I had a formal discussion, but it's not a bill. But Senator Rash has provoked them to send a cease and charge. Why does it never feel like that? I don't know. I don't know. When you come here, you feel like you're in charge. No. Probably because some of us reject the idea of photographing Even though you were allowed to. It's a very anarchist sort of approach. Yes. A completely lateral structure. We had a number of groups who we contacted. And they give us names of people that might be willing to speak. But they had a number of groups who said, no, we really don't want to discuss this. Or we're not ready to. Not available. We're not available to any means they didn't want to discuss the issue. So did you, because it's the final rise of the coin of eight groups in Vermont and the United States, do you have them? Well, I didn't create that title. But first off, well, first I just want to point out, and Joe's got a copy of the book. Devil and the Grove, which Peter had actually recommended to me a while back, because he had read it and I read it. It's a really fantastic bit of history about. Hold on. Just a minute. We have the process to try to take an interview here. And all we're going to get is my ball of head. We don't really need to waste that. We're psyching them. Count this down to a science. No. The last time I saw him, he insulted the tie I was wearing. And the only thing that gave me some comfort was that it was actually a tie that Senator Mazza had given me. And then I told Senator Mazza. And so I. That's on Bennington County. So be careful.  Oh, that explains a lot. Be careful is a good way of putting it. It could be dangerous. You tend to stick up for ourselves, right? Absolutely. All right. How did you grow up in your coffee house? Any way. Back then, he's from Iceland. So after this book is about four young men who were pretty clearly wrongly accused of a sexual assault back in the 50s in a part of basically an orange country in Florida, which really has been people don't really associate Florida with being part of some of the worst racial animosity in this country. They think of other states in the South, but parts of Florida were, by all accounts, some of the worst places in America and most isolated. This is before the tourist boom in the space industry. And all that kind of took off down there. And after having read the book, maybe a year or so ago, just about a month and a half or two months ago, the new governor of Florida pardoned the four men who had been, what many believe, very wrongly convicted in what was a real sham. And so I had reached out to him and said, you know, is there any chance you could come out and just talk about this experience? And it wasn't just because he wrote a great book, but really about this issue of trying to bring not closure, but trying to revisit some of the wrongs that have been conducted in the past and think about how a society processes through that and gets to the other side to the extent it can. And so he'll be coming up here and speaking in the Senate chamber in a couple weeks. And also, UPM has provided some money to have him do a nighttime talk in Burlington. So I think it's just really, I think really exciting. The issue you guys are looking at today is one that I think is, it makes sense that some people wouldn't know quite what to say or do about it in part because in communities all throughout the state, including Burlington, I know in Brattleboro and Bennington and other communities, from time to time, it might be something as not simple, but as low-tech as someone putting a flyer somewhere in public. Free Press yesterday had an image in the paper of one of their news boxes with the paper on one side, with the, you know, that day's front page sort of prominent on the front, and on the side was something that said better, dead than red, and it was a play on the old theme. But obviously meant to signal some anger about some people's political persuasions. Racial, racially-based or anti-Semitic-based graffiti flyers, spray paint have been popping up on college campuses in public libraries, on sidewalks, at schools, you name it. And it's not coming from nowhere.  And so, you know, I think we all have to be mindful of how to nip some of these attitudes in the bud at the earliest stage. Education is always the best, single best way, and I think some of the people we have speaking will shed some light in terms of how we can do a better job making sure that we do whatever we can to prevent this kind of thinking from lodging in people's minds throughout the state. And I'll just conclude by saying one of the things I think we all know to be true is one small, racially-motivated act has a massive effect on the community in terms of the message it sends, the feeling of not feeling included, feeling of potentially physical harm or risk. And so we'll never solve bias and bigotry altogether as much as we try. But we certainly have a long way to go to make sure we can kind of prevent this sort of stuff. I really appreciate you being a leader on this, and I want to mention two things. I want everyone, I think, pretty aware of the Bennington situation and the point of representing more is also whether white power, things that have been written in swastikas and so forth and it's hard for me as a public official to say strongly enough for some people that I deplored this action that I'm horrified by. And I don't think it's outlandish. So through this testimony today, I could understand better some of, are we responding? We as public officials, are we responding in an appropriate manner? I was meeting with some probation officers last night. And one of them related to the story that was so familiar to me. Back in a few years ago, we used to send defenders to the Jersey. And a kid that I had worked with came back and I saw him.   And he responded that I was 19 years old. I was down there in a prison. And I had to get protection. And that's the only way I could get it. As sad as that sounds, I understood that. But now he stuck with those things, basically, for the rest of his life. And he may or may not be. I don't believe he was as racist as those sentences would indicate. So we've got that, too. If you go into any of our prisons. Senator Campbell, Senator Campbell on the floor of the Senate, I recall him making a very similar, recounting a similar tale of someone who had got in and then the structures within prisons. And of course, some of it might be because the person doesn't want to be assaulted. But others are influenced by the people around them. And I think the issue of elected officials, when we see some of these propaganda, flyers, spray paint, whatever it is, the public rightly looks to us and says, what are you going to do about it? And sometimes it's easier for us to pass laws about what happens when someone gets caught. It's a lot harder to root out the things at the core. And I think the indigenous people's bill just does a small example. And maybe I didn't appreciate it fully at the time. But that curriculum-based approach is going to be at least one piece of helping, I think, as we move forward, making sure that the curriculum starts to tell a broader story. And the Human Rights Commission. Joe was the chair of the Human Rights Commission. And I think, without disparaging the predecessors, I think Boer Yang is actually really infusing it with a new set of eyes to help look at it more systematically. Yeah. I thought the roots out of these conversations were more visible to respond better to the divisions in our own communities. And I will say that I've seen the Benedictine community divided more on this issue than I've done. And it's very difficult. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you, guys. Thank you. Did you want to introduce our first witness? Well, is he here? Well, he's here. Oh, me? I'm not sure. Is he first on the list? Oh, he is. Well, yeah. So I'll just say I knew him as Dahaye, but I don't know what you professionally go by. But at my time at UVM, we were there at the same time. We weren't close friends, but knew each other well enough. And when we were reaching out to see who might have some interesting perspectives on what's going on, particularly with young people who are starting to maybe exhibit some signs of being influenced or heading down some sort of mental roads that are regrettable. Dahaye was one of the people who was singled out as doing interventions with young people in particular and thought that he might have a kind of an on-the-ground, human-level set of experiences to share that might be particularly helpful. So I'll hand it off. Welcome. Thank you. Get rid of my gum. No. It's not your problem. I'm not a fan, actually. Thank you all very much for having us here. Thank you. I'm Dick Shearer from Bennington County. Hi there. My name is Netahaye. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. I'm Jeanette White. We met and testified on a slide for you. Yes. Hi there. Phil Baruth. I'm also from Chitty County. Alison at Coop, Windsor County. I'm from Bennington, California. Hello. Thank you very much. I prepared a little outline, and I won't take up too much of your time, but happy to take questions to try to be sure. But yes, I've worked directly with folks in Vermont who hold white supremacists thinking and hateful ideology and want to speak to that. If I could quickly say, you know me, I had a pleasure meeting Senator Ash at UVM where I got a degree, I got a bachelor degree in sociology with a concentration in race and criminology. And I grew up as a white skin privileged person in Lindenville, Vermont in the 80s and 90s, but as a part of a mixed race family, an interracial family, and sort of had an interesting front seat to watching people's lives be curtailed by the violence and rhetoric of our neighbors. And you're the real leader of Sally? Sally. I'm Sally's kid. Yep. Yep. And in the last 25 years, since we were at college, I have worked with folks with white supremacist ideology, 25 years on job sites, because I have worked as a laborer, a builder, and subcontractor and landscaper. And in the last five years, and so in that capacity, worked with a few dozen folks who hold these ideas. In the last five years, I have been working with kids, maybe 20-ish kids who hold white supremacist ideologies in their heads and act out on them. I feel a great responsibility to speak to the context in which this is happening really quickly and to say that racist violence and white supremacist hate groups grow out of our white supremacy culture proper and a deep history of white violence with all too frequent impunity. And that is a consistent piece of our lives and history throughout this entire country to this point. In the last few decades, we've been seeing white supremacist hate groups make mainstream. Some of the narratives that 20 and 30 years ago were only existing on the very, very far right. So ideas like white vulnerability, white genocide, and white replacement, 20, 30 years ago, you could not hear those ideas really necessarily in these houses, these spaces. Words, terms like invaders, hordes, waves, criminals, animals, surges, when talking about human beings is something that we didn't really entertain. And now, we hear that in the US House, US Congress, the White House, and television all the time. So these things are connected. And I just wanted to make that connection. So we're in a situation where we have hate groups and hateful acts increasing. I'm not going to be the one to speak to the national numbers or state numbers, but we know that's part of why we're here right now. And that these ideas are becoming mainstream, more mainstream at the same time. So one of the things that I see happening to educators is that even educators who want to do something about it, I see them feeling timid and hand tied, really worried that they will be seen as partisan or feeding into a negative political climate. So even when a kid is high on Hitlering in a classroom and people are unaware of how and where to go with it, worried about backlash, even just about key pieces of dignity like that, and that I see educators who are without tools or direction to deal with the problem. That's what it feels like to me. So we're in a situation where marginalized groups, the risk to marginalized groups is compounded. We have on the one hand an increased chance of attack, insult, and denial of rights. We have a history of violence, and we have a current condition of white supremacy culture. We have a current and historic combination of, this is a compounding, of institutions that criminalize people of color while refusing to study, monitor, or even categorize as criminal the behaviors of white supremacist groups and people. That's kind of, and I would love if you have questions to speak on that in more depth, but I don't want to take the time now to get into the weeds of that necessarily. So I'm gonna say that even though it is, I would definitely say that white supremacists, hate groups and the ideologies behind them need to be thought of, monitored, paid more attention to, I also wanna say that this is ultimately not a policing issue. As Horrible's interpersonal racist acts are systemic racism, and the racialization and criminalization of poverty is at the root, and is as old as our country and as America is at the pie and is very much what needs to be dealt with in a proactive way. And that we, myself, you all, in my estimation, are every bit as much the problem as white supremacist groups proper, because we're sitting here dealing with the status quo and we have not yet figured out how to get ahead of this, how to be proactive and how to do the work that we need to do in our educational systems. So thank you for that little contextualization. I'd like to speak directly to what I've been talking with kids about and what I've been seeing in the schools. I'm a known racial justice activist in my community. If anything, I'm getting acted out against about that. I do not have kids come up to me and say, hey, by the way, I'm a part of this horrific group here. What I do know is that the language and ideas of the farthest right are emulated to a T and to a word by children in our schools. I know that the media of white supremacist hate groups is consumed by the children in our schools and by adults in our community. I have noticed a significant change, and I actually was talking to Attorney General Donovan about this, that we have this kind of understanding that we know that racism and bigotry stems from fear and misunderstanding. And we've seen the tradition of fear and misunderstanding of one family member sort of carrying on to a next family member. But what I'm seeing happening in the community now that I did not see growing up is that rather than that cycle just being perpetuated, that now when that fear and misunderstanding is put onto a child, they are being targeted in their video games because your video game is not just against the TV, it's the internet and all everywhere. They're being recruited. There are sophisticated ideologies out there for them to touch base with and that basically the sophistication of the level of their hateful arguments, their determination to feel them, and their feeling that there is a community that supports it is something that feels entirely different. I did not experience that as a child, and I feel like we're incredibly behind the eight ball regarding that in particular. If we're thinking that this is just a holdover of how people deal with fear and misunderstanding, we're woefully misinformed about what's happening. So to speak to that, I've seen inside the schools an increase in a few different sort of categories of behavior, and I'll sort of tell you what they are and if you'd like, I'll speak directly to some of the experiences of that. So in the context that I set up for you and everything, I