On a second. Can you hold? No. Okay. All right. Are we all set to go? We are. So, hi. Good evening, everyone. We are having our first public meeting as the community safety working group. And I'd like to call this meeting to order. I think we have a quorum present. The time is let's see 533 and the date is December 2nd, 2020. So, welcome, everyone. At this time, I'd like to take attendance for the committee. And And if you would just respond to it and start with Deborah Ferrera. Here. Russell Vernon Jones.  I am here. Sorry, I was muted. I'm here. Thank you, Russ. Welcome. This pattern on the Baku. Yeah. Brianna Owen here. Jennifer Moistad. Paul Backelman. We're just here. Okay. My Alicia Walker. Did I say you? Yes, and I am here. Thank you. So I think we're all set to go. Good evening and welcome. Just want to make a few opening remarks. Tashina Bowman has just joined us. You done meet yourself, Tina? Thank you. I'm here. Tashina. We're just doing attendance and you're here. Thank you. Good to see you. I want to say welcome to everyone in attendance here and those who are attending from home or elsewhere to our first community safety working group public meeting. Just a brief review of our agenda for the evening. I want to mention that we set aside two hours for this meeting and it is our first meeting and we have a lot of things to initiate and we want to give ourselves enough time to begin that process. So first of all, after we approve our minutes, the previous meeting, we will go into the reports and comments section of our meeting. We will accept public comment and I do want to respectfully remind people who are joining us remotely that we're going to devote 15 minutes to this particular time slot. So we'll be checking that time out. We hope you will, if you so choose, have something you want to share with us at that time. I'll get more into the specifics of that in a moment. We will also take a moment to check in with each of our group members, our working group members, to see what they've been doing lately, any new information they want to share with us, above and beyond our agenda, but just to give a sense of what's going on in their lives. And I'd also like to move from there to our action and discussion items. And these items include a review of our charge and the goals of the committee. We want to also mention, too, that the community and all of us have access to a community safety working group portal, which is on the town website. And you can contact Ms. Moyston or me through that portal, and we'll be looking for ways to get feedback and interact with you at that particular point of entry. We will be seeking some feedback on how to solicit and process information. And we're seeking to also expand our membership in the community. We also will be discussing the tasks and the research needed to, we need to do to make, to reach our goals as this committee, as this group begins its work going forward. And we hope it will be informed by our work together and our community input. We're also going to be discussing a process for broadening, collecting community input as we move forward. And I think this is a particularly important piece because without that connection between this community, this committee, this working group, and our community and all its resources, we will not be successful. So we're going to be working on ways to make that interface happen in a more credible way for serve. We're going to be discussing how to incorporate dialogue with local communities and agencies, community groups and agencies. We're going to be discussing a format for hearing individuals and groups after we publish our first, at least our first, and we will have a subsequent report sent to the town so that we can get feedback and responses. And we'll also be sharing educational resources to inform the public of our work. And finally, with the discussion of the, how we're going to be thinking about and actually collecting and reviewing relevant data to inform our work as a, as a working group. At the end, we'll identify any upcoming events, remind everyone of our next meeting date, and present any topics that the chair did not reasonably anticipate 48 hours in advance of this meeting. And then we'll move to adjourn. I just want to check with my group. Am I missing anything there? Let me take a minute to, before we go into public comment, actually, to allow members of our group to introduce themselves. This is our, our first public presence in the town. So it'll be important for us to, to know each one of us. So if you would be so kind, each one of you, and I'll go around, I'll, I'll call on you to introduce yourselves briefly and tell us who you are. Any interesting point that you want to tell us about your yourself or your work and your interest in working on this group. And if you haven't done so already, please let us know what your, your pronouns of reference are would be most helpful for, for all of us going forward. So that said, and I will go last. I'd like to, I'm just going to go around the screen here. And Deborah Ferrera. Okay. Hello, everyone. Deborah Ferrera. You can just call me Deborah. My pronouns are she, her, hers. You know, interesting thing about me is that, you know, I'm an immigrant to this country. I was born in West Africa in Cape Red Islands. And have been a part of Amherst community for over 18 years as a town resident. And then I was also here an additional four years when I did my undergraduate work at. So, you know, they've been long time, but I think my internet is kind of going in and out a little bit. I'm not sure it's showing me a little bit unstable. Sorry. But have done work pretty much for over 20 years, not 25 years in the area of equity inclusion and diversity. I'm an attorney by profession. You know, my work has always been around discrimination, sexual harassment, prevention of discrimination, sexual harassment, and also just around activism for making sure that everyone within a community, within their education or job is able to do their work without fear of anywhere positive because of their status of group status, race, ethnicity, all the different statuses that we bring that make us such, you know, wonderful people that we are, that we're able to bring our full selves to whatever it is that we do in the world. You know, currently I do work for UMass, but I'm also very engaged in the community, especially with young people. And of course, my pride and joy and my two sons that I have in the Amherst school system. So they're my pride and joy. And I do all the work that I do is to make a better world for them to live in. You're muted, Paul. Thank you, Deborah. I'd like to go to Alicia, please. Welcome. Hi, my name is Alicia. I have been an Amherst resident for a little bit over 20 years. I grew up here. I am now currently raising my three children here. I currently work as an executive assistant at a law firm in Springfield. And I also work towards with the goal of equitable access to the law, to the legal system. The reason why I'm interested in working in this working group is because Amherst is a community that I really care about. It's the only community I've ever been a part of. And I find that there is a lot of potential here. And I would like to really get into the community with the people I grew up with, with the people that I live here with and see what our needs are and what we can do to get those needs met. Thank you very much. Ms. Pat Onibako. My name is Pat Onibako. I'm a proud parent of five children. I'm from Nigeria. I'm a proud Nigerian-American. I've been in this Amherst resident for more than 35 years. I'm a serial business owner. I currently have a business in Hadley. And I've been very involved in the community on social justice issues in the school system. I have interest in joining this group because several years ago when the town meeting created a racial profiling committee, I was part of that group. And while we met for four years, we didn't accomplish enough. So I'm hoping, I'm very hopeful that this group will be able to accomplish some of my expectations so better the MS community. Thank you, Ms. Onibako. I'm just going around the screen here. Tashina Bowman. All right. Hi. My name is Tashina Bowman. I've lived in the Amherst area since 1989. And so I went through high school here, did some college here. Also put my kids in school in the Amherst school system. And really just feel like I'm already, I'm like invested in the community. So I really feel that as a community member, my voice needs to be heard. I have seven boys ranging from almost 25 down to four. So they keep me busy, but they also keep me very involved in just kind of happenings, they place sports and so on and so forth. I had one of my children had an experience running with the Amherst police on New Year's Eve when he was walking to go see his girlfriend because he looked like somebody. I've seen, I've community members who have mental health issues that have had run-ins with the police that were just unfavorable. And so I think that we really need to reevaluate how our town is accountable for their part in the behaviors of the community and also just finding better ways, finding more healing ways of interacting with the community. So they're not just coming through as disciplinaries, they're actually part of the community and they're working more directly with the community. And so there's not a hostility between the community and the police. So that's kind of why I came to this. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you. Russ Vernon Jones. Hi, I'm Russ. I lived here for almost 40 years and raised two children here. I spent 18 years as the principal of Fort River Elementary School. And you know, while I was principal, I got to listen to a lot of people's experiences and a lot of parents. And I heard all the time from white people that they didn't think there was much racism in Amherst.  And so I've been interested for a long time in how do we address that? How do we make changes that really have some significance and some staying power and impact the lives of everybody in town, but in particular people of color who live in the town.  