so I'll turn it back over to Marcia just to make sure that we get some final marching orders, so to speak. All right, thanks. Yeah, marching orders. Now I really feel like a mom. Okay, now we have met. This is our fourth meeting. I think we're ready to roll. And the work is going to be done of this task force. We're going to fulfill our mission in our round tables. And I just want to review the last time we met. We had, we discussed six round tables. We had great input and was recommended that we shrink those and get and have the flexibility to have our own timelines, to prioritize the issues within those round tables, and have come up with now four round tables. We integrated mental health into all of them. When we thought about the work that is before us, behavioral health is the hub in the middle of almost all the wheels regardless whether it is whatever the issue is, the focus area that we're addressing. Mental health is critical. So that is now integrated in all of the round tables. Gun violence has been integrated into violence, interruption and de-escalation makes sense. And so now we have four round tables. And we've spoken with y'all. And I think everybody's agreed to their assignments, have chosen where they want to put their initial membership and attention, focus, but know that you can serve on other round tables. And the beautiful thing about this process is that these meetings, these larger task force meetings, will then be bringing those parts to the whole. So we'll always be sharing what we're doing and reports will always be generated all those minutes. And so that we will know what the right hand and the left hand are both doing and both feet. Because we've got four round tables. So just would like to point that out. And also just to recognize that listening sessions are for all round tables, that that is a tool for us to form our recommendations. That they're going to be an important ingredient of knowing what to recommend. So we also have, we've spoken with Norrie and Tyler and Shanice and as our wonderful experts of facilitation and extreme experience in listening sessions. And they have agreed to be our guides, our counselors, our facilitators in this process. Thank you so much. Really, really appreciate that. So all the round tables will have access to that wisdom and knowledge and training and guidance. So that's very exciting. And Manju, you have also been mentioned. And so we invite you to also guide us as well. So that's wonderful. So I just so in the interest of time, I just would like to review for everyone what has been decided and make sure that we're all, that is the truth in this moment in time. That the round table on SROs will be Norrie, Tyler, Jesse, Tanya and Alec. That we will have a criminal legal system. That's a large piece. I see it from arrest to post release. And therefore those larger, this larger issue can also be divided. But I think it's hard to think of any one part of that system that doesn't need to have reference to the other. So on that round table will be Mike, Muffin and Jitoia. Then those are task force members. And then they like all task force members are invited and will be inviting other people to participate as needed. The third is violence, interruption, de-escalation, Cynthia, Wanda and Samuel. So that's really exciting. And then the 911 responses, the crisis intervention round table, that we learned so much about earlier in this meeting is Manju, Shanice, Jennifer and Isaac. Is everybody okay with that? Does everybody confirm that we got that right? Just a thumbs up would be great. Thank you all so much. This is the beginning. And for that, I am very grateful. Are there any questions that you may have about that, about going forward? I just hope that these round tables will meet as soon as possible. I think I said immediately, but I meant as soon as possible. And that we'll have the support of staff. Ryan made it perfectly clear his availability. And of course, Amber and there's others at our next meeting. I hope that Dr. Campbell will tell us more about the research partners we have. So as we gather together in our first meetings, we'll discuss our area of focus, what we want to know. Because these are going to be not only what needs to be done, but how this is going to be done. So we'll just, and there'll be leadership and some suggestions and guidance on that as well. And also, I think the big question is, of course, and I'll turn this over to Xavier, is the issue of private and public round tables. I think that's a question. And before I do that, let me just make sure. Oh, Mike, yes. I've been in the chat too, but it's a practical question. Since the same resource persons, agencies, organizations are going to have to be meeting with almost every DPD the sheriff, mental health folk are going to be in all of them or almost all of them. Should we run requests to invite those relevant folks through Amber to schedule those so that those people can divide up their time and then presumably that would also have to somewhat determine the timing of our meetings because we don't want to meet until the resource people we need can meet with us. Same thing with research requests. We probably need to coordinate those through one person. So they don't all get swamped at once. Right. My answer to that would be Dwayne that would be really, I mean, they don't go to Dwayne. He can say, absolutely. Here's the priority when I'll get to these. That's right. We can also count for the inviting resource panel, resource though. Absolutely. Ask Dwayne, not Amber. That's right. I think Dwayne, I don't mean to put you on this but it seems welcome to the task force. But my understanding is that you will be coordinating research. You'll be sharing the minutes of those roundtables so that we do know as we go forward, we'll know