have seen an increase in fear and vulnerability of these white students. These students fear Sharia law, they fear a liberal takeover, such that they are worried that they're gonna lose their rights to hunt, their access to guns, they're worried that they're going to lose their access to camouflage and to the American flag, that there's an increase in conspiracy theories among these kids too. And so I was talking with a kid recently about the new law in Vermont that helps make sure that a woman has got access to family planning, that a kid was misunderstanding that to say that was telling me that the state of Vermont had just made legal the aborting of a child who's already been born. And I had to talk to a kid and tell them that there's already statutes against murder and that we already protect the life of an unborn baby once they're past the stage of viability, like those facts didn't mean anything, okay? So an increase in fear and vulnerability, an increase in conspiracy theories, you know, I have had kids tell me that they thought that all Muslims were under a religious edict to murder them and that they slept with guns under their bed fearing even old ladies in hijabs. And this is directly communicated to me by children in our schools. I see an increase in dehumanization in othering. I've seen a refusal to give a moment of silence to the tree of life victims in Pittsburgh. I have heard kids say people deserve what they get, it's old history, get over it. See the term Mexican used as an insult rather than as a nationality. And we actually see nationally that Fox News earlier this week was talking about three Mexican countries. Not a single one of those countries was actually Mexico. And that that is part of that understanding and dehumanizing of people and how mainstream it is that we have that going on. I had a kid tell me they couldn't wait to join the military so that he could kill and torture people he didn't really care where, who they were or for what reason he was able to do that. I have seen an increase in Confederate flag and swastika displays on belts, shirts, computer screens, cars, trucks, on flag poles and porches and Hardwick, Lindenville, Morrisville and Glover. And that's just because that's where I commute to go to work and to do my thing. I have seen an increase in resentment and anger over any representation at all. And this is rooted in a white supremacy culture proper that again I would love to speak to if it made sense at a later time, but that I have seen kids who refuse to read books by or about black people. I've heard kids say I'm sick of thinking about people of color, what about white people?  I've seen an increase in vandalism and threats, right? Graffiti, Hardwick, Marshfield, Glover, Lindenville, Berlin. I've seen an increase in, this is all anecdotal, this is my experience, this is what I'm seeing. An increase in threats in Hardwick, Craftsbury, Stowe, Montpelier, Lindenville, okay? This is all in recent years. And I have to report, but I'm sad to report that in my personal outreach to the law enforcement community, I have been met, I don't want to use terms, I have too frequently been met with a mix of between minimization and victim blaming. And I'm happy to speak to specific incidents about that if you'd like as well. I don't want to get into every specific incident. Yep. I'm trying to get to understand the geographic area that you kind of cover, is it mainly the Northeast Kingdom? Mainly the Northeast Kingdom. I live in Cabot, and we have a representative, Montstain police here, sure to be happy to talk to you about. And we've met against it, and you've met. And also, William Thompson from the Attorney General's Office, we are trying to put together some kind of a basic wording to the parade incident, to exactly what you're talking about. I had never heard that, I've not ever heard any press or any information about the Northeast Kingdom. Mainly been hearing about Pennington. Yeah, right.  I mean, Glover, two years ago, there were swastikas in anti-black graffiti spray painted in seven different locations over one night. And I was told by the police the next day that I should expect that nothing was really gonna be found because they're hard to figure out. And I just don't, that doesn't seem like that is the response that I expect to get about crime. But I don't need to get further into that in that moment. But yes, yeah, thank you. We've heard, other than Stowe, and Burlington, I've heard a little of any racist issues. I'm glad to get to be here and shed a light on that. Because within our communities, we talk about it a lot. The folks have seemed to concentrate on a couple of issues and not the broad sense that you have, the predation. Yeah, Stowe and Pennington got particular press, but these things happen on lots and lots of levels. And a lot of times people are intimidated away from even dealing with the law enforcement community. Like we had in one of the little small towns that I deal with, a girl had been bullied, a girl had been punched and told that by the boy who punched her that he could do anything he wanted because Trump is president now. And I was told by that girl that she didn't actually feel comfortable approaching the police because the local police officer had a Trump sign in his yard. I try to communicate that. It's a very interesting, difficult set of situations, but the fact that we hear about Stowe and the fact that we hear about Pennington, I'm really glad then to be here to let us know. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's a teeny little bit of what is going on in this state. So thanks, and then any more questions about that? I would love to if I could just end quickly by saying dehumanization begets dehumanization. We know historically that as violence against folks of color increases, all marginalized groups suffer and violence in general increases, right? That gang violence, violence against folks of color directly correlates historically with group violence against women, for instance, okay? And so we gotta wonder about all of us in our community when this happens, right? Racist violence and white supremacist hate is not a niche issue of marginalized groups of people. It is not a niche issue of people of color. It is a key societal destabilizer and that right now, race and racism is being used in the exact same way that it was created and invented for in the 1600s, which is to separate the masses of working people so that they can be thieved from and controlled, you know? Racist violence is a smoke screen that allows criminality and theft at the highest levels of our society. That's why we have this. Race is a social construct. It is not a real biological thing. You cannot tell whether I have black blood or white blood in me. It's no such thing, you see what I'm saying? And that it's this history that feeds the situation that we're in, white supremacist terror that we're suffering as a society, as the sensible outgrowth of our history and what we've done. I guess my question is, I grew up in the Boston area and it was a famous area for school busing. Yeah. I was a fan of the Red Sox and the Red Sox, certainly were known for its prejudice in the 50s and 60s in terms of integration. But in that area, we focused on Boston in particular and then I, as a kid, when I was deciding what to do when I had left the University of Vermont temporarily, not there to request, I went to work in a warehouse called Zayers. Nobody here was under 50, we'll remember Zayers, but they were the forerunner of Walmart and all of those. So at that warehouse, because it was hard to get workers in the suburbs, they bus people in from Boston and many of them were black. And that was my first experience with a large, actually there were more blacks working there than whites and I learned an awful lot. But I didn't learn enough, obviously, to be able to confront this in my own community, but you're confronting. And so, I don't know, maybe I inartfully ask you the question, but so what is, for those of us who are leaders in our communities that are with us, we think we are, who absolutely condemn this behavior, what are some suggestions of how we can deal with this? And then as a committee, we've had an extremely difficult time in trying to come together on many of these issues to try to get views on both sides. So we're kind of. Well, I could make some, I'll give you some questions. I don't know if you've got my question. I think I do, like where do we go, what do we do? Yeah, and so I would say right off the bat, you know, like on me and I would say, first we need to listen to folks of color, we need to believe people of color and other marginalized folks as to what's going on in the community and to take suggestions directly from people of color in our communities. I know that I think that the age three, the Ethnic Studies Bill that just passed, it's nothing prescriptive yet. It is the beginning of a process. And I think that one of the things that we could do is to absolutely put all of our weight and power behind what that means to build toward that because there will be pushback and there will be backlash, you know. I think that supporting any and all of the racial equity and racial justice legislation that is currently out there and though I would say, being endorsed by Vermont Racial Justice Alliance is important, you know, not just, I don't need to get in front of that, but basically to be listening to folks of color to be making those moves and supporting what we do have legislatively going on. And then I would furthermore to say, we all sort of like, we need work on every single level about this, right? Like we're woefully sort of misunderstand a society where our ideas of race came from how we treat race and how it works out to this day.  Like within our schools to really have an entirely different approach top to bottom. You know, if I can say part of the thing going on, and this does speak to directly of what to do. Part of what's going on in white supremacy culture is this, we're a highly racialized society, okay? Highly racialized society, highly a history of being highly racialized. I'm a white-skinned privileged person, okay? I exist as a member of a racial group with racial experiences. I'm taught in a white supremacy society to view myself as normal, average, regular, and human so that my experiences are normal, average, regular, and human. That means all of the experiences of folks of color are seen as bringing race into the table for me, onto the table for me, as polluting my racial neutrality, okay? That is an incredibly harmful, destructive thing that is the base of so much of this violence, okay? And we're not taught that on really on any level. So there's work along those lines really just conceptually, and there's a lot of, you know, a lot of the mitigating the hatred that some of these kids feel, you know, they're really worried that someone's gonna come in and take away their camouflage and take away their American flag. I mean, hey, if you're taking away the Confederate flag and the American flag is next, that is what they're thinking. There's a lot of room to have these kids feel better, to feel less fear, to feel less vulnerable. They don't, you know, they're a part of the world. They don't need to fear loving people and competing with people and working with people and living with people. They don't need to. But we set them up to fear these things because we're here responding to the fact that people bring violence into the community rather than coactively building the educational fortitude and, you know, for us to avoid running down this line. Is that a little bit, is that? Speak a little bit to that. That really helps. Thank you. Thank you. If you want to get for the other witnesses, the joke. Yes, thank you very much. I took a little bit of time. I appreciate that.  We live in Cabin, obviously. Oh, he's no longer here. Well, first, I should say, it's a real advertisement visit to Nazare as many years ago. I don't know if you noticed that I was smiling during some of your testimony because you were talking about the experiences that you've seen and what kids were dealing with directly. The reason that I was smiling was because three years ago, I brought a bill here to have the state of Vermont adopt a Latin motto. The reaction on Facebook was absolutely off the charts about if we do that, we're going to have hordes of Mexicans coming over the border to invade and it just went right down the tubes. And I don't know what your exact age is, but I'm guessing what you didn't experience as a kid and are experiencing now is a direct correlation to the fact that social media has become the tool of choice. So my purpose in bringing this subject is today's Caledonia record editorial. If you haven't had a chance to read it yet. Talk to me. It's an open letter from the publisher to Senator Patrick Leahy about what to do about Facebook and how they're treated differently. And yet their content is absolutely poisoning our society that it's a fascinating read. So if you haven't had a chance to read it, take a look. I'd love to know what you think. I will check that out. And thank you. Thank you all very much. Thank you for finding the time and for considering. My story, I did end up being invited back to the university and I've graduated. I'm not going to tell you your plan. One is a thing you said for recommending reading. Caledonian records, evidently. Okay. Skyler, if you want to join us. Skyler Nash, many of the rules to the committee met last week and we learned a lot more about Skyler. He's here to really talk. He came originally to talk about life without parole and eliminating that. And we will continue that conversation next year assuming the university invites you back. Oh, they will. I sure hope so. And actually, if you have some time during the break, we can talk to Brent about a bill and we can start to work on that process, which is really why you came here. Today, when you were talking with us as a student athlete at the University of Vermont, you have some particular experiences that you wanted to share with the committee. We're happy to hear that. Yeah, no, thank you for having me back. So basically, a little bit about my background is I grew up in the city of Chicago. Your name for the record, so they know who you are. Skyler Nash, student athlete at the University of Vermont. I grew up in Chicago on the south side of the city. But I attended my elementary school on the north side of the city. And for those of you who aren't familiar with the racial breakdowns in the city, the south and west sides are predominantly black and brown people, low income areas for the most part. And the north side of the city where I attended elementary school, particularly the Lakeview, Wrigleyville areas are affluent neighborhoods, predominantly white spaces. And so going through my elementary education, it was a particularly unique experience, I think, for me because I would leave these predominantly black and brown spaces and go to school where I was oftentimes like the only one, is what I'd like to say, like the only person of color in a classroom at a house. And for a lot of the times with my peers, I was like their first, in a way, either the first person of color that they met or the first person of color that they had spent significant time around. And that led to a lot of experiences that I didn't know how to characterize them back then. But as I got into high school and college now, I knew them to be microaggressions, kind of the things of students coming and touching my hair and grabbing it over the top of my hair and saying, wow, it feels just like a dog's hair. Like, this is crazy, like without asking me here. Coming back from vacations on spring break, like, hey, let's compare, let's see whose skin is darker, like that type of thing. And