And I'm very interested in, you know, how we can think freshly about the police department and about community safety in general. But frankly, I'm also interested in the question of how can we use this opportunity to look at one department in the town and think about how we get an anti-racism lens on all of its work? And how do we get the town as a whole, that both the town government and all its departments, but also the citizenry more engaged in creating a truly just inclusive community? And to me, that's an exciting project. And I'm glad that those of us on this working group get to do this, but we also get to do it with the whole community. And I'm really looking forward to the community input that we get as part of this process. Thanks. Thank you, Russ. Welcome. Brianna Owen. Hi, my name is Brianna Owen. I have been in, well, I've been a resident in Amherst for about 10 years. I am a graduate of UMass Amherst. My degree is in law. And in my undergrad, I did a lot of work to promote diversity initiatives and getting young people to college. And now I run a program at Hadley for a nonprofit that helps foster kids navigate young adulthood. I am a foster alum myself. My interests are the intersections of social justice and diversity initiatives and policy. Thank you. Welcome. And Jennifer and Paul, should I go to you all? Even though you're not voting members of this committee, but is an introduction appropriate at this point? Jen. Oh, thanks, Paul. So my name is Jennifer Moyston. I'm a community participation officer and administrative assistant for the town manager's office. I've lived in Amherst for I think 43 years. So I've seen Amherst go through many different phases and changes. And there are just certain things that they get better, but it's still there. The presence is still there. And I am more than honored to work with this group to try and tackle some of the racial issues that are occurring in town. And I'm Paul Bachman. I'm the town manager. I went to college here and then went away and then came back about four years ago to become town manager and thrilled to do that. And I really feel that the work that this group, especially this group of people are doing, is really crucial to the future development of the town. And also I like with this group that everyone came in with a sort of urgency for action that you are only committing your time because you think something real is going to happen. Each of you, I think, had brought that perspective. So I think that that's very valuable. So I thank you for that. Thank you, Ms. Moyston and Mr. Bachman. My name is Paul Wiley. I have been voted chair of this group, which I'm honored to serve. And by the way, I want to mention that Breonna Owen is the vice chair of this committee. So you have two very stellar leaders that are going to help move this process forward, as well as a stellar group of individuals, some of whom I've known for a number of years now. And so I'm happy to be a part of this group and a part of this working group committee. I came to Amherst in 1982. I was in public school before that. And when I arrived here, I was working in the public school system. Like Russ, I was a principal of an elementary school. In fact, he and I came in at the same time and we left at the same time. He was at Fort River. I was at Crocker Farm School. I do want to say I harken back to that moment because I remember in many cases when I would go to conferences or places around the state. And I would say was from Amherst. People would say, oh, that must be great. You have a college community, you have the five college consortium. You have a lot of families who are families of academics and on and on and on and on and on. And they said, it must be great to have all those resources and those wonderful people around you. And I said it is. I said, but that's not the whole picture. And I remember saying to somebody, especially around mid-career as principal, that there's an underbelly to Amherst that people don't understand. There's a level of poverty in Amherst. There's a level of homelessness in Amherst. There's a level of inconsistent kinds of treatment of people in Amherst. There's an economic depression in Amherst for some people. So it's not what people think on the outside. I would tease them and say, this is not like Wobagon folks. This is Amherst. And we have a wide range of needs and a wide range of families and people. And we are a very important and vital part of the state as a community. Amherst has a lot to offer. I came to this committee, committed to working to get to the point where we can create a community that's safe in all the ways we want to define that, especially around our relationship with the police department and other agencies that provide support to us as a community. So I'm happy to be a part of it. I'm happy to be chair. And I'm looking forward to working with my colleagues on this committee and doing some good work for the Amherst community. And I'm hoping that you will join us too in this work and that we create this interface where we can have conversations and share information so that it is a collective effort on the part of the entire community. I do have one question though. Paul, did you go to Amherst? Good. Okay. I just- I went to Hampshire College. Okay. I was going to say if you went to Amherst College, I was going to have to leave the committee because I went to Bowdoin. So that was not going to work. Anyway, thank you. Thank you all for coming. I want to do- thank you all for those introductions and I hope people who are participating with us will recognize and support everyone on this committee. I do want to move to- before I get into the public comment, I do want to move to an approval now that you know us of last committee, the introductory meeting we had, approval of the minutes for this committee. This is our startup meeting. So I'd like to open that up for comment editing corrections discussion for this group. Jennifer. Would you like me to pull them up onto the screen? Thank you. That'd be helpful. Oh, can you see them? Yes. Yes. Oh, you can? Yeah. Paul Wiley, is the motion to approve the minutes in order? I have a motion to approve the the minutes as presented. Is there a second to that motion? Do I hear a second from that motion? I second it. Thank you, Deborah. There was a second to the motion. I'm going to do a- I guess we're going to do this by roll call. You can vote yay or nay. Russ. Yay. Deborah. Yay. Pat. Ms. Pat. Yay. Alicia. Yay. Brianna and Tashina. Yay. Thank you. Motion is passed. The minutes have been approved. I would like to go now to reports and comments section of our agenda. The first item on there is a public comment. Jennifer, if you might help me with that, public comment is are you going to put people on? Yes, if they raise their hands. If they raise their hand and you can be put on the screen. I just want to remind people that we respectfully will listen to you and also respectfully not respond during this particular time, but we welcome your comments and your input. At the bottom of the screen for the attendees, there should be a raise hand button. I just want to put that out there so everyone is aware of how to raise their hand. And I do not see any hands raised at this moment. Okay. I just in fairness to people who may be given this semester thought this is our first meeting, I'd like to be sure that we're giving people ample time. I'll wait a couple minutes or so, maybe not that long, but hopefully if you have some comment, you would raise your hand and offer to us. There we go. Yes, so Judith Glaser has, and so Judith, I'm going to pull you in as a panelist for the moment and then after you've spoken, I will put you back as an attendee. What I want to say is to thank you all for serving on this committee and thank Paul Bachmann for his support from the beginning for having such a committee and that as a community member since 1971 with a long time interest in making our town safe for all, I have great hopes that this is a moment where real change can happen and I support you as you go ahead. Thank you. Other hands? Do you see any others? Jennifer? No, I do not. Okay. Given that there are no other hands raised at this point, I'd like to thank the community for their input at this particular time and also remind folks that we do have on the town website a community safety working group portal where you can actually communicate with us through that portal. You can also communicate with Jennifer Moisten or myself directly with any questions, comments, etc. And we're hoping to develop that particular portal in a way that it is truly a conversation in our community. Again, this is our first meeting, so we're in a way creating the framework for how this will work with the understanding that we are working hard to connect with all facets of our community around this issue of community safety. So I did want to mention that and Jennifer, any other things about that? Any in terms of I think there was one point we were talking about emails, an email address that was going to be posted? Yes. So if you are on the town page at AmherstMA.gov and you hover over the boards and committees, the list of committees will pop down and you just need to click on the community safety working group on the right hand corner. There's a link that says contact us that goes out to all of the members. So everyone will receive those emails that are given there or we can also be reached at CSWG at AmherstMA.gov. And again, you can also as well reach out to Mr. Wiley or myself. Thank you. Thank you, Jennifer. And just just moving forward, this is a point in the meeting where and again, we're at our first point, but I would welcome at this point in the meeting any updates in terms of any particular activity that the members or projects, activity, things that are going on in the members' lives that are related to this work in some way, connected in some way to this work. And I would like to give each member an opportunity to talk about any of their current initiatives or current interest at this particular time. Again, this is the first meeting. I'm sure this will be more developed as we go forward, but this would be an opportunity for each of our members to speak to some of those things they personally are involved in that relate to the work that we're doing. I want to just add to that too that our action discussion items may overlap with some of these things you may hear. People decide to say something about it, but we have a very busy agenda this evening for discussion. So I'd just like to open this opportunity up for our members to speak to anything that's relevant to the work here that they're doing in their own professional personal lives. Also, since our last meeting, I've been reaching out to our youth in the community, and it appears that most of them did not know about this group. So I encourage some of them to think about joining the group. One of them gave back to me and told me that he had applied. So I don't know if Jennifer and Tom Manager, if you received anything from any MS to youth. Yes, Paul. Yes. So there have been at least one additional application. We usually don't discuss the names of the people until we've done the appointment. So yes, you're right. Yes. Okay. I know. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Annabelle. Can I say one more question? Oh, I'm sorry. It's already here. I apologize. So also this past weekend, I was talking to some adults. I'm a regional high school alumni who are in their 30s and 40s now about this group. And I was wondering, they're out of town. How do we reach those people for input? They are very excited and they thank our group and especially Tom Manager for creating this group. And I did tell them that that would be opportunity for community engagement, but they're not in town. So I just want to put that out. I'm not on Facebook, but for us to think about how to reach our MS school alumni for input as well. Thank you. I'm sorry. Go right ahead. If I may, just one. I said, thank you for the input, Ms. Annabelle. I also think down in our agenda, we're talking about looking for ways to broaden our connection with community and how to collect input. So maybe when we circle back to that, we can come back to your point about this particular individual because it may be relevant to other people's experiences with folks in our town who have lived here for a number of years and maybe have left or and still have a love and interest in Amherst. So thank you for that. And whenever we're speaking at that moment, I didn't mean to cut you up. I wanted to just thank Ms. Annabelle for that. Oh, it's no problem. It was just me. It was just you. So basically, I feel like one of the best ways is if I don't actually don't know if the town of Amherst has a Facebook page. But if they do, it may be worth, you know, promoting this group and like it on the Facebook page, you know, just so that people who are outside of the community, either because they've moved or because, you know, whatever their way at school or whatever. But that I think that's probably a quick and easy way. Um, you know, the other ways just share the town website with them the link to the website with them if they're not on Facebook or, you know, when you're having a conversation with them. The other thing I wanted to mention is that I do need like a link to the application because I do have somebody who inquired about it and wanted to apply. And so if at some point, Jen, if you can send that to me, that would be great because they actually said that they had communicated with you at one point. Like, so they just, I think they just got lost in the loop. So I'm hoping that we can get them to apply. Um, yeah. And I want to apologize to everybody. I know I've been having my camera dark. It's because I'm cooking dinner and while I'm doing this. So I'm having to most likely I had to make sure the kids get fed. So I wanted to apologize about that. Well, let me take an opportunity to thank you for that input. And as I said to Ms. Misano Baku, I think, you know, you're bringing up ideas and possible strategies for how we might outreach to the community. And I think we should, you know, certainly not let that go, that we should incorporate this in a discussion going forward. I also am interested in hearing. Before I see what I'm interested in hearing, I'm disappointed in you, Ms. Bowman, because you're making dinner and you clearly did not give enough food to everybody around the screen here. And I know you can cook. So don't try to avoid it.  