who's doing what and the information they're gathering so that we don't replicate and that it is just, you know, we gather whether we're meeting separately. We still have common knowledge. So the whole knows the parts and that is that correct? Dr. Campbell. You're correct, Marcia. Thank you. Okay, great. So Dwayne, you'll want us to run requests for resource participation through you. The resource panel met people we want to attend our roundtables. You would like us to ask you to make those invitations. That's the professional expectation that I have. Yes, thank you. Beautiful. Any other questions? Nori. Yeah, so I've been kind of wondering, and I know we just sort of had a long conversation about how roundtables work and sort of engagement with folks, but it feels like there hasn't been a lot of trust building within the community. I think like as individuals in our respective spaces, like folks can trust us, but as a collective, I don't think a lot of people know who the task force is. So I'm kind of wondering is there going to be any time where we could like just meet with folks and like so that they can know us? People we would possibly like partner with, could we meet with them? I think it's really important that we do that. If we want to like do this successfully and correctly, we have to be able to have that trust there so that people can feel comfortable, but also like the people who in those spaces can feel comfortable, but also for meeting with partners that they can say, okay, yeah, you can talk to people that they are already convening. So that process doesn't take so long, but it doesn't feel right for me and to like be just rushing and getting into this and asking folks to like talk to us without any trust there. So they feel comfortable, but also that they can trust us to be actually doing work with their knowledge and whatever they share in that space. Yeah, so just kind of figuring out is there going to be any time and if there isn't could be building that time to do that work? I think certainly, Xavier feel free to add your thoughts, but I think when we as we talked about this in most of all, we want you all to have freedom. We want those roundtables to be a place where you're free to do exactly to follow that wisdom that you just described and for other roundtables to hear that wisdom so that they too can learn from each other. So we can learn from each other. So yes, I think that that's absolutely and that goes for just how you prioritize, whether you say we may have two years, but you want to get this done quickly for reasons that you have that freedom. And so yes, and I do you concur? Yes, I do and I just want to add to that a little bit is and this is more of a suggestion that like that via process that we do all across the board, like that's something that we all sort of get together on and we talk about this is what it looks like and then we all agree to do that and that be carried out because I know we want to make sure that things are done consistently. And so just having a process really done and that it's not a super formal thing either that it's like y'all come and meet us. We may have a music, have a little food and yeah. I love it. That's beautiful. Yes, yes, yes. Okay, I'm absolutely great. Any other hands that I may be missing? Manju's hand was up. Thanks. Thanks, Xavier Manju. Thanks so much. I love that idea, Nori. I think that's spot on. I heard you say the idea that mental health is a central need regardless of the institutional setting or the round tables area of focus. And in a similar way, I feel like there's a theme through all all four round tables that is about resource allocation and how our budgets are structured because so often inequity and unjust power dynamics are mapped in where we spend our city and county money, our public funds that all of us pour our labor into creating. And so I wonder if we could ask that every round table as part of the solutioneering that we're doing in designing an alternative that we also be making recommendations as relevant regarding city, county and school board budgets? Like how would this be reflected in? I think we should be that specific as we make our recommendations to the to the elected bodies. I wondered to if we could create a format and a process for bringing proposals that aren't specifically about SROs, the criminal legal system, violence, interruption or 911 responses, but are relevant to the spirit and destiny of our task force. And we'd love to think about that with folks like what that could look like. That was the second thing. And then the third thing was I believe that there's a whole currently like 32 of every $100 that we spend in our city's general budget goes to Durham Police Department. There are abundant resources that go into designing what policing can look like and plenty of spaces where police get to influence all kinds of aspects of our daily lives. And that's true on the county level too in terms of the sheriff's influence and reach. We created this space because of the need for alternatives to policing. And so the idea that having law enforcement input into our roundtables is a given. That's something that in the development of the task force we've worked really hard to resist. And I hear you, Mike, bringing that up over and over again, really wanting to make sure that DPD and sheriff's department are available as resources. My understanding of our task force bylaws is that they are available to us through the resource panel. And any roundtable that has a question that comes up has the ability to reach out directly to those agencies and get the answers that they need, which is great, especially as someone from a community organization that has reached out to these agencies and has not received the answers that we've wanted or sought information, been