at the time, for me, it was just like white people being white people, right? I was kind of just how it is, how it is at school. But as I got older and gotten into high school and college, I knew them to be what they are, which is microaggressions that were shaping my experience and kind of learning how to navigate predominantly white spaces as a person of color, particularly as a young black man. And as I got into high school, I started to further investigate and become an advocate for racial and social justice. It wasn't shy about making that known on social media and in spaces and trying to educate myself on how to be a better advocate off the court. And so during my recruiting process, this was no secret to coaches that were recruiting me. And as the University of Vermont quickly rose to the top of my list in terms of schools that I was considering, my mom was definitely concerned about sending me to a state that we all know is one of the white estates in the country and the university reflects that in terms of the makeup of the students. But at the end of the day, there were a couple of things that made her and myself comfortable knowing that I'd be okay going to the university. One, I had that experience of navigating predominantly white spaces and being the only person in a room and I was comfortable doing that just based off of experience. I felt like I knew how to do it. I knew how to navigate those spaces. But secondly, my coaches did a fantastic job of when I came on my visit to the school, not only showing me the winning call trend tradition that is associated with the basketball program and the family atmosphere that is what made it rise to the top of my list, but also connecting me with people who could help me further investigate my interests off the court in racial and social advocacy and justice, but also just somebody that I could call up and come into their office and just share the lived experience that is being a person of color in a predominantly white space. And so I met Beverly Colston, the director of the Mosaic Center for Students of Color and Alexian and all these different professors and people that I could add to my list and know, okay, once I get to the school, these are people that I can come into contact with and know that you understand what I'm going through. You share that experience that is so unique. So once I got to school, I was able to leverage those connections to meet with leaders of the Black Student Union and other minority groups to kind of just get a better feel of, okay, once I get outside of this bubble that is athletics, because as an athlete, I start to learn that people treat you differently, right? I remember in high school, there was a big deal about a father of a kid who was on Facebook saying, man, the basketball team is full of all these section eighters now and what happened to all the white players and blah, blah, blah, blah. And once I found out who the guy was, I'd recognized that he had been cheering at every game, he had been to every game that season after games and come up and say, man, you're great, man. That type of thing. So you recognize that when you're in that bubble, you're not necessarily getting the full experience of other people of color in those spaces. And so I wanted to get a handle on what was going on in Vermont. And one thing that they shared with me and that I came to realize myself is that you have a lot of well-intentioned people who want to help and when you talk to them about race, they say, well, I don't look at race, right? I don't see color. And to them, that's like a really good thing. They're like, yeah, I don't see color. I don't recognize that, but the students and the Black Student Union and myself trying to have conversations with people to let them know that that becomes a huge problem when trying to address, because the reality is, is that we live in a highly racialized society as we heard earlier. And so when you say, when you try to be good intentioned by saying, I don't see color, you're ultimately going to become part of the problem. And they brought to my attention some of the issues that had been happening on campus, like the stealing of the Black Lives Matter flag from around the Davis Center and there had been a Mosaic Center display that had been graffitied with white supremacy signage and memos of flyers. And those are all small acts that you wouldn't think of necessarily, maybe as like major hate crimes, but they are little things that contribute to making the climate of the school less inclusive for people of color and making them feel unsafe in the climate. And so later on in my freshman year, we had a game against St. Mike's, which is a typical rivalry game for us. And yeah. And before the game, our coaches came to us and told us that the St. Mike's coaches had alerted them that a group of their players were going to take a knee during the anthem and silent protest against police brutality nationally. And we didn't think of it as a big deal. A lot of us were familiar with this issue from Colin Kaepernick and the NFL and we all respected their right to protest and said, okay, they'll do that and we'll get on with the game. Once it happened before the game, our predominantly white home crowd responded by booing them, cursing them, telling them to stand up, really hateful things coming from our crowd. And like you said, things that we would never hear as athletes of color because they're our home crowd. They love us. They have no reason to do that to us. But then when these other student athletes of color and just regular student athletes came and exercised their right to protest, they responded in that hateful negative way.  It was a huge deal. And this was my first experience with our athletic department and I was really proud to say that our athletic director and the administration did a good job of inviting us to be a part of the discussions of how do we respond to this? How do we let people know that this isn't what we stand for, this isn't okay? And so we made a number of changes. We wore warm-up shirts with love, respect and togetherness before game. We linked arms during the national anthem. We added a message before the game was talking about conduct and how to handle yourself when you're at our games. But after the season, I think one of the biggest action steps that the athletic director Jeff Shulman took was he formed an Athletics Inclusive Excellence Committee that was going to be able to specifically examine the climate and the athletic department at the university and whether it needed to be improved and how to improve it. And so he invited me to be on that committee. And one of the first things that we did as a committee is administer a department-wide climate survey and the responses were anonymous but they were categorized based on race, gender, sport. And with the help of Dr. Allison, the director of institutional research, we're able to get those numbers back and found unsurprisingly probably that student athletes of color and the department disproportionately felt unincluded in the climate. And so it was nice to have those numbers, not nice because they aren't saying what you want them to say, right? And I think it was a little bit of a shock to some of the other members of the committee because they're like, this is Vermont, this, our climate is inclusive, we try to include everybody that's what we stand for, which is true, but that's not always going to result in a climate that is inclusive for everybody. And so we wanted to get better context for these numbers that we were looking at. So along with Beverly Colston, the director of the Mosaic Center, Dr. Allison and myself, we held a focus group for student athletes of color just to bring them in because the reality was I'm the only person of color on the committee of inclusive excellence, right? And so I like to think, I think about these issues a lot and I have my own lived experience as a student athlete of color at this university, but I can't speak for every person of color, a student athlete of color, nor would I want to, because our experiences can be similar, but it's unique for every single person and the issues that they're facing. And so we were able to bring in the student athletes and just talk to them about what has been your experience here in Vermont, coming from home, on your teams, and a lot of what they talked about was that pressure and the weight of being the only either on their team at a game, on a bus, feeling the pressure that I'm meeting my teammate, this is the first time that they spend a significant time around a person of color. I know that if I mess up, that's gonna inform their view of people that look like me for the rest of their lives and talking about what that weight means for anybody, but particularly an 18, 19 year old kid. And talking about, like I said earlier, microaggressions, like recognizing that you kind of don't have, your identity isn't recognized as much on campus, you're gonna be mistaken for other student athletes of color. I tell you what, I went into the dining hall with my friend Anthony, every single time I walk in there, the guy comes, oh Anthony Land, I'm like how are you doing man? I'm like listen, I don't look anything like Anthony Land, he's two inches taller than me, his hair is this big, like you'd recognize that we are two different people, so every time I come in, you ask me about Rochester, I'm not Anthony dude, I'm sorry. And that's something that was a common experience for a lot of the people that we were talking to, but you wouldn't necessarily, they felt alone in that experience because they hadn't had the chance to talk to anybody that had been working on campus. And so one of the big things that I took away from that meeting was that we needed to do work to address the microaggressions and the negative things that were impacting the climate, but a big thing that we needed to do was to take action to create a space for student athletes of color in the department to connect with one another and realize that there were people that were living that same experience on campus as them and give them a space to connect and bond over that. And so what we did was create a monthly kind of like meeting space, safe space, whatever you wanna call it for student athletes of color to come together, meet each other, play games, have potlucks, and more importantly, use it as a time to connect them with some of the groups for marginalized communities on campus outside of the bubble that is athletics because what I realized after meeting with a lot of them was that my experience on my visit with meeting all these people that could, with the Mosaic Center and different professors was completely unique. Nobody else had had that on one of their visits. It's that when they came here, they looked at the facility, they talked about athletics and school, but that was it. They didn't know about the Mosaic Center. They didn't know about the Asian Student Union, the Black Student Union. They had no idea how to connect with those groups even if they wanted to. And so that can contribute to them feeling in that climate of oh, I'm alone, I don't know how to further ingratiate myself to get with people who can help me do this. And so we wanted to use that space to bring leaders of those groups in to talk about here's how you get connected with the Mosaic Center, the Asian Student Union, the Black Student Union. Well, you're leading me to a question.  Are you treated differently as an athlete than you are as a student in a community, in the Burlington community, and you know? Oh. Kind of treated as a hero as an athlete. Yeah. When you went to the NWCA Tournament, blah, blah, blah, you know, a good team. So do you find that difference, and how do you deal with it? No, I think, like I said earlier, you recognize that they're, like we talk about privilege, there's racial privilege, there's economic privilege, and there is privilege in being an athlete that I have over regular students on campus. Like I said, we are, our experience is in a bubble, right? You know, I see myself as, I identify as a young black man, but when I'm out on Burlington, we have our UVM gear on and we're walking in a group. Somebody that may treat a group like us that it wasn't on the team differently is going to treat us with a level of respect just because we're on their favorite team. And like you said, we made it to March Madness and we win all these games. And so we're not necessarily always privy to all the issues with the climate or the community around us just because we have that level of privilege. And so part of my goal with this committee was to come back to the chairs of the committee, Kathy Ray Hill and Joe Gervais, and kind of help them recognize that like, we all live in this bubble that is athletics and so when we have people who are so in awe of what we're doing, not just on the basketball team, but they see you as athletic directors and they're so happy, we're not always going to see the true experience of a person of color in that community. And so we need to go to as many people of color and try to get a handle of what is, like what is really going on here and empower them to come to us and tell us, this is how we address these problems. I'm very fascinated, you're the only member of the public when I've grouped. We had one other Chris Day, who was the women's coach two years ago, but resigned. And so once he left the school, I was the only person of color on the committee, which is kind of ironic, but it is also a reality, you know, for the state and for the school. Yeah, otherwise the state and the nation. I, at least one of the years ago, I was involved in a bill called civil unions, which stirred the country really in the world, I think, in terms of recognizing the rights of gays and lesbians to marry into. And it was a civil rights issue, no question about it. And Senator Nitka was on the House Judiciary Committee at the time and both of us took an awful lot of hate and the messages and things. It was before the, it was really kind of, the civil unions was really before the internet. So most of our stuff came in papers and I don't even have boxes, well we had emails, but I don't even have boxes of material, just because of the level of hate that we saw. And I can remember marching in a battle day parade, being yelled at with racists, with epitaphs regarding gay and lesbians. So I experienced that, I understand that, but I have not been able personally to evidently, for some people, say it's strong enough in my up, my disgust with some of the hate things that have been going on in this state and particularly in my hometown. And that was one of the reasons that I was happy that Senator Ash suggested doing this and I don't know if you have suggestions for us in dealing with what is a probation problem in our communities and we are obviously a white-angle Saxon Protestant, which is probably the... Yeah, no, I think that what I would say to you all is the same thing that I said when Beverly, Dr. Alex, Ian, and I met with the chairs of our committee is that, you know, the climate that exists in the athletic department on campus and our communities is the result of intentional actions that had serious intentions and if we're gonna be serious about making our climate more inclusive, it's going to take equally intentional actions to change it, like making this a safe space for student-athletes of color, like structuring visits to make the school more attractive to perspective student-athletes of color. We need to, if we're going to be serious about making the climate more inclusive, we have to listen to student-athletes of color, people of color, come in and empower them to leadership positions and to be a part of discussions like this, committees like the Athletics, Inclusive Excellence Committee, to give suggestions, to give information about the realities of the climate that we're not always privy to, you know, regardless of due to our privilege, whatever that might be. Thank you, Scott. I have a couple questions, Scott. I have a couple, actually. First off, going back to your days growing up, one of the tools that tried to eliminate this problem was forest busing. Were you actually part of the forest busing between the Chicago? No, my parents would take me up Lake Shore Drive from our home and we would roll up.  