Understood? Much love. Okay. So what are you doing in the community, folks, that what are you personally doing right now that interfaces with our work here as a committee going forward? I think it'll be helpful for our public to hear this too, because it was important to hear a little bit more about these things that draw us to this work. So, yeah, I'll chime in. Similar to Ms. Pat, I also was out there trying to share information. I sent a link that Jennifer has sent to us to my son, who's Vice President of Poku over Amaritai, and he shared it with a bunch of young people, also shared it with the dean, the Dean of Students, Mary Custard, and she shared it, you know, with her networks. You know, I also talked with a group who is that I'm part of. I'm one of the organizers, is the Harriet Tubman, Julius Ford Healthy Living community, which we're an intergenerational group that does a lot of work around, you know, social justice and, you know, equity and diversity inclusion as well. It's just all different aspects of how do we live a whole holistic, you know, life, and everyone in the group has a voice of very youth-focused, youth-centered, and so I also spoke about our group there and talked with some of the young people that are in the Amaritai school system, that are high school age, to also apply. And for me, I think in terms of ideas for how to go forward, too, is that, you know, obviously one would be, hopefully, to get our young people to apply. And I know, too, that my son Phoenix said that, you know, one of the people had said that he was going to apply, so I'm happy to hear that someone did apply from that group. But also, I think, you know, when we're generating our lists, we need to make sure that we have a lot of youth groups and youth members that we, you know, outreach to and that we get their input. And of course, I know we all around this, and our group, we all have different folks that we can outreach to, because I think that would be important when we're, you know, doing the working and getting the data. Thank you. Thank you very much. Anyone else? I see a lot of these, I'm sorry, Russ, go right ahead. Oh, I could just say I wanted to thank Jennifer for sending that information about the League of Women Voters webinar on the police situation. I saw at least one or two other members of our group there, and it was quite something, you know, we were, we were there while the bill was being voted on on the floor of the house, there while it passed. But it was also, you know, very disturbing to learn that Massachusetts is one of only four states in the country that doesn't have police officer standards and training. And there are a lot of issues there. So I think it will make a difference if the governor signs the bill, if the governor doesn't sign the bill, we may want to look at things that are in the bill and try to make them part of our local ordinances or procedures. Thank you, Russ. And, and I hope for, as we're listening across this working group, and I hope the folks who are watching and or participating from home or from wherever you are, that you're learning a little bit about us too. And I want to just just back to parenthetically say that I think folks that that I know certainly for a number of years coming to this work are committed to doing this not just to sit on the committee, to sit on the group, but to do these kinds of things like, you know, attends webinars, do a lot of reading. And I think it's been also very clear, just from our initial connections with each other, that everyone on this on this screen here is about connecting with community. So none of these things, as we mentioned them, I hope will go into down some rabbit hole, but they will have a chance to talk about it. In fact, I think the whole idea of how to access resources, how to share resources and how to incorporate resources in our work is going to be very important. So in the development of this working group, we hope to do more of that and we would seek the input of the, you know, of the community as well. Any other folks on the working group would like to report? If not, I'd like to move to the next item, which is really the bulk of our meeting, which is the action and discussion items. As a reminder to this particular working group and the participants who are not on the working group, we will continue to keep this as part of our agenda. So you'll know what we're doing individually. And as Moisten mentioned earlier, we, you know, you have a way to interface with us and talk to us so that we'll try to keep this well connected going forward. So thank you. I don't see any other hands. So let me go to the first item, which is the goals of the committee and the review of the charge. And I want to defer, Paul, if you wanted to say something initially about this, if you'd like to find, if not, I'd be happy to review our purpose and charge for, again, with the group and for our community. Sure. I'll just say a few words and then I think it's important for the committee to, the working group to look through it and understand what the goals are. I just want to mention that this really generated from the town council. They were identified this as a high priority need and with their support and their approval of your appointments. That's how this group got started. So I want to recognize the role of the town council and specific counselors who've really advocated for this. You know, the, there's a recognition that this is a very tight timeframe. I think that was done purposely by the council to make sure that something was going to happen. They, we have held two police officer positions in abeyance while you were able to do your work. I think there's some recognition that it might be overly ambitious to try and get all of your work done for this first phase by January, but we will see how far you're able to get with your work. There is an appropriation that the council approved of $80,000 that is set aside to support your work if there are things that you feel you need in terms of, you know, research support, outreach support, things like that. It doesn't have to all fall on you as individuals. We can reach out to people at the university or whoever who've worked on these things before and can provide you with support.  You know, you have a more, a longer period of time as you start to conceptualize what will be important to move us forward on this. So I think, you know, I think the biggest thing for you right now is to start to, you know, in terms of look at what the charge says and start to conceptualize how are we going to start to address this and then what resources do we need? Who do we want to engage with? What do we need? Who do we need to bring into the room and talk with about what is important to us to be able to do our work? Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Baucherman. Does someone have a comment? I'm sorry. I have a question. Yes. So are we coming up with questions when we're going to these different groups and trying to find out what they personally need or where their mindset is when it comes to discrepancies and race with along with racism and so on and so forth within the community? Like are we going to, are we, are we as a group coming up with questions to present when we go and talk to these other groups? If the group doesn't mind, I'd like to respond to that. I think my just shoot from the heart. I should say answer is yes. We want to have a way to approach people that is not just sounding like, you know, a quiz or an inquisition or we're just data collecting for the sake of doing it, but that we have some meaningful inquiries into what we want to have conversations with within our community about what we want to talk about within our community with the individuals and groups that work in our community. And in fact, you know, again, and I don't mean to keep deferring this down the line, but it's coming up shortly where we have a chance to talk about that because we are talking about in our agenda how to connect with our community. And we are talking about reaching out to local organizations that are interested in in safety. They're interested in the work of the police department. They're interested in work in terms of mental health issues. They're interested in a number of things that affect the safety and well being of our community. So I think for us to not have a collective vision of what we're trying to what information we're trying to get in order to work better with our community. Without that, we're going to be scrambling. So I think we'll have an opportunity to develop that and that's the work part of the work I believe of this committee. If I may, I'd like to just go through I don't know if this is Ms. Moyson, if this is something you can put on the screen, the charge, if not, I will read through it. So rather than read through it, thank you Ms. Moyson for doing that. This is our charge and I will give our committee, our working group, excuse me, and the viewers an opportunity to take a look at that. And if you have a speed reading class, God bless you. If you haven't, I'll be very patient and we'll see if we have any comments or questions going forward. Mr. Wiley, do you want us to start asking questions? Are you giving a couple more minutes to me? Give a few more seconds to because people can certainly continue. Thank you for asking that question, Ms. Ferreira. This certainly can keep reading, but let me give folks a moment or two. We've seen this document already and the community may not have. So give them a moment or two. Thank you. So let me start with you, Ms. Ferreira and all other folks. If you have some comments or questions on this, you can raise your hand and go through Ms. Moyson on this. This is our charge and are there any questions or comments that you want to present to our working group to consider or deliberate on? Yeah. Yeah. So for me, I do have two key questions. The first question that I want really kind of like some clarity on is the fact that it states that, you know, make recommendations on alternative ways of providing public safety services to the community. So I know that we were focusing on the police department, obviously they're one of the agencies. So is that the singular department we're focusing on? Or are there other public safety agencies that we're focusing on? I think that would be very important so that then we can know what the scope is of our work and what we need to focus on. So for me, that's one question. And then also too, I think Paul had already, Paul Bachman had already kind of touched upon it previously in terms of the January 15th timeline. You know, I mean, I think we do need some more kind of specifics in terms of what, you know, they're looking for in regards to that, because that's a very short timeline, given that there's holidays coming up and so on and so forth. So for me, if that is the case, if we need to present that by the 15th, then we need to really kind of, okay, how many meetings do we have? And what are we going to be addressing on each of that meeting so that we can address that point? So those are my two main questions right now. Thank you, Ms. Ferrera. And I have a comment about that, but I want to divert to the working group and also, you know, Mr. Bachman, to you, to any first responses to that. I actually had a response to the first part of whether or not we were just working with the police and stuff. So my thought process in this whole thing is that you can't just work with the police. The police have no background, at least no solid background, in mental health issues. And what, and they're not always equipped to approach things on a compassionate level. Whereas if, if, if when you're dealing with, you know, a mental health crisis, if you have the ambulance, the EMTs go along with, maybe we can have, you know, they're not coming from, you know, the same, they're coming from a helping healing point of view, not just like let's get everything in order kind of point of view. So I feel like the police and the EMTs need to be working more hand in hand when they're, when they're, when they, when their police are showing up to certain issues. And maybe that, maybe there's some way that we can like help them define what those issues are. But I know that I, I know that I've had people call crisis for neighbors, and the police are the only ones who show up.  