unable to access it. That is awesome. The idea that it would be a given though and that it wouldn't be in our hands whether to reach out to them does not make sense to me. And I could see reasons why, for example, the team working on SROs might decide, like it's really important to us to really listen to the folks most impacted, who are young people, who are educators, who are nutritional workers. We would rather not listen to SROs as our first point of inquiry. I was mentioning in the chat, it feels like a miss that the RTI study that Ryan referenced with the 911 data only talked to, in the focus groups, only talked to law enforcement, right? Like 911 encounters necessarily include someone besides law enforcement, right? And those voices have never been heard. Our vehicle here is about centering the voices who have been left out of the process and shifting the power dynamics so that we can transform our society. Thank you. I think that that's the power of the roundtakers. Thank you for sharing that. And I think one of the reasons we wanted to start with sequential intercept mapping is because we need to have budget. We need to not only, we need to see where do we, where do we change? Where are the points of change? And I think it is all of our intentions that those recommendations come with numbers. Absolutely, that part of what we're doing is not only recommending what to do, but how we're going to pay for it. And so, yes, thank you for those comments. And I hope that all the task force agrees that just with what you said. Can I add a little something? Certainly. I worry that I singled you out there, Mike. And I say it with a lot of respect. Like I recognize that you've been working really hard in the jail ministry for a long time and that you've been serving through this Sheriff's Advisory Board. And I really respect you and all that you're bringing to this table. And I'm glad that you're here. And I just want to say like, I also bring with me folks who would have less trust for a body if law enforcement were at the table. And so I want to visualize that too. Yeah, and I think it's not either or it's both. I mean, Jesse made that good point about the SROs that at some point you would probably want to talk to the SROs, but not first and foremost, because they've had their say in a sense, but not this parents especially or the students. But for and to invite the involvement of Sheriff and DPD or in my case, the criminal legal system, the DA, but if A, they don't want to come or B, they just want to come and tell us what's going to happen. Then in a sense to be blunt, that's on them. But just politically, if we shut those bodies out, they would be on the outside taking potshots and delegitimizing the process rightly or wrongly. But they say, see, they didn't want to hear from us, but we have to be involved. You can't talk about how to change the 911 system and not have the involvement of law enforcement that's still going to be responding to some of that. We can't talk about the criminal legal system, which involves incarceration and reentry, and not have Yale staff be part of the conversation. But I agree with you. I want to hear first and foremost from the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated who went through that process and what they experienced or didn't experience. Because they're the voices who haven't been heard. When we get to the implementation part, then I think it's all necessary that we have to have the option to draw upon those resources as we see fit and fit their input in the context of all the others and not give it priority because they've had a loud voice for a long time. Witness the SROs. That's been a negotiation between the administration and the Sheriff's Office and the MOU for a long time and hasn't involved really anybody else. Matt, you know, clearly can't continue. Thank you so much for both of you. And we are definitely going to work out. This is a room, a virtual room full of leaders, and we're going to work out how you process and unfold your roundtable discussions and fact-founding. It really is, as Martha was saying, you have the freedom to unfold as it fits your mission. And when you have a question, mission is fact-founding. But also, in the guidelines that were given, I guess, two meetings ago, there was four bullets. And one of them was definitely about including budget recommendations. So that's definitely a part of it. And so I just wanted to really, to just quickly share that, just the top part of the document, just to remember about what those four areas were. And how you, and this was designed to be a high-level guideline and how you unfold it, who you listen to and what time that really is up to the roundtable. Leaders and task force members, again, we do want you to invite other persons. And I just want to also remember that once you do convene, because we're running out of time here, I'm trying to rush through this. Once you do convene, we do suggest that you have a co-chair-type situation with your roundtable, just so in case one person can't lead, other person can be available. And it's always good to collaborate, even leadership. So I do, we do hope that all the roundtables have to have two co-conveneers. And we are marching our, not part of any particular, because we're going to, we're going to support and make sure that all of your questions are answered. A second thing, and then I, Muffin, I see your hand there. Before Ryan left, he had to leave because it was his daughter's bedtime, he had to put her in the bed. But we were talking, and I was hoping that by this meeting, we would have this in place, because to Mike's point about coordinating all of this work, now that we have four roundtables acting concurrently, the hope and the design is that every roundtable not only has two of you doing the