The brakes would be squealing and stuff, you know, one time I was staying after school with the vice principal, one of the few times in elementary school, and I told her, I think my mom's here and she said, how do you know that? I can hear the brakes coming up the street. And so in this whole parade of black suburbans, you could hear the rusty town and country squealing up. So yeah, no, I wasn't a part of the forced bussing. So you are now in a bubble called college. Yeah. And one of the hardest things that I had to learn was that there's actually life after college. Right. And when you get out of that bubble, you have an experience, especially as an athlete, of leading a good discussion from a black person's perspective. The ultimate solution is not using government to force us into eliminating our tribal barriers, but rather investing individuals with the desire to cross those lines. What would entice a person like you to move to the Northeast Kingdom? Sure. Have you ever actually been to the Northeast Kingdom? I think I may have driven through. That's a good thing to do. Yeah. But honestly, you know, like when you talk about the first upcoming and then staying, just even for the state in general, like I was telling my friend last night, you know, five years ago, a few had told me that I was gonna be in Vermont, even just going to school here. I might have even said like, Vermont, what is it like, Vermont? I'm trying to think. Oh, Vermont, okay, yeah. New York turns left. Yeah, right, yeah. But now, you know, two years in, I told her I could see myself staying here because I think it's a unique opportunity, like you said, for rather than the government coming and forcing people to change their ways, because I don't think that that's really sustainable long-term, when you're forcing people to do something, you have to force on people. But ultimately, you want to bring about change organically in a way that's gonna stay there long-term. And when you talk about people who are willing to invest in crossing those lines and trying to institute that change, I think that Vermont, particularly from my experience, presents a unique opportunity for people like that because you have people in government, people in leadership in the schools that are aware of the problems, maybe not always in full, but they're aware that there is a problem and they have the power to help change those problems, but they don't always have the answers, but they're willing to admit that they don't always have the answers and empower people who do and who may. And that's certainly been my experience in the athletic department and with the university as a whole. I think that that presents the unique opportunity for the people that you're describing and I'd like to think of myself as one of those people to be empowered to have those conversations and to help bring about that change. All right, I hope you do stay in Vermont and I hope you, after you graduate, that you'll remain involved in the Vermont community. It can only be a positive experience. Maybe you can run for the Senate. And maybe you can move out of Chicago County because we'd love to have you at our places. Oh, no, I'm staying here this summer instead of going back home now that I'm living off campus. So I was telling my friend Sam Dolly at the school, because he grew up in Vermont, said I want to explore the state a little bit more and get out of Burlington and see what else there is. Absolutely. If you can stick around with that. Yeah. Unless you have to leave. Brandon, you and I can talk a little bit about the other picture. Yeah, absolutely. If you can't even sort of be a king. There is a very first black member of this legislature was a guy named Alexander Twilight, who's an educator from Orleans County, the town of Browning, the school that he built. And I often think about it, not only did he have the courage to come there, but he had the courage to remain. And by living a simple life, a good example, is the best way for his neighbors to eventually evaporate in their biases that they had. And I struggle with that because you just don't have a whole lot of folks of color move into the kingdom. Yeah. They was talking all about that story. Your mom was a pretty good example. I mean, she not only came, but had the courage to stay despite what was going on around her. And if you'd have the opportunity to become one of the leaders of making that happen, eventually we'll be in a much better place. Thank you. Thank you, scholar. Thank you, I appreciate you taking time to come down here again. Thank you. The next witness is Julio Thompson. You can see the little rights. I'll let you give your time. I always get a spot down there. Where can we go? Record a civil rights unit of the State Attorney General. Yes, good morning, Julio Thompson, Assistant Attorney General and Director of the Attorney General's Civil Rights Unit. Well, thank you for inviting me today. I think we've heard a lot of valuable information on a very large and persistent problem, dealing with hate crimes and bias incidents which might be non-criminal acts that are nonetheless intimidating to individuals and that might limit individuals' opportunities in education or in employment or housing. Senator Benning, I think, brought up a point that I think is worth emphasizing, which is what is different now than, say, America 30 years ago or 25 years ago? It's not clear, and I'm not a criminologist or a statistician, but back in the 1990s, when I lived in Los Angeles, I was practicing civil rights law in Los Angeles on the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor. There was a wave of hate crimes against the Japanese-American community in Los Angeles, acts of violence and vandalism that persisted throughout the year. Sometimes these things go in waves. There are periods and cycles where it seems to be that there are rises and dips, and it's not clear to anyone whether the level of hatred and bias has really changed or whether there are events that occur in the country or statements that are made by political leaders or events that occur either nationally or internationally that spark that behavior, that creates sort of a permission structure for people to step out of what otherwise might be. Community norms that keep their thoughts or that have them keep their thoughts to themselves. One real difference, of course, is we have the internet now, and so the ability of individuals who either are members of or are sympathetic to hate groups is much easier than it was a long time ago. There are numerous websites and social media platforms that cater exactly to ideologies of racial hatred, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, on down the line, and those are accessible now with the advent and affordability of smart phones. Those are accessible to anyone in their back pocket. And there's little that parents can do once their children are out in the world to handle what's on those phones. But what we also have seen over time is that in terms of public figures, the bully pulpit does matter. This January, I was lucky enough to attend a conference on hate crimes enforcement sponsored by the National Association of Attorneys General, and we had presentations there from people who spent their careers studying hate groups and waves of hate-related violence. And one of the speakers that we spent a fair amount of time with was Brian Levin, who's a professor of criminology at the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism and at San Bernardino, and he's testified before the US Congress, I think maybe half a dozen times about hate groups and his organization puts out not only data regarding past years, hate crimes reported in states and cities, but also what his group calls or his school calls a hate crimes forecast, they try to forecast trends. And one of the interesting points that he made was he had provided us some data, and I don't have that data available to me today, showing that there are certain events or certain speeches that are given by individuals that affect what they would do is they would look at certain websites like that cater to hate ideologies like GAB, for example, which is sort of a Twitter that is completely unregulated and search for how many anti-Semitic or racist statements that were made in the light of certain speeches by national figures over certain events speeches by, say, President Obama or other political figures. And the takeaway was that it does matter. What is going on in the national conversation does matter. And I think that it works both ways. If officials are either unwilling to engage in the issue, so I had an ascent approach or even a sympathetic, a sympathetic stance that can create an environment where people are more active in speaking out, they're hateful views acting upon them, and in our office, of course, we're the Attorney General's office, so we are limited, constitutionally by statute to deal with crimes or civil wrongs that can be redressed. What we have seen in Vermont is, in the last couple of years, is a real vitality in community groups that are responding to incidents which even though they may not violate the law are nonetheless deeply offensive and intimidating to all members of the community. So, for example, last year, there were photocopies of Confederate dollar bills that had been slipped into books in the Rutland Free Library, and the response to that, which may not have violated a law, and there were certainly no known offenders, and it was something that had been done in multiple states. I think people using social media decided to make an organized event of it, but there was a big community forum that was sponsored by the NAACP of Rutland and the Rutland Jewish Center where it was a packed house and people who were there to speak about their opposition to that behavior, to hear a little bit about what the law can and cannot do, and to connect with each other. And through that meeting, the people were reporting other incidents that they had experienced, or their children had experienced at other colleges like Castleton Colleges or others in the area. Well, you mentioned one of the difficulties that I have and that is because I chair the Judiciary Committee, many times people expect a law enforcement response. And as we've learned, number one, you have to catch the perpetrator. Number two, you have to have evidence that would find out that perpetrator guilty beyond the reasonable doubt of whatever the behavior was. So you're talking about rather than maybe a criminal justice response, a community-wide response. That's where I struggle, I experienced this in Bennington with the person who was well-known who targeted a black legislator, but there wasn't evidence to convict him so he wasn't charged with those crimes. So that's difficult for people to understand. Well, if the police and law enforcement attorney general can't protect us, what do we do? Well, I think you had on the point, which is that it's a difficult problem and there isn't one solution. It has to be a multifaceted approach. So where crimes are committed, you need to have a swift and appropriate law enforcement response. But for the incidents that are not criminal, there are responses that communities and schools and public leaders can have that don't involve handcuffing people. Well, I look back at Bennington's mistake was relying on having a law enforcement response. We should have been having a community-wide response. I don't know who asked. Well, I think the point that I'm trying to make here is just that if, where there are limits where the government can act and the criminal justice or the civil system doesn't mean that it's tough luck and there's nothing else you can do. Some organizations that have been focusing on hate, on college campuses, for example, the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2017 put out an excellent guide for students and campus administrators to give them a toolkit and suggested responses for when either a hate group or sometimes there's a single controversial speaker comes to campus and kind of breaks down what are the dos and don'ts. And for one example would be, for example, to have overreactions where there's either threats of violence or something that can feed into the ideology of victimhoods that a lot of hate groups advocate. And that's true also in all aspects if there's something that's an overreaction so people are counter-protesting but doing so in a non-peaceful way with the ubiquity of cell phone cameras that can go on YouTube and be used and is used, in fact, in propaganda pieces that are put out by organized hate groups. And that's true also for law enforcement. So one of the speakers that we met at this conference was a gentleman named T.M. Garrett who was born in Austria on his young mammal as a neo-Nazi and a leader and a neo-Nazi group as well as a German chapter of the Ku Klux Klan who when he came to the United States abandoned those groups and basically fled those groups in Austria and spent his time in Memphis, Tennessee working to break the cycle of the hate group membership in the prisons by, for example, enlisting a network of tattoo artists to cover up or change tattoos for offenders who may, and while in prison, gotten a racist or let's say a swastika tattoo and those individuals come out and then they're, in his view, as he said, they're in that real difficulty obtaining employment because they're- I mean, if you get a swastika on your forehead which I actually worked with a doctor who was in and still in jail, so he's still not eligible for a job but who has that on his neck he's got other places on his body. I can't imagine him getting a job, I think, so. And part of his organization, that's just one of the things they do which is this hate tattoo initiative where they have enlisted artists who are willing to donate their services but one point that he made is just simply that an overreaction, an unlawful response to hate is central to their ideology. He said that's how he recruited people. If people lost their jobs or were assaulted than people who are members of the hate groups that's an opportunity for him and he referred to some public events that had happened in different parts of the country where he said he attempted to reach out to that part and maybe someone who was exposed was having some sympathies and lost their job or their house was vandalized and he said there was only a matter of days before people who were affiliated with hate groups wouldn't try to reach that person and say, hey, we can give you a job, hey, we can protect you and that's a central recruiting mechanism. So I think it has to be a multi, it has to be a nuanced, multifaceted approach and our office, again, we've been meeting with the experts, people who've spent their careers on this and we've been learning a great deal and we've been working through this. And I know perhaps, Tyler, I can't pronounce you. Yeah, yeah, it's, you might want to comment but it ended a lot of it in perception. I mean, I lived at the television this morning, I was watching Channel 25 out of Boston and in their ads, they frequently used two M13 people locked up with all those tattoos and all that, frankly, that's fairly scary. If I walked into those guys in a dark alley, I'd be fearful. So a lot of it's our perception, is it not? Well, I think a lot of it