Because if somebody's calling for crisis, it's not, it's not necessarily a police issue. Do I believe police should be there? Maybe they should be there just to kind of supervise and kind of stand back. But you know, when it's, when you're dealing with somebody who's in crisis, you know, they need somebody who's who they need, they need a lot of times they need to go to the hospital, they need an EMT, they need to be talked to and, you know, and a lot and for so many people, police showing up is threatening, period. And being in crisis and then having the police in your face, that's a threatening thing for a lot of people. And so I really feel like the police and the EMTs really need to be working hand in hand when, when doing, handling something like a crisis situation. So that's just my two minutes. So thank you, Ms. Bowman. And I think that that resonates with with many folks, certainly. And, you know, let me just say parenthetically, I think if there were some of us who were on the webinar recently, that that Russ, Vernon Jones talked about, there's a lot of information there that speaks to that particular issue. In fact, the bill that was being voted on at that particular time had language in it around those kinds of things. So I think this is the this is actually part of the charge of the committee. Oh, the Emerson Police Department was mentioned specifically. It doesn't limit us from looking further and having discussions into what are the mechanics of this going down the line? How do we make this happen? That our goal is to ultimately provide some embers to make embers a safe place to be for all people, especially people of color. Let's not be mistaken about this. I mean, I think that's that's one of the issues that is on our particular on our plate right now.  And I would welcome other other folks to chime in on on Ms. Ferrer's question. Yes, I'm sorry. So yeah, so I think I think both comments are relevant because I think right now when the a call comes in about a crisis, it is the police department that responds. So I think one of the things the council, the committee, the working group might want to know is what does that mean? How does that get how does how does the town respond? Who decides if it's police or the fire or EMTs who respond? And that sort of information you would want to to gather, I think is being a key piece of what is our current practice. And we and then you will know from your personal experiences or anecdotal experiences, you know, know that that sometimes isn't the right way to respond. And maybe that's something that you want to look at. So one of the things I think is to on this thing is to review policies, complaints and current training practices, examine current public safety services and how they are delivered. So that might be something you might want to explore at some point during this process. In terms of the timing that Deborah put up, I would suggest that, you know, the town council is meeting on December 7th and the 21st. Give yourselves a couple more meetings, say at the December 16th meeting, sort of do the working group can do a self-check-in and say, are we going to really meet that deadline or not? Or do how much more you'll have a better sense of how much work is ahead of you. And, you know, I think the council would be open if the working group said, you know, we really need a February 28th deadline or something like that. I think they would be, you know, their intent of that deadline was to make sure something happened. If you said, we need some more time, I think they would be open to that request. So and then that could go to their January 24th, their December 21st meeting. Thank you, Mr. Bachmann. Are there other commentaries? Can you see me? Sorry, I'm losing people on the screen here. Ms. Pat? Okay. Thank you. I'm sorry. Yeah. That's okay. So safety means different things to different people. And so in one of the items that stays collecting data from people's experiences in Amherst, are we only just going to limit that to people's experiences with the police department? Or are we going to expand that to the school system, to the business community, to the town government? So I think some of the items are very broad and I need clarity as to, you know, what we have here, you know, what we'll be working with. Are we going to expand some of these items beyond police? Ms. Walker? Hi. So I just wanted to also add that I think if we're really wanting to examine what community safety means, that that needs to encompass more than just the police department. But obviously the police department plays the major role in our community safety and how that works right now. So we would have to focus on what they're doing and their policies and their training. But we also have to focus on other things like housing services, like access to food, like those things also contribute to how safe our community is. Thank you. Thank you. Other comments or responses to the current commenters within the group? I have a question to the time manager. Is that your understanding with the town council that we can broaden our scope or no? So I think the intent initially was to address the police department and how the police department delivers services because the police department is now sort of the catchall for all services that are being provided by the town. It does reference currently provided through the police department and other means to in terms of community safety. I think you're both right that this is a much bigger topic. But I think this working group at this moment in time should be focused on the narrow or what do we do as opposed to and then say and we need to do more work on these other topics as well. That's my impression. But it's up to you guys. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Pan. Other comments? I have a comment. I'm just waiting till the end or last. Ms. Owen. I just had a question again about safety and to see if we were going to address pandemic in regards to safety. Just in how the CDC guidelines are being enforced access to PPE and also access to mental health services. Would that also fall into the category of community safety? That's an important question. Certainly it's not just important. It's critical to find answers to that particular question, Ms. Owen. And I think I would go so far as to say that's on everybody's mind, although you stated it. And I think it's an important contribution. Again, I think if as we're hearing the comments coming forward right now, and I'm also looking at our agenda too, there's a lot of overlap in what I presented as our agenda to the meeting. And much of it is around research and study, but it also is being directed at how we make recommendations to frame policy and practices. And I think there's this overlay of the coronavirus, which just adds another layer of complexity to it all. But that notwithstanding, I think we have an immense charge before us. I saw some of us smiling when we realized our first report had, you know, as expected by January 15th. And, you know, full respect to Mr. Backelman and others. I know you have to set some hard deadlines sometime, but it's up to this committee to really decide on what direction we need to do initially to set a strong foundation, even if it takes us beyond a certain deadlines. We don't want to do something that's going to set an unstable foundation just to meet a deadline. That would be my opinion about that. I think we're talking about study. We're talking about research. If you look at those the charge, you're looking at words like exploring, collecting, examining, reviewing, that takes time and study. And while we can put some speed to that, we don't want to do something at the expense of not, you know, studying it enough to make good recommendations instead of firm foundation for future work in this town. So I, you know, in terms of response to the town, I would say that, yes, this group is going to work as hard as they possibly can. And, you know, we certainly can build an agenda, you know, for the next meeting that gets us, you know, if not chest deep, neck deep in this work before the holiday and beyond, I think all of us are capable of making those kinds of contributions. And, you know, we certainly do the best we can. Any other comments to, just because I'd like to move on to beyond the charge to maybe sort of blend some of these other items I mentioned in the agenda. Any other comments from the community? That's fair. Well, I think the Sheena had her hand before. So I'm sorry. Yeah. And then I'll go after her. Ms. Bowman. So the thing I was thinking about was that, and why it's kind of like essential for the police to be the center of this is because I really feel like, and especially after watching all the like protests and whatnot over the over the spring and the summer, the police forces in communities really set the tone. They really like they really, when they're working with the community, they can make some terms, keep something really positive. And when they're working against the community, they can really be destructive. And, you know, I feel like it's really necessary, especially because of the history of policing itself in this country.   I called 911, the police showed up. I was like, you can't do nothing. What are you doing here? But the idea is that, you know, they, they need to have the information to like they, they, we need to be working directly. We need to see what we're there at and we need to, we need to really look into researching like, okay, do you know that the reason why you do this is because of this and that this needs to change because this doesn't work anymore. You know what I'm saying? Like we really need to be looking into that. And I think that that's very, very essential going right off the bat. Because I feel like it's been, not only has it just been too long in general, country wise, but it's been too long in, you know, community wise, there were police officers who have retired that I do in high school, you know what I'm saying? And they're police officers now that I'm like, I see them and I have no idea who they are. And I, and I don't know that that is a good thing. I mean, I don't think it's a good thing, you know, it's like I'm on Facebook, I'm on like social media a lot. And there are officers that I follow who are very, very active in the community. They show up to every football game. They show up to every like, you know, possible whatever events happening because they really want to know who their community is. And um, but we have to take it a step further. And I think that if you can change the tone of how the police are responding to things and how they're moving through our community, then it's a lot easier to change the tone of like how these other, you know, businesses are responding to, you know, you know, people of color and not being, you know, racist in their practices. And, you know, even when the police show up, like them not being racist in their practice, if we're already starting with them, because looking at them as being central. So I just, I don't know. I just feel like they're central. Thank you, Miss Bowman. I think Ms. Freire, are you deferred to Miss Bowman? Yeah. A moment ago.  