co-facilitating, co-convening, but we want to make sure there's two staff persons, whether staff and researcher, two persons dedicated to your roundtable specifically. So the support that you have after this meeting adjourns will increase. And hopefully it will also increase with this brand new department that City Council is going to vote on, we hope. That's just my personal opinion, not a political statement, but we hope that it does happen and that we're able to see even more support as we go forward, because that's a lot of work. So in addition to Dr. Campbell's assistance, Marcia and I are here for you as well. Thank you for your patience. Oh, thank you. I had put it in the chat, but I just wanted to be known and clear that for the most part, I'm just shooting off on one barrel. But if you put me in the room with Holies, law enforcement, whatever you want to call them, I'm going to shoot both barrels at them, but throw a grenade in the room, and let's see how many of them scatter, because there's nothing that I think that the Holies could teach me or anyone else that has been directly impacted by this system. And if we wanted to defund the Holies and fund community wellness facilities and things like that, then we can't operate from their perspective of what they think is going to work, because apparently what they're doing is not working. So I definitely wouldn't want to take any advice from them. Thank you very much for listening there. Dr. Campbell did put it in the chat that he wants to be available to each Roundtable as well. So as we coordinate these, we'll make sure that none of them are meeting concurrently and that that can happen. Is there anything else that someone has on the top of mind that will help you be commissioned from this point to get your Roundtable started? Jesse, did you have something? I did. It's not important. I'll follow up via email because it's after time, but I know Council Member Javier has had her hand up and been in the... Yeah. Oh, you know what? I couldn't see it inside of her background. I'm sorry. Okay. You can leave it right in. Thank you, Jesse. Yeah, just call me Javier. Thank you. I didn't even let my students call me by my last name when I was a teacher. It's not Montessori, y'all. Anyway, just what I want to communicate and you have four elected officials on this call and this is why you all sat through a lot of jargon about all the responsibility, but you also have a lot of power. You're officially appointed by elected leaders to serve this city. And so if and when you need us to help you all, we are here as your liaisons. If you need information and you're not receiving it, I will happily send an email to any elected official in the city at your request. I think that we have had some really incredible ideas and work come out of our resident-led commissions and boards. It's one of the reasons we wanted to ensure that there was a resident leadership around that. We got eviction diversion because of Human Relations Commission. The initial conversations around alternative policing came from the Fade Coalition that then went to the Human Relations Commission. We have folks on Environmental Affairs Board now working really closely with their housing authority residents around environmental justice issues that they're seeing in their housing situations. So I'm naming all of that to say that there is a lot that can come out of here and I believe and trust in you all. And budget recommendations should absolutely be coming from this board. We expect it from a lot of our boards and commissions. And we are moving to in the city, a lot of the advocacy comes in the spring and that's a little bit tardy. So hopefully in the fall is where we were moving these initial conversations so that because departments start submitting ideas in December, then residents are kind of behind the curve and that doesn't necessarily seem fair. So just kind of sharing that update with you all. Thank you so much for your time and I will see you all at the next one. Thank you so much. We really appreciate that reinforcement in your presence for all the elected officials who are with us. Thank you so much. And that's one thing I was thinking about, Norrie, when you were asking about people not having trust in us and so forth. We are connected directly to the elected officials who put that trust in us and carry that badge with you as well as we go out in the community. Another thing connected to what you were saying, Norrie, Marcia and I wanted to cancel the June 23rd meeting so that we all can get started on the work so that the roundtables can get together, select your leadership and start planning to have meetings to start gathering information. So we have a June 23rd meeting scheduled and Marcia and I would like to cancel that one, suggest canceling that one so we can get to work. But also that also gives more space for that event that you were talking about, Norrie, so we need to really brainstorm how we can fit that in before our next meeting. And our next meeting in that case would be July the 14th at 6 p.m. And that would be the end of our two per month. So after that July the 14th meeting would be the first of monthly meetings going forward. So moving forward, we'll be meeting on second Wednesdays of every month. How do you feel about not meeting on the 23rd of this month? Thumbs? Any trepidation about that? We should just make sure that our meetings aren't all at the same time at that time or then Dr. Campbell can't be in all three places. Absolutely. And all roundtables do not have to meet before then, but you should at least do an organizational meeting for that. So thank you, thank you, Manju. Any other, if there's nothing else about that, I need to pass it over to Marsha for our closing. And thank you for sticking around, everybody. Beautiful. Normally