is that, if you had- I'm perceiving that as a danger. And I'm Donald Trump. Certainly you're using, you mentioned that group all the time, M13 coming up from Guatemala and whatever, so I'm mentioning that all the time. And then I see that on the television and I say, oh my God, they're here and now I'm worried. So it's like when I first opened the program down in Bennington for Dillington Kids, people would come down the street and I'd watch them walk to the other side of the street as they went by the building. There was no danger, but they perceived the danger. And I think that's a lot of what's happening here, is people perceiving the danger. Well, and I think that is part, if you have something that's on television, it carries with some individuals an air of legitimacy that, and some authority in speaking, I think that's related to the bully-pulpit problem that we have. It's both a problem and a solution depending up on what the speech is. I teach the hate crimes class at the Vermont Police Academy and when I first began teaching, we would watch portions of a documentary called The Letter, which related to an incident that occurred in a city in Maine in which there had been an influx of refugees from Northern Africa following the genocide. And the mayor of the city had written an open letter to the elders, as he put it, saying stop sending your people to our city where our resources are strained. And then as the documentary portrays and he went on vacation for some period of time and in the wake of that, without much delay, there started to be hate crimes acts of vandalism that occurred and as the documentary presented it, a white supremacist group from the Midwest learning about this letter, this is back before the days of social media, drove all the way to Maine to get a permit to march down the center of town. So that's what I'm talking about when you permission structure where someone is saying something that may open the door to otherwise what most people consider to be deeply social and acceptable behaviors or expressions of intolerance. And I think that is challenging. You can't criminalize a letter to the editor, but what the community did there and what the governor of Maine did there was organize peaceful counter-protests to demonstrate that this was what they were proposing, which is that this town would be opposed to people of color or people of the Muslim faith was unthinkable in their community. But these are, this is part of the complexity and the challenge, I think that's why we work as hard as we can with community groups who have the ears to the ground better than we do and more solutions. Go ahead. Yeah, and I'm sorry. We don't usually do this, but go ahead, you're dying. Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm so obvious in my face with that. I appreciate all of that and I hear so much the over extension of law enforcement can feed very much into, right? Just as he's saying, absolutely. I think it also feeds in the other way. And so yes, absolutely, it's a multi-pronged thing we have to attack on many facets, but I know that like in the Bennington situation that my understanding and talking with some folks and I did go to college on criminology stuff, although I'm not a criminologist, simple assault does not take physical contact to be charged with. And the fact that Mitch, is that his last name, showed up at the press conference talking about it. You could be seen that there are chargeable offenses. And so my only point about that is to say that there is also license in that. In our little town, a kid who was expressing hateful things and he had a Confederate flag on his car, he pulled over and was not giving a ticket, happens to people all the time. But in his conversation to me, he understood it in his head as being an agreement, a tacit agreement by the law enforcement person with his ideas. Now that's not an arrestable offense, but it just speaks to that. I speak to the Bennington case and I was there at the press conference, as was Julio. And I would say that life would have been a lot simpler, people hadn't reacted to him and just ignored him. He wouldn't have gotten what he wanted, but what he got was a headline saying he was there. And it took away from the effort. So I think in some cases, you may be better off not to react to someone he walked in and all of a sudden, people in the audience began to react to him, not the people that were speaking at the press conference. I absolutely respect that. So from my perspective, sometimes no reaction is better than that type of reaction, but we will debate that. We also know from watching him that the fact that he was not arrested, they used as propaganda material to say, this is how you can run people of color out of office. And so it's every side, I don't mean to say it's not that case, I'm just thanking, and I'm sorry. I was there and I still wonder what would have happened if we'd just ignored him. I mean, we were at a public hearing on firearms. I ignored people doing a certain thing as a terrorist committee. The House chose to not ignore that and got a much different reaction than we did. That's all I will say. Just a little please. I guess, just to conclude, I can't underscore enough the importance of the community response in partnership with law enforcement because there are, like I said, there are definite limits to government power. And it is community leadership that in our educational system, and there's been legislation, important legislation passed in this body this year that I think has a longer term effect in terms of changing hearts and minds, exposing people to other viewpoints. And as I've testified in earlier sessions on legislation here, we have been developing as we go along this bias incident reporting system where we've encouraged and we have a commitment from the Criminal Justice Training Council and the member agencies that law enforcement report to us things that the bias incidents, whether they be anti-Semitic homophobic racists, that even if it may not be a prosecutable offense to notify their state's attorney, because it may be that those items are either precursors to acts of violence or criminality, or will allow law enforcement authorities to connect the dots, or in another case where there might be an assault to be able to show that there's a bias element for that defendant. And a vital picture, a vital portion of that is for cases where there won't be a criminal or law enforcement response to then close the loop with their community groups and support their efforts to speak out against that and to do that in a way that's lawful effective and that meets their goals in terms of publicity and participation. Open to any other questions? Any other questions? Very helpful. Thank you. I don't know how long. I was gonna hopefully, it seems like you've covered a lot of it, so. Yeah, but it'd be helpful to have the Monk State Police perspective on dealing with this. For the record, Captain Gary Scott from... No, he got just promoted. Just last week, so. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Congratulations, Captain. Thank you. Director Farron and partial policing for the Vermont State Police. So I guess we're thinking about how the agency's changing. A lot of things we're talking about here today, who we have brought up and how we're looking at hate incidents and the bias and we've already started that process when we're in the, of reporting it. So when something like that occurs, the AG's office is aware. The local state's attorney's office is brought into that loop. We still have a ways to go to make sure the sort of the boots on the ground understand what the mission is and how we capture those incidents. So the image is put on the park bench. We don't necessarily have a known victim in that case. It may and has been coded as just a vandalism. And so making sure that the officers understand that code needs to have that bias code added to it. So have vandalism and the bias code entered in there. So that's a process we are in right now. And a lot of times that when that happens, if it goes up on a private building, say a restaurant, an image goes up, the restaurant a lot of times isn't the reporter of that incident. It's a community member. If they drive by, they see it, it's offensive to them. They make the call to the police. The restaurant sends a worker out there. They power wash it off and they're not really involved in this process. So that creates these complexities sometimes of when we're investigating these incidents and where they can and cannot go. But that's what we're in the process of right now, regardless that incident on the restaurant should be coded out. So at the end of the year, we have a scope of idea for that. As our awareness are, one state police, another one force in the state, has the awareness gotten better or we've had a huge increase in hate? I think I'll reiterate what Julio said is we don't really know the scope of the problem. I think as you've mentioned many times, if social media brings these things up a little bit more, but I don't know about the actual numbers that we're trying to really drill down to see what that is. And I don't think we'll be there this year or next year. It's gonna be more about that upfront education of understanding where these incidents are occurring, making sure we put them in, we document them at the end of the year as we have COVID. I think we're seeing a lot more publicity around individual acts that occur. I didn't know what you were talking about. What I also don't want to forget is there's another group that has been in the target many times in my mind, that's the lower socioeconomic group, whether or not they lead or not. My time dealing with those folks has been that group that's also in the target. Yes. So we take those incidents in, we do work in collaboration with federal partners, the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, the JTTF is aware of every incident that occurs, that recording goes to them, and then also the Vermont Information Center. So every incident is funneled and recorded in those ways, and then at the end of the year, also through the spillman in the Val Corp systems, we're hoping to get a better scope of problem that can be reported out through the VCIC. And I do appreciate everything that the Vermont State Police are trying to do, but we have a dispointed system with 14 different states turning, 14 different courts, criminal courts anyway, and we also have a migrant of local law enforcement. So it becomes difficult to have a uniform. Consistency and investigation is something we're trying to tackle. Consistency and the behaviors, but I think it may be part of the answer-wise and what persistency. It's this daughter of that. Thank you. And then I'm horrible at names, this is why when we do a public hearing of how we call on somebody else that listed the names, but in a trying to mix a Boston accent and with the argument in the house name, you know, what he's doing in the schools, what Skyler's doing to inter-consider him on, those things eventually are the solution. We still have discrimination, we still have incidents of hate, we still have, and it may be in fact, be growing because of both the internet and the current president of the United States continuing to use the framing, the base and that term of the words, the roots, and I've been to Guatemala or I've been to Costa Rica, I've been to Nicaragra and get off the ship, but that was a different reason. You know, so I've been to many of those countries and I don't see those people the same. I see them and I think those are the people that are from those countries, but it seems like the education is the key. I don't think it changes without that. I mean, what you said earlier, the community outreach and we're continuing trying to partner up with that around the state is many of you aware of the efforts we've done, but it's a chipping away process, we're not there all the way. It's not every way. So I think that I took away a couple different things here, but one of them, when I was thinking about, in Browborough we had a, I don't even remember what the poster actually looked like, it was a poster that came from a hate group. It was a horrible thing. It was a, do you remember really? Oh, what? It was this poster that came from a group outside that had found a few people in town that were sympathetic and put these posters all over town and the community response was to get, use it as an opportunity to do an education in every school, in the public, every development of the public housing, every project, every, they just did a whole thing and it stopped. Now it may have just gone underground, but it wasn't, it didn't continue. But the other thing that I really took away from this is that two things, we need to continue to listen to people of color in our communities because we have organizations that are very concerned about this in our communities. There are very few people of color in those organizations. And so, in one that I've been at, suddenly somebody said, some member who was a person of color in that group said, you know, we talk a lot here about talking about these things but we don't really talk about them. We talk about talking about them but even our group hasn't confronted this. And the other thing I really took away was that we need to, those kids who are vulnerable to the recruiting and to the, it's based on fear and we need to, we need to, and that, if you remember when we were dealing with the school shootings and the kid, the one of the pages sat there and said, what we need to do in school, he was a 13 year old page and when he said, what we need to do in school is we need to make sure that those kids who are marginalized in school that we don't continue to marginalize them because those are the kids that react. And I thought that was incredibly mature of him to say that. So I just, I didn't. So anyway, thank you. Because this is. Well, thank you. A cap. A cap and a hat. I think a few weeks, a few weeks, at least I didn't call you sorry about it. I have to just call him Gary. I want to thank everybody for being here this morning. Congratulations. It's been a good evening and I'm sure that it doesn't end here. It really begins here. And I continue a conversation about this problem. You don't have simple students but I'm reminded that by some of the comments here today, we also have the swastikas, which are particularly religious groups. We have the Ku Klux Klan. We have all of that growing here, but there is only, when I went on the Southern Poverty Law Center's website and I asked Peggy to make copies of some stuff that is on there. And if you want to go to that, there's some good information there. Vermont has one group and one hatred right now that's recognized by the Southern Poverty Law Foundation and that's the, I can't think of the name of it. Patriot Front. The Patriot Front. The Patriot Front. And we've seen some of that literature and so forth. So luckily we have, but they are keeping an eye on it and that's helpful.  We couldn't get anybody from there to speak this morning because of, well, who knows why, but... Patriot Front is the one that had the... Things in Brattleboro. In Brattleboro, yeah. Yeah, the most recent ones up in Brattleboro. Okay. And thank you all and thank you for helping us to understand what's going on in other parts of the state, which I haven't seen the public view. I want to take a break to a quarter of it. Now we come back to talk about this. It's sure from the Attorney General's office you're going to walk through the bill and let us know if the Attorney General's support is set or not set or not. Thank you, Senator. And I'll start wearing the legislative walk-through hat and then switch to the Attorney General representative hat and just for the record, Assistant Attorney General David Chair, representing the Attorney General's office. So this is a bill that was worked out between a number of stakeholders, starting on page one of the draft that's passed by the House, which I think the committee has in front of it, hopefully. 