And I, you know, and I agree a lot with Tashina and why ask that question initially is just to kind of have some clarity so that we have some clarity as a working group. Because we do have a tight deadline, even, you know, the second report in June, you know, that will come before we know it. So for me, it's like, you know, how do we focus, right? And how do we make sure that we get the work done that we need to get done? And I do agree with Tashina even from before when she said about EMT and fire department, because that was my idea too. But I wanted to hear what folks have to say. But then I think if we, if we kind of go beyond that and go into all, because obviously we can go into so many different areas, right? You know, in terms of issues of social justice is really broad, right? In terms of what? And I think some of the areas that that that's that we're going to be talking about is going to be tendent, tangential, right? It's going to come into even some of these things that we're going to be focusing on. But I definitely do agree that we need to focus on like have a focus of the police as a focus just because the police have that power, right? That power to be lethal, to be coercive, to hurt, you know, people.  So, you know, I think we have a great opportunity here to really dissect that, right? And bring some reform around it. So, you know, for me, this is my opinion, obviously, we need to kind of decide that I don't want to bite off so much that we more than we can chew that then we don't do, we just do a little bit of everything and not do, you know, a whole lot of one or two things, right?  So. Of the input and thought and sentiment around that, Ms. Ferrer is certainly welcomed and appreciated by at least me, if not everybody else here, I'm sure they do. And I think one of the things is I, as we're coming together, this is a working group. And I think it has that name for a reason. It has to get to work. This is not like it comes from kind of a committee. And it has to engage in and complete some tasks in a way that gets some things done, as I said, to lay the foundation for the work that's going to go forward. This committee is not going, this working group is not going to be the sort of savior of our community. It's going to be the group that this community is relying on to, again, set the foundation, set the path going forward and come to, you know, help this community understand what it has and doesn't have with respect to full safety and health and well-being of our community across a number of realms, and which you've, Ms. Ferrer identified. So again, I think if you go back to the charge, if you see what we're being asked to do, there are a number of things in that charge. But I like to offer, you know, for our committee to think, our working group to think about is I differentiate these things sometimes between what's important and what's essential. Everything on here is important. There's nothing I see on here that's not important. But what's essential that may need to happen before January 15th? What's essential that may need to happen before, you know, June 30th when another report comes out? And I think we have to, you know, position ourselves and set ourselves up to do this kind of work. And that said, I think there are a couple of things in our agenda and, you know, although the, as I said earlier, some of these things may overlap, but there are a couple of things in our agenda that I think are essential right now, if I may, to get us moving. And there were several things brought up that I know people want to talk about. And I'll just put three of them out there. The process for broadening and collecting community input. One of the things I want to say about that is that we have, as an intention of this group, is to outreach to local community organizations and agencies to find out what the concerns are, what the needs are, what the suggestions are in terms of what these agencies and organizations would like to see with respect to safety and well-being in our community. And that includes the police department, among other people. Related to that is what was brought up by Ms. Bauman was that we just can't go willy-nilly out there asking a bunch of questions and quizzing people and having coffee with them. We have to have a plan for what are the, what are the essential questions we're going to be asking groups so that when we collect information it's coherent and we can use it in making recommendations to any kind of reforms or improved practices that we might be talking about. That's one thing. There's a concern, a concern and a need to outreach to our community in terms of dialogue. I know that's something this committee needs to talk about. And we need to talk about formats for how to interface with these individuals and groups in our community as we do the work. We can't be in isolation. So I guess I'm trying to narrow it down. I've named like three things in this agenda, putting a couple of other things on the back burner to say what I'm suggesting strongly to the committee, I keep on this committee. It's a working group. So the working group is that we make a decision to focus on what it is we want to find out from this community. What do we need to know? Whether it's collecting data, whether you know from the police department or any other agency in this town, whether it's having conversations with people and how we do that. Those kinds of things because I think that's going to give us the information to go forward. I'm saying that to set the stage for what I think should be our work right now is to make a decision on how we want to approach the community. We have a lot of issues to talk about how we want to approach the committee, the community, and how we want to make sure they're heard in this process as we develop our recommendations. So I would really like to hear from others I haven't heard from right now in this group and I'd welcome your input on that. So I just want to let you know that Russ Fernand-Jones and Alicia Walker have their hands raised. Thank you. Who was first? I didn't recognize it. So I saw Russ's because his was on. It's fine with me if Alicia goes first. Okay. Sorry about that. They're on the other page. I couldn't see them. Yeah, I've got almost a full screen of the charge and the purpose. So I'm losing a lot of people on the right side. Alicia, please. Thank you for waiting. So I just need how to clarify in question. So I'm looking here at the purpose A is to make recommendations on alternative ways to provide public safety services to the community. And then that is basically what our first report that is due on January 15th is. Alternative options to public safety services currently provided by the Amherst police department. So I guess what I'm wondering is, so would we be looking for alternative? Can't hear you. We just lost you. Can you repeat, Alicia? You're muted. You're not muted. Sorry. I think my computer froze for a second. Yeah. So I'm just wondering if, like, if that was our intention there. Other, I can respond, but others want to comment. Russ. First of all, let me point out that if you take your cursor and put it between the shared screen and the videos, you can actually slide the shared screen left and enlarge the area of video so you can see the whole group in gallery view even while we've got something shared on the screen. The way I read the first, I mean, same two things I think that Alicia was pointing to the first part of the charge and the first report. Part of the way I understand that question is, are there some responsibilities currently assigned to the police that would be better dealt with in some other way?  And I think if we start with that as one of our guiding questions, it will lead us to deal with what are the other mental health services in town? What do EMTs do? What, you know, how can things be divided out? But if we start with that question, I think it'll take us further. I also think that, I mean, in my mind, I've envisioned both that we would have at least one sort of hearing when anybody who wanted to show up and we encouraged lots of people to come and show up, could get a brief time to talk to us and maybe we take an entire meeting just to listen to people and we might frame a few questions for that. And then I imagine that we might also want a meeting. There are a couple of groups that have really been grappling with these issues. We might want to invite a group in where we would have some back and forth with them as part of a meeting. Those are sort of two different ways of interacting with groups. But we probably, if we're talking about a short timeline, we probably ought to get some dates set for those and begin to make a list of who are the groups and people we want to be sure to hear from. And I do think there's also a dual thing here. We need to hear people's perspectives in order to guide our work and people need to know that they've been listened to in order to trust our work. And I think we need to do both. Comments on Russ's offering, please. Ms. Owen. I think that's a really great point. One thing that I'm also interested in learning more about is what the ideal COP in Amherst looks like. I think that if I was able to understand how law enforcement works, like in regards like how do people get promotions and what is an ideal COP, I'd be able to kind of do more efficient work in this. For example, I work very closely with the Department of Children and Families. A good social worker is somebody that's able to close as many cases as possible. But just closing cases really mean well-being. No, not always because you're closing a case, you're limiting a family's resources and you're turning a blind eye to abuse and neglect that could happen once that case is closed. So I guess I'm interested to know more about the structure of what an ideal COP is. Like I hate this idea that crime has become like a sales point for the amount of arrests that a COP can make or the amount of convictions that a COP can get. And I guess I'm just interested in what that looks like in the town of Amherst. Thank you. Other comments? Yeah, I guess for me, so this is Deborah. I guess for me, I think what Brianna was saying, I'm in agreement with too and what Russ was saying too. But I guess in the order is like, I would like to know a little bit more about Amherst police, have a little bit more data about Amherst police, how they respond, who responds, who shows up, what they're doing. Again, they're hiring process promotions because I'm really interested in who gets hired and who's there. A little bit more information, maybe even have some kind of homework for our next meeting to kind of discuss that so that then we can frame the questions. I think we need a little bit of information to frame the questions and then talk to the community. But I don't think that that I think if we set up meetings right to say, okay, this meeting we're going to meet to kind of discuss some of this data and then already have some other meetings set up with the community so we don't lose momentum, I think that would be great. But I think I need a little bit more information before I just go and talk to the community without having that background. I think embedded in Russ's comments and clearly articulated in Russ's comments is that there's a need to collect some data. And I think if you look at the top charge, if you will, to recommend reforms, we can't recommend