This is it for the commissioners. And with that, let's call this meeting to order. So that 602 p.m. All right. Agenda item 1.02. We'll call it determination. This is, we have a quorum and we're all here. Uh, so. Item 1.03 additions and or modifications to the agenda. I'll take any additional modifications to the agenda at this time. Commissioner. I'd like to move to, uh, uh, remove item 5.04 from the agenda. All right. I second that. Uh, any questions or comments? I'm sorry. I'm not here any to put that to a vote on favor of removing agenda item 5.05 to a later date. Oh, sorry. 5.04. Moving to a later date, raise your hand to say, I. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Question. Is the, is the proposal that we move it to a later date? To suppose that we remove it from the agenda today. We hold it. Sorry. I'll remove it. Um, I'll move to a later date. And then we move to a later date. And then we move to a later date. We're moving this agenda item. Please raise your hand to say, I. I. I. That passes unanimously. Any other. Uh, modifications to the agenda. I'm not seeing or hearing any. So that moves us on to agenda item. 2.01 approval of last meeting's minutes from 323. 21. And do I have a motion to adopt those minutes? Uh, the minutes from the 323. 21 raise your hand to say, I. I. I. That passes unanimously. Um, which moves us on to agenda item 3.01, the public forum. And with that, I hand it to Shannon. Um, so we did have a few sign up. We did have a few sign up. The first is grace Ahmed, then Carly Robert. Robertson Lee Morgan. Liz Curry and Andrew Cranich felled. So grace. Perfect timing. They're grace. All right. Let's come back to maybe we'll have. Oh, let's see again. Many to unmute yourself, Grace. Resolution. Next up is Carly. Robertson. And I don't see. On the list. So Lee. Morgan. Hi, can you. Yes, we can. Excellent. Good evening commissioners, chief mirad and Shannon. Um, I appreciate you all. Um, having this. Uh, agenda item to consider. I'm calling in to encourage you to consider this proposal. Um, I have been, um, Interested in advocating for, uh, Justice for Ralph Jean Marie. And as I was kind of reflecting earlier tonight on. Um, I, um, I, um, I have my statements to make sure I don't forget anything. And I just, like, You know, at one point I just kind of slam my notebook shut. Like, I think at the beginning of the year, I felt kind of like, Like, oh, like this case sounds so weird. And then it's like really developed into, I think it's reached a point of anger. And I think it's, it's like, I think the, the police, the police, the police reporter went across the street from the hotel where Ralph was living at and reported to be last seen. And in the course of a year, the police have not even bothered to interview neighbors across the street or neighbors whose property abuts the hotel. Um, the chief confirmed this. Um, so it wasn't just, it's not just a theory. Um, also it was claimed by police that. Security footage from, uh, uh, stores and businesses along. That the road that Ralph was last seen on that all the security footage had been obtained. This reporter was able to confirm with a business that they were not approached by police for the security footage. And that security footage was deleted after 30 days. So they were like, hey, we need to keep fire, let's be safe so we can keep bomb, but we're confirmed this as well. And you know, I'm sure for the little bit, we do know, there's a lot that we don't know. And I feel like. You know, the chief has over and over again said. That they've exhausted all resources. They've done everything they can. And at this point, they encourage the public to come forward. And now it's time to just move along until a murderer decides to confess. I mean, to me, that just does not make any sense. Especially now we know how lacking their investigation was. And, you know, I understand that for the Burlington police commission to even be discussing something from very city, like, that's, that's unusual. That probably sets a precedent. And I think some people may ask like, well, may ask like well why is that your business and I just don't see why care and concern of a human being ends at city lines and you know there's a lot of things in this country that was done a certain way a lot of quote unquote this is the way things are done and I think we can agree that as we move on from those we become a better we become a better society and there's a lot more we have to do and I so I ask you to really if you're on the fence about this because of a jurisdictional thing just I would ask you to reflect on what you would want from someone in your position if this was your family member and I will just end with speaking of family members Ralph's cousin Fabiola Williams asked me to read a statement from her so her statement is as follows some of you guys may know me but some of you guys may not I am Ralph's older cousin a year ago he went missing without a trace no evidence no nothing it has left me and my family in a hard place I can't eat sleep think or even look at his kids without feeling pain in my chest I'm greatly devastated because this isn't the only black person to go missing without a trace in Vermont considering the conditions you think the police would contact higher authorities to pitch in to figure out what's going on but no since it's a black man it's getting tossed out of the window like the rest of the black files I don't mean to make this all about race but it's the reality I'm living in me and my family me and my family has been to Vermont three times and have come back three times with no good news which is very sad no one should have to go through this we need justice we all need to come together and with that I will end my time thank you I can appreciate that next up is Liz Curry good evening thank you very much for this opportunity to speak at your public forum I am also speaking in support of the resolution on your agenda tonight regarding urging the Barry police department to use the technical assistance from the FBI Lee Morgan who was just speaking did a lot of her own work trying to like document a lot of the events and and I just felt moved to speak because I think that you know there was a