518. 518, yeah. Do you have a folder? Yeah. Did I put it over there? Yeah, it was right there. I put it off to the side. I just put your stuff to the side. 518, actually in the Fire and Park with the police and staff by the House. I had a good one. Is it one that we have already? No. It's a brand new one. OK. Wait. I'm going to put that stuff over there. You've got to have it over there. Oh. OK. OK. OK. Yeah. It should be the second folder that was left on your desk. Sorry. OK. So all the key, should I keep running throughs? Yeah, go ahead. OK. So on page one, one of the primary changes is the end of the first paragraph, subsection A1. The underline is the new edition. What this accomplishes, what this edition accomplishes is basically saying that individual agencies around the state, if they want to, can be more protective of immigrant rights, or rights of undocumented individuals. And I should, when I say rights of undocumented individuals, I really mean information about undocumented individuals. They can be more protective of that information if they choose. And they may not be less protective of that information. It's important to note that, and the purpose of this is to make it clear that the model policy is setting a floor of protection, but it doesn't set a ceiling of protection. It was the ACLU's position that the law already essentially did that. It was the Attorney General's office's position that the prior law essentially was saying that every policy has to have the same legal effect. And we believe that was the language as it stood prior to this amendment was simply saying, all the components have to be the same. You can adopt additional components if you want. But you can't do anything that would contradict the model policy. David, can I ask you a question? But when you say that it had to have all of the policies, it didn't have to have the exact same words. That's exactly right. And that was the legislative compromise that came through in 2017. There had been a debate about whether all the policies should be exactly the same, or whether agencies should have a little flexibility. And the legislature came down on the side of allowing some flexibility. But that then left it to the Debra Mock-Romance training council and consultation with our office to figure out if, in fact, the various policies sufficiently matched the model policy. And that was the work that we've been doing. And what this does is make it explicitly clear that this is a floor, not a ceiling, and people can go above it. And it's clear for the committee that it remains the law, as passed by Act 54 in 2017, that no policies are allowed to violate federal law, and they name those federal laws in that section of the statute. That part of the law is not being changed.  That will remain the policy. Or sorry, that will remain the law. Page two of the bill, the top of that bill, basically is a, I would describe it more as an administrative change, talking about deadlines for when updated policies have to be implemented and when the check on updated policies has to be completed. That's what that is. Moving down to subsection B on page two, we've got language that basically says, we said comply with subdivision A1 of this section. All that accomplishes is making clear that the floor, not a ceiling policy, applies here as it did in subsection A. It's really just getting the language to match. And then we added in consultation with the office of the attorney general, which is basically just putting into law what the practice has been for the last few years. And the same changes that I just discussed are enacted in the three following changes. The final line on page two is actually an important one, even though it's brief. And it basically accomplishes two goals. One is, well, I'd say from the attorney general's office's standpoint, it accomplishes one very important goal, which is to say that our office will no longer be in the position of making statements about the compliance of individual agencies, municipal agencies with federal law. We actually view that as something that is protective for the state. Towns are their own legal entity. They will make their own decisions as to legal risk. And we think it's important for us to be out of the business of making judgments about what an individual town agency may or may not do. I will note, though, that town agencies are still subject to the state law that says you will be in compliance with federal law. They are, of course, bound by federal law as well. You don't have to be a real life example. Sure. So one example of this is there was a debate among the stakeholders when we were designing the model policy at the end of 2017 regarding what information could be told to a judge regarding the status, I should say, the citizenship or immigration status of an individual who may have been arrested. Now, when somebody's asking for bail, when an officer, I should say, is asking a judge to set bail, what they're asking about, what they're asking for, is some protection to make sure that that person will appear and will not flee from prosecution. The debate was whether the officer should be allowed to say to the judge and note here that we're talking all about state officials. This is not dealing with communications with federal officials. Whether the officer could say to the judge anything at all about the individual's immigration status. It was the position of advocates, like Justice Naciel, you in particular, that they should not be allowed to say anything and their position was that that could unduly and unfairly and unnecessarily prejudice the judge towards holding the person. Law enforcement felt differently about it and felt that there are circumstances where it is important in order to give the full picture of what's happening in a particular case. It's important and necessary to be able to tell the judge something about somebody's immigration status. An example for that might be, let's say, you have an exchange student at one of our colleges in Vermont, an exchange student from France, say. That student is accused of a serious crime on campus or off campus, but is accused of a serious crime of violence and it's near the end of the semester, the student might be due to fly home soon. It would be the concern of law enforcement that it would be very hard to describe to the judge why they are so concerned about flight from prosecution for that particular individual if they couldn't state that the person is not a citizen and that they may have a visa that's due to expire in weeks or less. And obviously that's a very particular example, but you could imagine other such examples where somebody may be running to the end of their legal status in the country and may be going home and there is a very serious public safety need that the state has to accomplish in order to effectuate their job. So law enforcement felt that it was important to be able to state that in order to sort of bridge the, as best we could, bridge the divide, although the ACLU and my justice didn't ultimately agree with this language, but in order to address their concerns as best we could, if you look at the model policy under that bail provision, it does say that considerations of immigration status or citizenship will not be a sole reason to hold somebody. It's just one of a number of considerations if it's relevant. So we tried to sort of give that explicit direction to officers, look this isn't a reason to ask for a bail by itself, but if it is part of the full picture of what's going on in order to protect public safety and make sure that the state can protect victims, you can talk about it. So that's a concrete example. This is what the House passed. This language that you're looking at is what the House passed. What I was just describing is the model policy, which hasn't been passed by the legislature, but what is it? Model policy, probably the model policy that hasn't been passed by the legislature. That's right. The legislature directed the model policy to come up with it, and so it's not a legislatively enacted document. Thank you, David, for that explanation. So that was long-winded, but it goes to show... It goes to the artists, but we'll do more testimony on it. So I just want to make sure on this last line here, what this last line is saying is that if a municipality or whatever agency decides to go above the model policy, that the AG's office will no longer be issuing statements of acceptance or I mean that you're not going to weigh in on municipal policies. We will still weigh in on municipal policies to the extent laid out in subsection A1 and page 1, just to say, did you do the minimum or more? However, we're not going to weigh in on this particular language in state law regarding are you in compliance with 1373 or 1644 for municipal agencies? It won't be very clear that in our role, as a member of the Criminal Justice Training Council and as a sort of legislatively directed part of the process of developing model policies, we will always follow the applicable arms for those policies, so we will not be working to develop model policies that violate federal law. We view it as the plain obligation of government officials to follow the relevant law and to do otherwise would be a very dangerous precedent. And I will also say, as the committee may know, the Attorney General's office does believe that 1374 and 1644, the relevant federal statutes are not constitutional. We have filed briefs, amicus briefs and a number of cases arguing that they are not constitutional and we hope to see them overturned by the courts. That being said, they remain the law today and it is therefore our obligation to follow the law as it stands and we will continue to do that as in our role directing statewide policies. But with regard to municipal agencies, we'll say, look, you got to hit the floor, you can go above, but it's not our job to make the risk decisions that's on you now to make the risk decisions with regard to how close you tell the law. It wants to go well beyond what the law and policy is, they're welcome to do so, but you're not going to criticize or advise them. We won't, yeah, as long as they're, yeah, exactly, it will say, look, you make your own risk assessments about how close you're going to push this. We also, again, review this as something that is protective for the statewide entities that we're trying to be in compliance with. Sorry, I'm going to put on two hats here. Your summit for Brent Harrow had to go upstairs for something in the house, so if you're, when you finish the walk-through, you're welcome to give us the attorney general's position. Thank you, and I think, I think I've already been heading over into that role, but I just say the final piece that I haven't mentioned is, again, purely an administrative piece on page three, stating a new deadline for when all this stuff will be done. Again, that's not particularly substantive, just a matter of when will all this happen. So I've given you all, so now I'm going to put on the attorney general's hat officially, and I've given you an overview. I've already actually given you a bunch of the policy reasons why we support this. I will also say that this is, as it passed the house, this bill is supported by the attorney general's office, by my name, Justice, by ACLU, and by the Democratic-Romance Training Council. It is, I will note, for the committee very rare to have agreement among those four entities on anything, so we view this as an important step forward. We view it as an important step forward, both to enact the policy goal of protecting everybody in the state of Vermont. The attorney general feels very strongly about that. He also, as I've already mentioned, does feel strongly and believes it is our simple legal obligation to follow the law, but we want to give towns the flexibility to be as protective as they want to be. The bail example that I mentioned is an important one, and I think a good illustration of where, essentially that was a debate about what does public safety require. A town may say, we believe that it is more important to withhold that information about immigration citizenship status, and that's where we're going to make that decision on public safety. That doesn't actually implicate federal law at all, but it's allowing town to say, we're going to weigh the public safety concerns and the immigrant right concerns a little bit differently than the state did, and that's fine. We're now saying, go ahead and do that. It's no longer our job to prevent you from making that decision. We also think that, as I said, this is useful because it will get the state, when we're in these disputes with the federal government, it gets the state out of the business of having to make representations about anything other than the statewide policies that we have been a part of. Let me ask you a question. Can there be a difference depending upon the crime that the person has been charged with? So there could be two examples.  Two, driving with license suspended or without a license. What is there allowed in here a different response depending upon the criminal activity? Yes, I think that there's nothing in, I would argue there's nothing in this law or in the model policy that prevents law enforcement from making all of the usual differentiations that they might make. In this state, I'd be more concerned that somebody who is alleged to have been charged with aggravated sexual assault would be released than I would if somebody who's charged with driving without a license is released or normally that would just be diverted. Right, though. I worry that we don't give the flexibility for the, in all these lines of model. In the model policy, do you come down on the side? I'm going to take your example of a student from France. So the model policy did come down on the side of giving law enforcement the flexibility to make decisions about what needs to be said in order to protect safety, you know, risk of life. And again, all the normal rules that are available for law enforcement with regards to, you know, free trial safety, whether that's detention or conditions or whatever it might be, are still going to be available. They aren't directly affected by the model policy or by this law. You can also, as you know, send or hold somebody without bail for a violent felony if that's still available. So all that stuff, I don't think, is going to be significantly impacted by this law or the model policy. So the floor is the floor and then the model policy allows you... Or this statute will allow for... Going beyond. Going beyond. And again, I mean, I think the legislature did... Well, I'd say a couple things. The model policy is pretty comprehensive in terms of what it requires and what it prevents. I don't think that the difference is that you're going to see... I'd say lawful differences that you're going to see are going to have a huge practical difference. As already, everybody in the state is going to be prohibited from asking about immigration or citizenship status of anybody unless it's specifically necessary to the investigation, for example, a human trafficking investigation, unless it's necessary to establish the crime. So I think the model policy is going to set up... It sets a very high floor, I would say, that it will protect safety and also the rights of undocumented individuals or immigrant individuals quite extensively. And so we don't view these differences as having a large practical effect, although I think... You know, I think you'll hear different opinions on what the... I guess, you know, I need to understand the bill myself