anything that's going to be of any substance without knowing what already exists or doesn't exist. So I think looking deeper into that would be important. In the police department, it was not by accident that they were prioritized in this. So let's be clear about that. So that is one place I think we can focus with our questions or our data collection or our conversation, if you will. And that might be a better focus for us at this point. As we're talking about this, I'm thinking about, as I'm looking at these things, could we divide ourselves up in a way that we send a couple of people in one direction to pursue a particular line of questioning or data collection, another couple of people to work on some other aspect of this charge. And I mean, in the third group, if you will, to extend it to work on another piece. I'm not sure what those pieces are, but I think it would enable us to hone in on both the research and data collection and certainly the questions we're going to ask. And by default, we may gain some answers to other questions that we probably want to ask, just like your response to thinking about that sort of structurally. Ms. Pat, did you have a comment? I saw your hand raised. Yeah. Actually, Mr. Paul, I was thinking in the same way you just stated, I think in order for our work to really move forward, we have to have some sort of subcommittee or group, whatever we call it, to get some work done. And in terms of the police department, I don't know much about how the structure is, the organization. That's something that I'm interested in knowing. And several years ago, when I joined a group about racial profiling, I'm hoping that that's one of the data we'll be able to collect, at least for 20-year span. If we're asking residents to express their experiences and if we're not able to collect racial profiling data from the police, I'll tell you guys right now, it will be a problem. Because we tried many years ago, it didn't happen. So I'm hoping that will be part of our charge with this group to collect racial profiling data. Thank you. Well, as many of us know, data doesn't inform a lot of decisions we're going to make along the way and also inform our discussions. I don't want to get necessarily caught in the data trap, but I think we have to certainly do that while simultaneously determining a way to keep our community engaged and embrace their need and willingness to contribute to the conversation that's going on. I see that as, in a way, two separate things. So, Ms. Paddock, thank you. I mean, I think we can do that. I do see the police department as probably a very critical data collection point. And I'd like to hear what the working group would like to think about focusing on that with our questions and inquiries around the kinds of data we might want to ask for to help us do our work. Paul, you suggested some small groups might meet. What are the open meeting law issues if three of us, not an official subcommittee, but just three of us were to get together and try to come up with a comprehensive list as we could of the information we want from the police department. And maybe three others were to get together and think about what are all the different parts of the public we want to invite in, and what are some of the questions we might ask them. Can that be done under the open meeting law? Well, I would defer to Ms. Moisten and Mr. Backemin on that. I would hope that we could do something that like that, but not at the expense of exposing ourselves to violations of the open meeting law. And I don't want that to be able to crimp our style. But this is the work of the committee, of the working group. So, I'd like to hear Ms. Moisten and Mr. Backemin's comment on that. So, if I may, once you assign a group to do something, that's a subcommittee, whether it's a quorum of the larger group or not, they're still acting, so they're still subject to that. The way the council does it is that they say, the president of the council, in this case would be your chair, says, give me all the things that you want and send it to me individually, not to reply all. And then the chair collects the information and says, okay, here's the list of everything that we want to, and then sort of manages that, manages that to the police department, fire department, whoever it needs to go to. So, that's one way to do it. I mean, you could also utilize your staff person to do that as well, or both. Yeah. Well, Paul, I just want to ask you about B, Backemin. I'm Mr. Riley. I wanted to ask you, you had mentioned a consultant or what have you. So, what does that mean? Because in terms of data and getting information, just for knowledge for us, so we know, you know, what else we could do in terms of getting information and research, possibly. Yeah. So, I mean, I didn't have a clear concept of what you might need and what you might come to saying that this is what we need. And so, you certainly have the ability to that we do have to follow procurement laws in terms of hiring and all that kind of stuff, because we are the government, but we can facilitate that as a professional contract with someone to, if you said, we want to have, maybe there's another community that's already done something that we can do some research on and we can learn from them, you know, for instance. But if you said, doing a survey of our community isn't adequate, we really need to have someone who's going to reach into communities that, you know, who are not responding to a normal survey. We need more targeted surveying of people or outreach into community, certain communities. So, it just gives you the ability to say, we need some support on these things once you identify where that support is, we can go out and help find that. That's not very clear, I'm afraid. That's good to know. That was somewhat clear, at least to me, was that there's a pathway by going through the chair to articulate what needs to happen. And I'm asking that question of Mr. Bonkelman. Yes, that's clearly okay to do, right. But it would also be possible for three of us to meet if we actually post the meeting and... Right. Absolutely. So, if we were to do something like that and posting a meeting within the, you know, certainly the open meeting law guidelines, et cetera, we could hold such meeting to have a discussion about whatever we want to do. It doesn't have to be like this meeting, necessarily. Would we also have to have all of our members in that meeting or quorum? No, you can have a subcommittee of any number as long as they post the meeting. If you have a quorum of this body, then you'd have to post a quorum of... They post a meeting for this entire body as well. So, if you have more than four people show up and, you know, again, with the council and other committees, sometimes that happens. They're having a committee, but they know a lot of counselors are going to be interested, so they post it as a meeting of the whole, basically. I see. Okay. I actually like that. I just feel that's the only way we can, you know, move forward if we can have subcommittee post the notice. I think that would be much more efficient, I think. So, in terms of, I don't know if this is... Well, procedurally, and I guess this is to Mr. Bochleman, procedurally, if I were to ask this working group to funnel questions and inquiries and next steps to me as chair, then I could collate that information, schedule another meeting, and we could work to organize that in a way that, you know, launches us forward on what we want to do. Yeah, that's certainly possible. And then you could even say, for this group of questions, we want to assign these three people to go off and do that research and meet with the people they need. Or you may say, let's... This is a big enough topic. We want to bring people into our meeting and learn from them, you know. So... That was going to be my next question, because I think that gets back to the offering that Mr. Vernon Jones was saying about, you know, again, engaging this community in a way that's fruitful and transparent. So, if we have that option to do that, that would be useful to me. And make a suggestion. So, one thing you might want to do is, like, you're in the information gathering phase right now. You're trying to figure out, what are the questions that we should be asking? So, maybe you take a segment of your next meeting, the next three meetings, and say, we would like to invite people from the social services community and pick someone from Craig's Doors or family outreach, whatever, you know, people who are working in that field. Maybe the next time you invite someone from the police department and fire department, here's a list of questions that many of you raised already, like, what kind of training do you do? How what's the perfect cop or whatever it is, the kinds of questions you might want to ask. I think if you look into January, I think the big sort of public outreach, if you picked a date in January for your big public outreach, you know, maybe the second Wednesday in January, you might say, that's when we really want to reach out to the public.  That's sort of a very structured way of doing it. So that's my idea of the comments from the group. I just feel that whatever we're doing, that we when we start doing outreach or trying to gather information that we start off with the people that were most impacted. Yes, we will reach out to agencies. What comes to my mind, the leaderships are white people. I think we will reach them, but I would like to see something like gathering information from the police. I'm okay with that. And then the next group to gather information from should be people of color who are most impacted, trying to get information in terms of what they will see as a perfect, ideal community for them.  I'm not offense, but I just want to make sure that we don't start off with the traditional groups and then come later after thought to the people that are most impacted. I just want to make sure that we consider that when we defeat up our tasks. And I would hope that if we're getting, if we want data from town departments that much of it could be asked for in writing, then we have a record of their answer and can have that to reflect on. Well, that would be important. That's part of our, I guess, our research archive, if you will. I mean, and that could be, you know, that would be something we would use, not just in the initial stages of our work, but as the work continues, moving down forward, we can back reference that information that's going to inform our work. And we'll be collecting information. We'll be collecting resources as we've already done, people gone to, you know, this recent webinar, for example, there's going to be some readings. So I think there's a lot of ways to store and archive these pieces of information and use it to our advantage to support the community. Other comments? Yeah, I guess for me, it would be like since we're talking about no kind of framing questions, what are the questions that we need to ask and things like that? And we can kind of know those questions. One of the things that I think we could at least get started doing is just maybe today still, if we could decide, okay, what do we need to kind of, you know, act? What are the questions that we need to ask based on, you know, which topics, right? So the police, we need some data from the police. What are the questions we need to ask from the police? And then maybe get, all of us can get those questions to you, Paul, right? And then we can formulate, you know, a document in terms of that and then see, okay, are those the questions that we want to ask and so that we can get that data, you know?  