fair amount of dismissiveness and I don't know if that is like just practice within the Barry police department but the fact that Mr. Jean Marie is black and homeless it means that you know that marginalization means he's particularly vulnerable to you know the kind of appearance of dismissiveness that that looks like the Barry police department treated this with and and I understand like it I understand there's probably a question having been on the school board for seven years it's it I understand the awkwardness of you know deciding whether to comment on another municipalities you know public officials and and and actions but I think we all owe it to you know we're a small state and people can be pretty parochial and I think we owe it to our fellow Vermonters to look out for them and protect them and when you know there's an appearance of injustice or wrongdoing from public officials I think it's important for all of us to speak up and we want to encourage best practices in all public officials you know all departments throughout the state and you know school districts included I think there's been a couple of greedy things that have happened in other school districts and I did write to those school boards when I was a school commissioner and asked my other school fellow commissioners to write to so I I would ask you to please you know take that step and set an example because I think it creates a culture and climate in Vermont that we want we want to you know say you know hey like people are watching and people care particularly when there's an appearance of racism and classism or you know marginalizing homeless people and and we want I think to set an example and not think about how the that department will feel you know not think about how those police officers will feel that's not really our job our job is to think about how other citizens feel and you know when there's an appearance of injustice to speak up so it's kind of like not being a bystander I guess is what I'm asking you all to do so thank you very much and I appreciate the time. Thank you I appreciate that. Okay next is Andrew Cranichfeld. Hello thanks for having me tonight I just wanted to come and definitely say that I vote for the resolution to say to the Barry police that you should bring in the FBI I think one thing that's really kind of affecting me personally is I just think about the recent article by Colin Flanders in seven days and the part where you know he he literally walked across the street and people said no they never they never interviewed us about anything or did we hear anything you know one person even said something like well if they had asked me a year ago you know I maybe I would have remembered something and I just always think like what if this is my brother I live you know in Burlington with my brother what if the Burlington PD couldn't cross the street couldn't cross the street to see to see if my brother was alive or not it's upsetting to me and you know I don't think you need to go to like a police academy to know like you canvassed the area is across the street in the area of course it's cross it's you know we cross the street 10 times a day without thinking about it it's like nothing and they didn't even do that for Ralph that's all I got thank you so then we have Meg Klein and then we'll circle back to Carly Robinson okay Meg hello yeah thank you for the time here today I'm also in support of speaking up for justice and as an intense polity encouraging Barry to reach out for technical support I've I've been following his disappearance for quite some time since not long after the family started a Facebook page in like desperation to find some information and what I witnessed there was like brutal just brutal from the community lots of discussion about him being a drug dealer and it's what's wrong with our community all the right racist tropes it's just so much racism including you know the assistant director of Barry housing who I wrote an email about and sent screenshots of explicitly racist things she'd said in a fairly public forum so that's the part I've witnessed and it was brutal I know the family has followed up and pressured the police to stay active I just I can't imagine how they feel and I think our we have an opportunity directly to look to the family and the people that cared about him in his day-to-day life to make a statement that justice does matter and that we are watching right and we do care so please please consider that thank you and then Carly thank you for the time sorry I wasn't here sooner when I might have been called I stand in solidarity with the communities with the family of Ralph and the push to bring in the FBI this is my first time speaking at one of these so thank you for having me and I see this as a example of utterly racist neglect and when I say racist I I think it's important to acknowledge that we don't all understand racism to be what it is which is systemic which is the structures that are are not are not just about what we think personally but about the ways in which the intersections in which we're all perpetuating these systems that allow for something like this to happen and so I just want to bring in the point that it's not just this case of course and that we must commit to transforming our system so that no person has to go goes missing without a trace and that there is that there is stuff that's missing in response that there's not a comprehensive investigation like folks have mentioned here and so I would really like to also stand in solidarity with the topics that was discussed last night just about transforming our systems so so we're centering community accountabilities and because we need to bring closure to Ralph Jean-Rae's family and we can't let this to keep happening. Thank you for my time. That is everyone chair that had emailed me to speak. I appreciate that Shannon thank you. Moving on with the agenda takes us to item 4.01 which is the chief's report with that. Chief Mayor. Thank you very much Mr. Chair for having me tonight and having you let me speak. I'll start by talking a little bit about our data and where we are for the year to date as of April 27 so January 1st through April 27 overall call volume incident