we go around and just share a word on what you're taking from our time together. Let's do that and we'll see each other, some of us in our roundtables, but all of us in July. And I will pass to Samuel a word you're taking. Excitement. Yay. I'll pass it to Dr. Carroll. Knowledge. For me, the vast experience based knowledge of everyone on this past course that I'm so excited to learn from, I will pass to Wanda. Hopeful. That's all. I'll pass it to Jessie. My word is energy, energy, energy, energy. I will pass it to Jatoya. I am taking away readiness, just ready to do the work. And I'll pass to Mike. I'd say confidence with all the resource people, but also Pi, and I'll pass that to Manju because that's where the word came from. Yes, Pi. I will invoke Grace and I will pass it to Commissioner Burns. I think you're on mute. I will evoke the word rejuvenation because I think we got some really good stuff tonight that can help us move forward. And I will pass to, because can I see everybody, I'm going to pass to Muffin if she's, okay, Javanya. Councilwoman Lewis. I'm going to say, and now I can't even say what I want. I mean, I can't say what I want to say, but I will just not say exhaustion. And I will pass it to Xavier.  And I pass to Javier. If I disappear, you know why. Admirations, and I will pass it to Samuel unless he's gone. I have gone. I don't know who else has it gone. Wave if you have gone. Is Dr. Campbell gone? I'll pass to Dr. Campbell. My word is calibration as we go on this very important project. Let's keep in mind that there's going to be a lot of intersubjectivity, concurrence, and variables, and varying viewpoints, and that we should put all of these in our thoughts, in our notes, as we create best institutions for policy change for a better term. And I'm passing it to Ajane. Teamwork, and I'm passing it to Councilman Lewis. Action focus, and I'm going to pass it to Noor. I think I am feeling ready, just ready to get to work and make the change that is necessary. I feel like Jennifer, have you gone? Okay. Has everyone gone? Everyone's gone down. Yay. Thank you all, and blessings and see you soon. Good evening. Thank you. Take care. You too. Thanks, everybody. Appreciate your number. Thanks.


Hunter Biden made a surprise visit to a Capitol Hill hearing Wednesday as Republicans were taking the first step toward holding President Joe Biden's son in contempt of Congress for defying a congressional subpoena in a bitterly contested standoff, the arrival of President Sun at the Oversight Committee, sitting in the audience with his legal team, including Attorney Abbe Lowell, sent the panel that is working to impeach President Biden into a political frenzy, speaking outside the hearing room. After he and Hunter Biden walked out, Attorney Abbe Lowell accused Republicans on the House Oversight Committee of playing politics, the Republican chairs are proving once again that they cared little about the truth and wanted only to, quote, move the needle of political support, which was a quote Chairman Comer confessed was his true purpose, Lowell said. The Republican chairs today then are commandeering an unprecedented resolution to hold someone in contempt who was offered to publicly answer all the improper questions, he added. This is like this. Why did you do that?


Hi, this is Pooja. I'm a third year PhD student in the Department of Information Systems at UMBC. I'm working with Dr. Chen and Dr. Bangopadhyay on adversarial learning for rule-based intrusion detection systems as a part of ACCL lab at UMBC. The objective of our study is to analyze the potential attack strategies against rule-based intrusion detection systems. We use graph analytics and clustering to analyze these strategies. Two of the common attack models include indiscriminate attack and targeted attack. In an indiscriminate attack, the attacker tries to evade as many ideas' rules as possible, whereas in a targeted attack, the attacker tries to evade a specific rule. Hypergraph model can be used for analyzing indiscriminate attacks, where each rule is represented as a node and each condition is represented as a hyper wedge. To demonstrate this, we analyzed SNOT's malware rules, where each rule represents a node and each rule header represents a hyper wedge that includes all the rules with that header. Here is the graphical representation of a part of the entire rule set. The table on the left shows the coverage for some of the rule headers, and the graph on the right shows that a small number of conditions cover a large portion of the rules. And in this example, top eight conditions cover about 75% of the rules. So the attackers might focus on evading such conditions, which cover large portions of the rule set. A possible solution is to generalize the rules, but making such generalizations or changes might not be easy and requires domain knowledge. Moving on to the analysis of targeted attacks, clustering can be used to analyze such attack strategies. To demonstrate this, we use a set of 15 malware rules, and the rules are clustered using agglomerators' hierarchical clustering. We created five clusters for this set of rules, and it can be seen that rules in a given cluster are very similar to each other. It might be possible to generalize similar rules in order to capture new attacks, but there's always a trade-off between the false positive rate and the robustness of the ideas. Clustering also facilitates analysis of evolution of rules, and it can help detect rule variants that are not present in the ideas. Our future work includes utilizing rule clustering to supplement abductive reasoning, analyzing the evolution of rules over a given period of time, and also analyzing the counter-attack strategies at the cluster level. This brings us to the end of the presentation. Thank you.