and be clear about it. So I just want to make sure that... The other thing I want to make sure of are we in danger once again of losing federal funds? Yes, so that's a good question. That brings me to... From our state police, I was going to have a different viewpoint on this, on this bill. It is the Attorney General's office's belief that these changes will not endanger federal funds to the state. It may be the case that individual towns could make decisions about their own policies that could place them in a course of conflict with the federal government. That will be the responsibility of individual towns to make that decision. But would the federal government be so willing to recognize the distinction between a town and the state? In other words, let's say we have ten states that adopt policies that go beyond the floor. Ten towns. Would the federal government deal with all of them individually, or would it say Vermont as a state is preventing proper compliance? A couple of things. One is most, but not all, of the grants that happen are directly to municipalities. So the relationship there is municipal government to federal government. So they would be dealing directly with the towns. Where the issue comes into play is in the occasional times where as part of a statewide grant, there are occasionally sub-grantees that are named in it. What we've been seeing, though, is even with the current, and well, so I'll state my piece and then I do want to acknowledge VSB as a different reading on this, but what we have seen as a matter of reality, even with the current Department of Justice, which we believe has taken a very maximal position in terms of trying to prevent state flexibility on this, they have explicitly exempted the Attorney General and the Governor from having to make representations about whether the sub-grantee is in compliance. So they have said, look, you're making representations to your own compliance. You are not required to make representations as the town's compliance. My understanding is that Vermont State Police and the Commissioner do have concerns about that and they will testify to those concerns. They believe that the sub-grantee issue could potentially place statewide grants in jeopardy. We don't agree with that position. We feel otherwise and we feel that the documentation that we've been receiving from the federal government demonstrates otherwise. Other questions for Dave? If I might, I just had two other issues that I wanted to address. I'm almost there. The Human Rights Commission has submitted written testimony. We're trying to schedule them next week but now we may have to change. We need to be able to find room 10 or 11 or even now for the next meeting. We need a room with more room. So, you know, but we're trying to schedule them for the 17th. That's our plan is for Wednesday to take this bill up again but it'll depend on where there's a room available for us to be in. Obviously, there's not enough room. So the Human Rights Commission did send, I'll just send a letter not able to be here today but if we want to, whenever she's available. And it sounds like we'll get into that. Wednesday at 7.45. That sounds like we'll get into that in greater detail then next week. I will just forecast for the committee that our office doesn't have an objection to what are essentially increased enforcement mechanisms, which is what the Human Rights Commission is asking for. But we would note for the committee that there will be increased opposition to that from law enforcement agencies. We would be likely to lose the support of the Criminal Justice Training Council, although I don't know that for sure. Nor do I think that, you know, that would have to go to the council. Can we wait on that issue until we actually hear what the suggestion is from the Human Rights Commission? Because I have no idea what that is. What were you saying? And figure out what it is that they're responding to since we don't even know that yet. I appreciate your judgment. I just found a problem with everything here. Yeah, don't. Our little P-brains can't take it. We will allow you to come back. I appreciate that. But that then, I'll leave that as it is. I would tell one other piece, I think there has been concern about the consistency issue and that may be raised again. Again, we do think that as a practical matter for people on the ground dealing with law enforcement, they aren't going to feel significant differences in those interactions because those interactions are pretty heavily regulated by the model policy. And somebody going beyond the model policy is mostly going to be dealing with interagency communication between federal and state. And that's not something that the sort of average person interacting with the officers are necessarily going to feel a difference on. Although, again, the actors feel very strongly that there should be some pretty strict limits on that. And I would note that the model policy, because our belief that the model policy does actually have quite strict limits on that. So I would just conclude by saying we supported each 518s passed by the House. We think it accomplishes several very important things and strikes a good compromise between the various parties. Thank you. Thank you. Our next witness is Captain Gary Scott. Thank you again, Captain Gary Scott with the Vermont State Police. I want to echo what David exactly said. Our concern is the JAG funding as we've gone through it for the past couple years now with the policy and how they interpreted. So the commissioner and our legal counsel say that there's concerns there of what the Department of Justice could do in looking at... Just briefly explain the JAG funding. That's opiate, essentially a lot of opiate officers and northern drug task force and there's some community... And there's some community grants out there that provide local law enforcement with the ability to handle that problem. Yeah, it's about two million dollars in a dish. So that is the concern for the commissioner of what Department of Justice reaction would be and we appreciate exactly what the Attorney General was off saying that there's been a path there, but I guess we're a little gun shy for the last two years having that money held up and not knowing it's very unpredictable what they're doing there. So that is a significant concern for us of what could happen if a town is a sub-grantee, could they hold all the money and we are in the midst of an opiate crisis. I understand our concern and there's a member of the appropriations for the double concern about it, but I will say there are certain times when you have to take a position that might not agree with the grantors and we suffered shortages from the burn grant because of our refusal to put teenagers on the section of under registry who are treated as juveniles in our family court. The state chose to take a 15% cut in the burn grant I don't know. This like 10 years ago I was chair of this committee and we made a choice of the choice that we do the feds would not provide us with a full funding for the grants but we said we should not write somebody who's allowed to be in family court as a sex offender to put their name on the sex offender registry we're violating anything that we believe in. So I appreciate that but there are times we can't allow the federal to see that. So you know how I feel about from a state police contracting but given that right now we do contract so could a town like Waterbury decide that they are going to go above the floor here with a contract with you so you are in the position of following their policy it would a town without a police department be allowed to who contracts with somebody else would they be allowed to to have a different policy or is it the agency itself that has the policy? My understanding would be the agency and we would follow our agency policy regardless so if we go into a town does adopt a higher standard the state police as we go all over the entire state that could create confusion I think it could be an issue so I think about coming off the interstate you are going after a speeder and now you are in the town and you make that arrest that town is adopted this policy the state police has this policy and now the arrest is made in that town that can create a public backlash of why the state police in this town and all these things could go along with that but some of the concerns absolutely. The agency has it but that town could start to go down that path absolutely. I have their own policy without having a conversation that would happen a little bit. We will take that up in our other bill. I think you should take that up in your mind. I am making a list of things. This has become confusing enough to have a town without a police force that sets a policy that whoever the police force is and he could be the sheriff for example. It could be multiple. Other questions for Lou Cathy? Captain, thank you very much. Thank you. My next witness is Will Lambert from Michael Justice. Will is going to act as an interpreter for Valentine's Day. Can I announce that correctly? Okay, well, they had it back. That's okay. I guess you have to get the abbreviated part right. I warn you, I do understand what you're saying. I know you're an Englishman, but... I got a Z plus. I don't even remember if you wanted to say that. It could have been worse. It could have been worse. We're going back. Thank you, Chairman Sears and members of the committee. For the record, Will Lambeck. I'll primarily be interpreting for Enrique Balcazar. I might have some additional comments at the end. And then also, just for the committee's purposes, a list of folks who are outside now who wanted to be in, but for space limitations. We apologize that we're not aware that we're going to have this crowd. I apologize then, but they're stuck outside. Not a problem at all. But if the committee would like it for the record. That would be fine if you want to hand that. But next week, I'm sure you'll take up the bill. We'll have no room. Thank you, Chairman. Senator. Go ahead. Hello everyone. My name is Enrique Balcazar. I'm here representing the community of workers, migrant workers in the state of Vermont. Hello everybody. My name is Enrique Balcazar. I'm here representing the community of immigrant dairy workers in Vermont. And I'm here today supporting Bill 518, H518, as well as, and I understand we aren't going to be talking about it today, but as well as the amendment that was presented by the Human Rights Commission. And I want to start just by giving a little bit of context, which is that our community for decades, both in Vermont and around the country, have suffered from the political attacks by immigration agencies that don't allow us to live freely and separate us from our families. And we've been fighting for years to address these issues through the fair and impartial policing policy, what we refer to in Spanish as La Ley de Nopoli Migra. Unfortunately, under the administration of Trump, this policy has been weakened because of threats from the President Trump. And we've been fighting for years to address these issues through the fair and impartial policing policy, and because of threats from the presidential administration, as well as from the desire on the part of some law enforcement to maintain relationships of collaboration with federal immigration enforcement. And the existing collaboration between police agencies and federal authorities makes it so that communities, immigrant communities, cannot place their trust in local and state police in the state. Q. And this results in trust not being created or built between immigrant communities and police agencies in the state of Vermont. Thank you. Bueno, un ejemplo de las consecuencias que quiero dar, por ejemplo, es el caso de Olman López, un compañero también trabajador lechero que estuvo a punto de la deportación en el condado de Addison, en el pueblo de Vergen, que casi fue separado de su familia, tiene tres hijos aquí, afortunadamente pudo salir de detención. Pero hubo colaboración entre la policía con emigración y esta es una preocupación en el caso que queríamos. And a recent example of this is the case of Olman López, farm worker from the county of Addison, town of Vergen's, who was separated from his family for months and was on the verge of being deported because of collaboration between police and immigration enforcement. The Vergen's police? The state police. Yo también viví esto en carne propia cuando fui arrestado por agentes de ICE y pase 11 días de mi vida en un centro de detención en mi cuerpo. I've also lived this in my own experience when I was arrested by ICE agents and spent 11 days behind bars in immigration detention. En mi caso hubo colaboración con el departamento de motores y vehículos, que es una agencia del estado de Vermont que proporcionó la información esencial, debido a que aquí mismo en esta casa luchamos por el derecho humano a la movilización, obteniendo la licencia. Y saqué mi licencia y esta agencia entregó mi información y también ha pasado en otros casos. And in this case, ICE agents received information from the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles, a state agency that provided them with the necessary information to detain me. This is information that I had provided to the DMV, because we had been here years ago to pass law allowing the right to access driver's licenses. And I freely exercised my rights under that law to obtain a license. And having given that information, that was then passed on to ICE. Y bueno, esto fue una campaña de ICE contra los líderes que demandamos el abuso de poder de esta agencia y la separación de familias. And my arrest was part of a campaign undertaken by ICE to arrest immigrant leaders who had been denouncing unfair practices and the separation of families. El departamento de motores y vehículos del estado de Vermont está cubierta bajo la política que hemos estado luchando de nomas polimigra, que así lo llamamos nosotros. Y esta es una de las consecuencias que les quería compartir. And the Vermont DMV is a state agency that is covered under or is subject to the fair and impartial policing policy. And so I just wanted to provide that example as well. Y bueno, quiero mencionar este cuatro cosas que es lo que nos preocupa, verdad, de esto. La primera, la política modelo del estado, que es débil con algunos huecos donde permite que la policía colabore con las agencias de inmigración. And I'd like to mention four objections that we have to the current state of affairs as it relates to fair and impartial policing. The first is that the model policy itself is weak and contains loopholes which don't allow the policy to fully stop collaboration between local law enforcement and immigration authorities. Dos, esto no es implementado como debería ser, verdad. Y hemos res, hemos estado investigando y hemos recibido 52 políticas del estado de Vermont y 13 de estas o lo que representa el 25 por ciento no cumple con el mínimo que requiere de la política. The second issue is that even with that model policy or even that model policy is not being implemented as it should be. We've been requesting agencies fair and impartial policing policies. Today we've received 52 policies from agencies around the state and 13 of them are representing 25% of those agencies have not implemented the model policy and don't meet the minimum requirements of the policy. No hemos visto que el entrenamiento sea suficiente porque no hemos visto la evidencia clara de que esto está pasando, verdad, como que sea de una manera donde los policías están recibiendo entrenamiento de cómo actuar en cosas de inmigración. Third, we don't believe or we don't have evidence to believe that the trainings on fair and impartial policing have happened in a manner that's sufficient. We haven't seen evidence that police are receiving