So, you know, we should be funneling those to you so that at least we can start getting some questions and then maybe also creating what are some of the reading lists that we need to start reading, you know, for the next meeting and stuff like that. And we can get that to you or we can start getting that together today. I mean, you know, these are some of the things that I'm kind of thinking about. If we could do something like that, and this is, thank you, Ms. Ferrer, and it's going piggybacking off of following Mr. Bachmann's recommendation that if this gets funneled to a certain place, you know, it can be collated in a way that we can actually say, you know, we can say, get this information to me by such and such a time. We can schedule another meeting and we can have a coherent conversation about how we want to organize this information or how we want to do it, who we want to subgroup this out to or whatever. And have a real working meeting in that way. And that would be the focus of that meeting, there would be no, we're not talking about our general feelings and upsetness about certain things, but we'd be really focused on and task-oriented. So yeah, you know, I feel that support that. And somebody else had hands up. I saw, I don't know, Ms. Owen, did you have your hand up? I did, but it was just to second Mrs. Pat, what Ms. Pat was saying before, just about being careful about reach out to agencies before people of color from the community, just because I work in the nonprofit world and there is a lot of white faces and there is a lot of barriers and implicit biases with people receiving services there. So I don't think they're able to tell the whole picture. Yeah. Thank you. So I kind of want to jump the hook a little bit. Also, as we continue to do this work, if anything comes up like, you know, getting a consultant that we are very mindful of who the consultant will be, I would personally would like to see people of color in whatever alternative programming that we come up with, that they be in the leadership role, they be the people really doing the work, if the council approves them. I just want us to have that in the back of our mind. I read some articles on the Denver Star, on the Kuhu, whatever. And as I was reading, some of them were existing agencies. And while I'm impressed with some of the alternative programming, the answer I couldn't get is who is running these agencies in those communities. So I hope MS will be different. I would like people of color, whatever we come up with recommendations to be the people in charge. That's all I want to say. Thank you. It seems like our conversation is narrowing down a bit to a point where there seems to be some consensus about funneling information to the chair with respect to questions and next steps. And that this would be collated. And this is kind of a question forwarding a recommendation for a meeting to deal with this and move beyond where we are at this point. I think these questions and information would help us do that. Am I on the right track? Am I missing something? I think you're on the right track, Paul. I would appreciate it if we could have an understanding that when we send things to you, you would not edit them, you would simply organize them, but that we would see back everything that anybody sent in. And it can be and Paul Bachman, this may be a question for you. We can create a packet for a meeting and send out something in advance. We have a chance to look at it and study it. I think that would be an important part of this. That's a point well taken, I think, for the entire working group as well. And I think Russ is speaking to a point that deals with our overall intention of transparency. First of all, you don't want me as your editor. Okay, let me start there. Second, I think if you don't take information as it's presented to have conversations about what was presented, then you're misrepresenting it. Despite default. So the point Russ is well taken, whatever it comes can be rearticulated in a way that fully represents what was received without the editing, without the commentary, anything like that. And I think that's a point well made and the point we should all take well as a group. It's Moisten. So I just wanted to add on to Mr. Vernon Jones comment. So there is on the website on our web page there is a section for packets. Today only the charges in there because that's all we had. There's a separate link for the agendas. And there's also a link for the meeting recordings. And there's also a link for the approved minutes once they've been approved, like such how upload them for tomorrow. So all of that information can always be found on the website. And I our next meeting is scheduled potentially for the 9th. So I don't know if we if you guys can get your questions and as soon as possible. And perhaps I can send up the packet on a Monday and then people can have it for review then. But I'm here to assist you and with those types of administrative tasks. Well, time. Time is a of essence. The task is deep and broad. So I would encourage, if I may, this working group to funnel that information to me in a in a way that I can actually put it together and have it. I can work with Ms. Moisten to to see that it's in everybody's hands by Monday. Is that what you're saying is Moisten. And that and that we have it at our next meeting and that would be the primary the focus of our agenda for that meeting outside of the other pieces that we are required to do, certainly. I'd like to hear the group's comment on that. It's Friday too soon instead of Monday to submit stuff to you. Friday too soon. Is it too soon? Sooner or better. Sooner or better to submit to me. I guess what I'm saying is, you know, is that too soon for everybody to submit stuff to Mr. Paul? Oh, I see what you're asking. Yeah. Oh, there's need to answer that. Nobody. Okay. Monday. Yeah, I would be better with Monday. I'll just put it out there. But obviously, I think like you said, you know, anyone can submit it to you earlier than that. But I know I submit it earlier. That's great. If you can submit it by Monday. I'm not too familiar. This is this is my first time as a chair of a of a committee in the town. But in terms of I go to Mr. Bachman and Ms. Moisten. In terms of getting all that information collated and out to people. Is there a time on Monday? That we have a deadline for. No, the packets can be sent out. I was just at any time I was just before the meeting. I was just thinking that if people had the bulk of it or if people had submitted by Friday, then you have the weekend to collate it and then I can send it out on Monday to the group so that the group has Monday, Tuesday and the better half of Wednesday to review the information. And I think we came back to the question that Ms. Pat is asking, you know, if it doesn't come by Friday, I will work between football games on Sunday to make sure it gets put together. But I think that Deborah was saying that she needed more time. I know that's insane. So I and I think that that's fine. I think that we can still go ahead and move forward with whomever and I can always add stuff to the packet at any time. So that's not a problem. Does that work better for you, Deborah? Okay. Yes. Yeah, thanks. Yeah. I was actually thinking about you, Ms. Jennifer, when I made that comment about Friday deadline because I don't want us to take you for granted. I know you have another workload too. So I want to make sure that you have some time to correlate and put things together for us. Oh, Paul's correlating it. I'm just sending it to you guys. Okay. Okay. Talk manager then. I want to make sure that you have enough time to do that for us. Oh, no, not talk manager, Mr. Wiley. You can change my name to Jennifer. You can change my name to Jennifer. It's two hours. I know what I'm talking about. I was thinking about Jennifer sending stuff to us on Monday.  Well, I've tried to take some notes as we were talking here and just wondered whether it would help us to have a list of what it is we're invited to send you. And what I have so far is who do we want to invite to talk with us? And that might be particular individuals or types of people or types of groups. How are we going to gather them or recruit them or contact them? What questions might we want to ask them, invite them to address? What questions or data do we want from the police department? Are there questions or data we want from other departments now? And are there readings that anyone would like to recommend to the rest of the group? I don't know. Well, that's everything. But that's that's what I got just trying to keep track of what people had said. Anyone want to comment on that or add to it? I had a couple of those down. But not a couple of others that you had, Russ. Can you read it again? I'm sorry. Yeah, or maybe even or maybe even could you could could Russ, could you send that to Jennifer so Jennifer can send that to us? Because then we'd have it. Yes, because because it's been said in the meeting, it's now it's in the meeting. It's legit to send out, right? Yeah, that would be good. I can I can send that list to Jennifer tonight. And I just would like to say to like the PD, I'm do you guys want them to respond to your questions and written and I know this is jumping but that might be one of the questions and you kind of touched on this. But do you want them to come to a meeting and speak or do you guys want them to like the chief of police or do you want them to answer the questions and writing? So for me, for me, I would prefer for them to send it first and writing and then yeah, and then we would follow up with the kind of in person. Yeah, conversation. Yeah, I'm sure we'll want to talk to the chief of police and maybe other police down the road but and I don't know whether we asked them directly or whether we asked Mr. Backelman to ask the police department to do all this work. Yes, so so that the information you would was sent to me and we will divvy out to whoever needs to do it and for any of the anybody you want us to reach out to we can do that will provide any kind of administrative support that you would like unless you choose to do it yourselves because you might want to have that touch yourselves but but for town staff that would all go through the town manager's office. Great, I appreciate hearing that and also I think again circling back to the spirit of this again it's not just collecting data and having us analyze it but at some point having conversations about this data with our community you know and and and having some transparency about what it is we're trying to do as a group you know so that you know we we continue to build some trust in this community and I think there's some trust there but this there's not a whole lot in some sectors we put it that way so how best to do that will come from our you know our ability to collect the data and use it in a way that's going to be informative and helpful so any other I see where I said we're going to do this for about I think we're going to settle two hours I think it's two hours just about right now are there any other comments that people want to make before we move to the next piece? I just wanted to say that the Marti School from the League of Women Voters of Amherst contacted me and they have done a report on and they are asking to present it to you so the report is racial inequities in Amherst and how they gathered that information and so they they are asking to present. Okay so this this comes back to again I I think was a point you know Mr. Vernon Jones raised about inviting people in how soon do they want to do that and how soon might we want to listen to that? I think that they will whenever you give them an invite they will be happy to come present and so whenever you guys are ready. Okay let me ask right now because that's a that's a pretty substantive topic and it might inform our work I don't know how long they would need to present I don't know if it's something that they might be able to send us prior to this next meeting that could be in a packet that we could review and possibly put them on the next meeting. I don't want to undermine the work we have to do in the next meeting although I would certainly