sufficient training on the responsibilities with regards to immigration enforcement. Y cuatro pues las agencias que han querido mejorar sus políticas para subirlas más del mínimo han estado en duda si pueden o no pueden hacerlo y creo que mencionar algo de esto acá. And the fourth issue, finally, is that those agencies which have wanted to change their policies to go above the minimum requirements have had the doubt about whether or not they will be allowed to do so. Y bueno, hoy estamos aquí testificando a favor de este proyecto de ley que permitirá y aclarará que las agencias pueden mejorar sus políticas. And so on that point, that's why today we're here testifying in favor of H518, this bill, because it will clarify to agencies that they are able to improve their policies above what's required in the model policy. Bueno, quiero mencionar que todavía quedamos preocupados por la política modelo que hay en el estado y queremos seguirla mejorando, porque es débil y les pedimos al comité que se involucre en la discusión que se abre en el proceso de revisión con el Consejo de Entrenamiento. And with that, we continue to be concerned about the state of the model policy itself and we invite the committee to be involved in the process of policy review when that process begins within the Criminal Justice Training Council. Y por último para cerrar, nos gustaría estar presentes la próxima semana cuando esté presente la Comisión de Derechos Humanos, porque nos gustaría testificar a favor también de esta enmienda. And finally, we would like the opportunity to be present next week when a subsequent hearing is called to hear testimony on the Human Rights Commission's amendment because we would like to testify in favor of that amendment. That's not a problem that I have, but first question is, if this bill passes whatever form, if it's like what passed the House or with the Human Rights Commission's amendment, would you feel comfortable in reporting a crime to law enforcement or an unfair labor practice to authorities in promoting the labor law? Would you feel comfortable in reporting this to the police in Vermont? Well, I want to say that both of us can answer questions. Will is here translating, but I can also help with the questions to save time for the interpretation. And well, yes, in the past we have collaborated with the Human Rights Commission to work in some cases where, for example, un caso muy viejo que fue, pero muy impactante para la comunidad, que apoyó mucho a la comunidad, fue el caso de Lorenzo donde el sheriff de Franklin colaboró con la agencia de inmigración, pero a través del apoyo de la comisión pudimos enganar un caso ahí. Enrique had said that for questions he may have asked myself will to respond as well to save time on interpreting, but for this question the response was, well, in the past we have felt comfortable bringing cases to the Human Rights Commission when there have been abuses, for example, in the case of Lorenzo Alcudia, who was discriminated against by originally the Franklin corrected to Grand Isle Sheriff's Department, the community did feel comfortable going to the Human Rights Commission to present that case of discrimination against Mr. Alcudia. Y por esto, bueno, tenemos una relación con la comisión, y como sería importante por eso testificar a favor de esto, porque sería un gran apoyo estando. I may be missing something. My question is about whether or not this bill counts. Would it increase that trust? What an incredible confidence between the community and the police. That's what it means. That's what it means. Yeah, but it increases the trust. What it increases the trust. Yeah. Yeah, let's see. Can I repeat? Yes, of course. As I said, in the past we have a good relationship. Well, if this were to pass, I think little by little it would go towards increasing trust. And that's one of the reasons we support this bill. The only reason we support the bill is that it would increase the trust. It would increase the trust. And the trust between the community and the immigrants. If it doesn't solve this or if it increases trust, it doesn't make sense to approve this. Do you want to explain me how that works? So just to add to that, and I think related to the question, Enrique had mentioned the 13 policies that my interest has received from law enforcement agencies that on our reading don't meet the minimum requirements of the Farron and Parsha policing statute and model policy. And I'd like to present those to the committee to put in the record if you're amenable. That's great. These were emailed to migrant justice volunteer who called every agency. The policies were emailed usually by the chief or the sheriff and printed out to be presented here. So this for us is quite concerning. And I think we can come back to it more in the testimony around the Human Rights Commission's amendment. But the fact that there have been multiple iterations of statute requiring departments to update their policies. And we still have policies here that appear not to have been changed from 2011, 2014, 2016. So as to the question of trust, to second what Enrique said, this creates a framework for which trust can be built. The test is, it will be implemented. There's no point in doing anything. Folks who are in vacation. If there's a, well maybe you can talk to other colleagues of Enrique to find out what their thoughts are too. And just to interpret that, having the Human Rights Commission involved in the process would go a long way towards increasing trust. You may have said this previously. What did you, of the policies received, were there, how many of those were meeting the Baron Carson policy? I can respond to that, Senator. So of the 52 policies that were received, 13 of them or 25% on our reading did not meet the minimum requirements. The rest of them, 39, 75% of them either meet the minimum requirements because they've adopted the model policy verbatim or have similar language that's materially similar. There are a couple of those that, on first reading, we weren't entirely confident that they met the requirement, but they appear to. So the first bill I ever passed in this building that I submitted and that the governor signed was the driver's privilege card bill. And we had a nice signing with Governor Shumlin out on the stacks of the State House. And it was a celebration, but then I remember a couple of years ago hearing that ICE had distributed the information, or the DMV had distributed the information to ICE. And I took that very personally because we had had long discussions in passing the bill with the Department of Motor Vehicles and Governor's people, the chair of my committee and myself. And everybody was very clear that that information was never to go to immigration. So I understand the skepticism and I just wanted to know that I think it's a good thing, in light of that, that we go back and look at the model policy and follow up on that as we look at it. Thank you very much. Well, I'm just looking through these. I'm going to ask Peggy for copies so that I can read them because I've been really involved in this all along. But I'm looking at one here, for example, that says the confidentiality portion is missing. But I know from working with some police departments that they have general policies that cover some of the things that are in the model policy. So they have a confidentiality policy that doesn't need to be specifically put in here because it's covered in their general policies for all of their work. So would you just comment on that? If their general policy covers something, why would need to be in here specifically? So thank you, Senator, for the question. I'll respond to this as yourself rather than as an interpreter. I believe maybe you're referring to Burlington Police Department's policy. I think it's Burlington that says confidential policy. So they're a bit of a unique case. I think they're the only one that really falls within the category that you're referring to. We were involved in meetings with the Burlington City Council and Police Department around the creation of this. I don't believe that there's a general confidentiality policy on the books in Burlington that fully covers the confidentiality provision in the model policy that was removed. The path towards passing Burlington's policy was a little bit circuitous and actually that policy predates the model policy in its current iteration. In most areas it still meets the requirements we believe in that one particular area it does not. But I would say most of the policies you have in your hand, they are deemed not to meet the minimum requirements because they are from a 2014 version or a 2016 version where the policy has been substantively changed since then. Other questions? Thank you very much. We'll see you next week. If you want to respond after the, anybody who wants to speak next week, check with Peggy. But if you want to respond next week to the Human Rights Commission, I imagine that a lot of people will. Thank you very much for the space and I hope that this will continue to move. Thank you very much for the space. I appreciate the words as well and I hope this continues to move forward. Thank you. I think we'll have to go after you. No, I don't think I'll introduce you to the transportation. And then this is real. We started to hope that. You want to take a sign name. It was the following year after a study. Yeah. Tell you in the community that you're walking down the hall and Senator Sears, someone from behind, talked to me and thought that I was. It's much better looking from behind than I am. From behind me. We obviously aren't going to get to age 460 this morning. So anybody that's here for sealing of criminal records and explanations. Sorry about the rest of the agenda. Thank you. So good morning committee. Thank you for the record Rick got their executive director, the criminal justice training council. I've had a chance to review this bill as a past the house and I've talked to David share and talk to council leadership. And there's no objection to the contents of the bill as a past the house. I heard about the proposed HRC amendment this morning. I haven't actually seen the language. So I'm going to obviously withhold any comments until I have actually seen. So you're supporting age 518 as it came out of the house. Can I ask you have a report here from April 1 of 2018 to March 31 of 2019 report to the Senate House committees on judiciary. No, I think people's vote looks like this. Did you want to comment briefly on this report? Well, there's I think it's act 54 that requires that I make an annual report to the committees of the legislature on the number of officers who have taken the baseline fair and partial policing. And the time period is generally April 1 through March 31 because the report is due before April 1. I generally run a little late with the report because the training records training may have taken place in March. I mean, I get a record of it until mid April. So I generally hold off till I've got all the records. The thing to note with this is that not only is this the number of officers who took it in the preceding year, but as I include in the narrative, this brings us up to less than 30 officers in the state who have had the baseline council approved. And those 30 are generally working on some sort of waiver and we're able to do it last year for one reason or another. You've given us the names of every police officer, right? Yes. Nobody failed it. I don't know which my record is. What challenges are you facing in implementing as a, at the Terminal Justice Training Council, implementing fair and partial policing? Well, as you know, a couple years ago the legislature made this a mandated training for all law enforcement every hot numbered year. Like we have domestic violence is mandated every even numbered year. So the challenge becomes having somebody not only work on curriculum and meet with the fair and partial police and subcommittee, but implement the training around the state, track the training. The officers taking the training have to be recorded so that we can make an accurate report at the end of the year. And in general, anytime there's a specific training like that, it requires a lot of attention on the fire training coordinator for a number of reasons. Obviously curriculum development may be huge, but also liaison activities with community groups that are interested in topic. We ran into, I'll back up a little bit. Because I didn't have this specific resource in the run up to completing the baseline fit for everybody, we struggled with that. We managed to get it done, but it was, it was a struggle. The other half of that struggle was now we're in 2019, there's a mandated fit training. We've already developed working with the fit committee, we've developed the training and part of the training is training to the model policy. But the, I would rather see more substantive trainings moving past 2019, moving into 21, 23 and onward. I'd rather see trainings that are much more reflective of what we hear from law enforcement, what their needs are, and what we hear from communities about what they would like to see in law enforcement training. That remains a challenge. Training to the policy was very challenging. I articulated to ACLU and Margaret Justice a couple of times what the challenges were, but the, so in an attempt to kind of resolve some of that, we now roll the model policy training into the level three, I can't say full time, Senator White-Gales, I think, into the level three training and into the level two training. It's a mandated training to the policy. And since we've made that a mandated training for all law enforcement this year, it's going to be primarily online, but I'm actually planning on delivering some of it in the classroom myself. The first session is to the constables in a couple of weeks when they have their meeting. So, but that's really kind of, that's not at the level where we want this. We have domestic violence, for example. It's a very robust, very involved. We're just not there with fair and impartial policing. And we need to be fair. The, so those, those, that's kind of a thumbnail sketch of some of the challenges we face with that. Our, because the department that people represent here aren't listed, members of the department of motor vehicles enforcement team are they required and officers of the Fish and Wildlife are they required? Everybody. Everybody was certified by the council. Regardless of their agency affiliation, if they're certified by the council, they have to have this training. What about the commissioners? If they're certified law enforcement officers. But if they're a commissioner of Fish and Wildlife or a commissioner of the department of motor vehicles, they don't need to. It's not mad at the rioting here. They're allowed to provide information of what we heard testimony just before you got here. I mean, Judd and Sherry, you heard the testimony that Enrique was reported by, to ICE by the department of motor vehicles, which has never happened. Should we, should the commissioners of the various agencies be involved here in understanding what the policies are? I can't speak for every agency. I've talked with the commissioners of PPS and Fish and Wildlife. We talked specifically about the model policy. I didn't, I haven't talked to the commissioner in the area. I understand that's still a little bit up in the air. Well, she's one of the bitters. She's been through it. Can we move it into the bill, some requirement? Any agency that is not certified by law enforcement, should, I noticed Chad Smith, for example, who's head of the Sheriff's Department of Medicine was on the list and so I obviously recognize Chad Smith. But anyone who's not a certified law enforcement officer who is in charge of certified law enforcement officers should also be req