value and appreciate the the information they'd want to share and I'd like to hear from the group to see if any comment about that any concerns. Ms. Pat. Mr. Paul I like your suggestion if they can send us the they can send the document to Ms. Jennifer and maybe Ms. Jennifer can include that in the packet. I'm very hesitant at this point I'm a member of you know legal women's mostly made up of white folks and I appreciate many many many of them are our allies but I think we should hold off on the group coming to present we will have them at some point in the future that I would like to like read up on whatever information we're trying to collect at this point I think we should hold off on having groups come to present at least for next two weeks if people are okay with that and if we're going to have groups to come and present to us I think we should start with people of color who are most impacted groups first is what I would like to see. Thank you Ms. Walker I think you had a comment here. Yes sorry so I actually agree with Pat and Anabaku and I think that I am interested in the information and I'm interested to hear what they have to share with us and I think it would be important and essential information and I just think that we should absolutely prioritize the community of color and if there are any organizations that are ran by people of color in this community I think we should try to stay informed by them first and see what we're missing there and I also think we should just start with our questions like as a base for next meeting and focus on that then but I also don't think we want to wait too long to start gathering information. Thank you. I see a lot of head nods and it doesn't constitute a vote nor do we need to have one on that but just take that before as good information and counsel. Any other other comments? In our agenda we had you know in the structure of the agenda was upcoming events I think next thing for us the upcoming event is our own meeting actually but I don't know if there are any upcoming events that you all know from your personal and professional lives that you may want to share with this working group that again may interface with the work of the group and you may want to have us be knowledgeable of it. Yes Ms. Oner. I don't know if you guys would be interested but at the focus program that I run I do a lot of outsourcing because obviously I'm not like an expert in psychology and like clinical work um in like in the uh in January February March we're doing different in services from organizations in the Valley on healthy masculinity um keeping people healthy during a pandemic ran by the Pioneer Valley Suicide Prevention Board and stuff like that. Would those be events that you guys would be interested in learning more about and be sharing? What is the name of your organization again? I'm sorry. Oh no it's okay so I work for an umbrella nonprofit called Friends of Children and I run the focus program. Okay yeah I would think I would have to share yeah. Definitely um I will definitely include you guys in on that the in services that we do are super awesome and I just think that each different unique organization in the Valley has a different expertise that maybe they could share with us and it's always good to get everyone on board with that type of thing. Sounds good so Ms. Moison as this appears in the notes is this also uh links and things like that gets Ms. Owen shares with you and it appears in the notes how does that work? Um yes she can share and I just also wanted to let everybody know that on our website we have a community calendar so for events as such you can go and um submit them there they'll be approved and then or pending you know assuming that they're approved be listed on the website and it actually sends out an alert to anyone who has already signed up for the calendar alerts so it's just a good way if you guys have other meetings that or workshops that you know that are going on that she can get people involved and we can um I don't know Paul what do you think about placing these things on on as links as resources we can have a resource section so if you send me the links then I can add those things to the link as well. So for example uh just to follow up with that um you know all all of us I'm sure I know the people who I've known for four years are also doing a lot of reading and uh they're involved in their own research around topics related to our work here so we personally have um resources articles videos webinar whatever it is uh related to this work same funnel to you that goes into the resource bank. Yes I can I mean you can put them add them to the resources links. Yes thank you okay just want to make sure we all know we could do that um you can have a long list Ms. Moisten you can say that right now um that's a quick comment. Yes it's that a comment I want to make is kind of off the point but when Ms. Jennifer mentioned something about resource section actually when I was running my restaurant in town one of the feedbacks many feedbacks I got from out of town customers were like they are shocked and surprised that town of Hermes doesn't have a list of people of color businesses sometimes the the way that people find me believe it or not is through Hermes College website they have me listed there they have some people of color businesses listed there like hairdresser so hoping is one of the things I would like to see in this town to highlight um people of color businesses because we're so invisible I mean my business is hardly there I'm talking Hermes it would be nice to go to some of Hermes website and list people of color their business is here because not because not all of them are members of Chamber of Commerce because we've never been accepted in that organization we're invisible they only interested in collecting our unknown dues so it would be nice to find another avenue where we can raise visibility of people of color that run businesses in this town. Point taken um thank you Ms. Pat um there was a two last things one is the on the origin there was a topic that the chair did not reasonably anticipate 48 hours in advance of the meeting I anticipated everything so I think we're good um the other part is unless anyone has any other comments I'd like to take make um uh solicit a motion for uh adjournment. I think you can just declare the meeting adjourned as chair okay you don't need a vote. Okay thank you Elisha made the motion I'll I didn't hear it but I'll second it. I didn't hear it either I think all of a sudden I thought I was looking at a photo or screenshot to everyone went silent on me and still okay I move that the meeting be adjourned it is uh 7 40 p.m. I want to thank everyone for their contributions and and thoughtfulness and to this meeting and we look forward to hearing from everybody in near future and our next meeting is going to be on December 9. I excuse me I'm sorry yes I just wanted to before we adjourn bring to the attention that we have a question in our questions and answer section is that what I'm still looking for we know I'm I'm getting ready to leave it it's a thank you oh okay yes so I already thought did you see the question that's with it it says many thanks to you all for the thoughtful work there are several mentions of a recent webinar could a link to that webinar be posted is is that the same question that everybody else is yeah okay so I believe that I worked with it I didn't I don't believe I know that I worked with it this afternoon to have the last meeting uploaded to the website but it takes a little bit of time because it's a long meeting so it should be there now hopefully it is on the website and but she I think they were talking about oh she's still there I think they were talking about the the women's what was the meeting that happened with the League of Women Voters when they were signing a bill signing a vote for me they were referring to that as a resource for a link I we could always yeah let's see yes the League of Women Voters webinar yeah that so I can ask um or Pat did you say you're a member of the League of Women Voters yeah do you want me I can forward that to you tonight okay that would be great and then I'll I'll attach it to the website tomorrow in our resources section or a new resources section new resources section thank you yes do I need to readjust your your German time to 742 now yes thank you all very much and for all your hard work and I hope to hear from all of you by Monday have a good evening good night thank you for those of you who are viewing to appreciate your participation and attention to this hard work we're going to be all be doing thank you everybody bye


When conducting research, it can be difficult to identify sources that are credible and useful to your topic because information is complicated. Evaluating the sources you want to use will help you determine the credibility and usefulness. To evaluate a source, the first thing you need to do is stop and check your emotions. Does this topic or source make you feel a strong emotion such as fear, anger, happiness, or pride? Why do you think this source is making you feel that way? Taking the time to make yourself aware of your own opinions and possible biases from the start will help you more accurately evaluate the source. You also need to stop and recognize what you already know. Ask yourself, what do I already know about this source and its claim? You can use the knowledge you already have to help you investigate the source and claim. Next, you want to start investigating the source, and we've broken this process down into four areas. The who, the what, the where, and the why of your source. Each of these areas has questions you can use to help your investigation. Let's break it down piece by piece. One of the first things to look at when starting to investigate a source is the who. Who created the sources? Can you find out more about the author or authors and their credentials? You may need to go further than just the author bio within the source. Go outside the source and investigate the author's background and publications. Some other questions you may want to ask are, is the author an expert on this topic? Do they have personal experience with this topic? Are you able to detect any potential biases they might have due to their past work or who they are affiliated with? That leads to the next set of questions. What is the purpose of this source? Can you identify the thesis or main argument? What information do they cite to support their argument? Can you fact check or verify this information in another source? Another part of a good argument is addressing multiple perspectives on an issue. Is the author looking at the topic from multiple perspectives or do they seem to be ignoring other important perspectives? Often evaluating a source requires you to do additional research on the topic to better evaluate the quality of the information being presented. Next, you'll want to look at where. Where was the source published? Can you find out more information about this publication? Is it a peer-reviewed academic journal? A blog? A web news site? Think like a detective and try to google search for the journal, magazine, newspaper, or blog title. Are others talking about the source as biased or not? The last area shows that it's important to connect sources back to your own research question and purpose. Why is this source useful? Why is this information relevant? How does it enhance your argument? Finding sources for your research is kind of like putting together a puzzle where each source provides a different piece of the total picture. Does this source fill a gap in your research? Finally, circle back. Return to the evaluation process often to take the new information you've gathered and conduct a more effective investigation of the source and information moving forward. If you need help evaluating your sources, you can always ask a librarian.