volume rather I want to clarify their incidents and I've been trying to use the term incidents more than calls because they're not all calls and they don't call they don't all come in as as calls but the volume is down 27.8% for the year through yesterday through the 27th. Now that of course is measuring up against a January and February of 2020 that we're pre-COVID. April 21 so far is actually higher than April 20 which is unsurprising it's slightly higher not very much but it's slightly higher unsurprising owing to the fact that you know I think that we're that the 20 April 20 was actually the very very early stages of the pandemic and in many ways tumbleweeds were moving through various parts of Burlington at the time and we're not there anymore and thankfully I think we're moving in a new direction we've got to be careful about that direction I think everybody here is aware of for example the the date of exuberance on a Saturday down on North Beach where we had a large number of folks who were taking advantage of the first warm weather but we are in a better place as a community so that data is the the overall call incident rather volume the incident volume is down it's down significantly and of course we know that the trend over the past previous years prior to COVID had been in a downward direction as well I remain very both confident and concerned that we will see a significant uptake in the next couple months and through the summer certainly with regard relative to 2020 but I think that we're going to see it relative to previous years as well I encourage everybody to take a look at the open data portal there are there are several venues for open data that the city has up now and they're available both in links through the Burlington Police Department web page on the city website and also directly through the city website and I think there are a lot of interesting ways for people to be able to crunch this data themselves and see trends see specific types of crime and also locate it to specific areas within the city another thing to that I'd like to talk about is we have continued with our our training with trusty loving who has been providing us with iterative bias and anti-racism and cultural awareness training and I think that that has continued to be a good experience for the department the the most recent one was was I think well received involved working on on jihari plots together and actually sort of having groups of of folks in the the room be able to to understand both individuals and personal relationships within the department but then extrapolate that to questions of of bias and of preconceived ideas and notions I have here a note about the Beard request I apologize to the chair and to the commission for getting that to you a bit late I had hoped that we would be able to discuss that tonight and regret that that I was deletory in getting that to you so that it can't be discussed I sent you the email about it and I guess we'll we'll address that in the following but my apologies for that there was a rally for Ralph Jean-Marie here at Battery Park two Saturdays ago we brought in I brought in additional officers with the intention of being able to assist if there had been a march and was in frequent conversation with the organizers of that including some of the one of the individuals who spoke at public forum and was prepared also to participate in that certainly we had a presence if necessary it was I think attended by a small but passionate group people who were who were certainly invested in in that case a we conducted a sergeant's process over the past during the past month it was attended by a former commissioner derpy who I'd like to say I I miss her on the commission I think it's a wonderful promotion for her or not promotion but a wonderful the fact that she is now a department director is great that she is a member the city government team is terrific I really appreciated the opportunity to work with then commissioner derpy in this capacity but not knowing at the time that she was on the list for the HR department I asked her to participate in our sergeant's process and brought her in she gave incredibly generously of her time over two days to help conduct the interview panels and we had a robust process one that we have honed since previous iterations of it and will continue to hone moving forward I want to make certain that we continue to make it as fair as possible I had lengthy discussions with commissioner derpy which is appropriate considering that now she's she's running HR about that and with with others to try to to really make that a process that we can work with our first pro tee from it is going to be our school resource officer Mike Henry will be sergeant Mike Henry starting on May 2nd but he is currently shadowing other sergeants and in the sergeant field training process we conducted this past Monday and all in that's an event where we're able to bring people into the building and sort of have a group sharing of information between the department and leadership and the entirety of the department a this was the first one that we've been able to do not virtually that we're actually the majority of this department is now vaccinated and we were able to be together in a way that we haven't been able to be in a year and that was that was great that was a great experience for everybody we talked about plans for training and the way in which we anticipate having a reinvigorated training budget our budget was slashed by 70% last year owing not to the various sort of movements that that affected the budget discussions in June but rather owing to our own winnowing of the budget because of anticipated revenue decreases owing to COVID we talked about staffing we are about we are at 80 we just had two retirements this week we this just a few hours ago gave a walk out to a retirement a 10 year 20 year retirement from an officer who came and was able to say goodbye to the men and women with whom he's worked for 20 years not a lot of careers where people do 20 years anymore I think that you know there's my father did 35 at UVM I'm aware certainly academia being a place for that but that is is fallen by the wayside in a lot of parts of our society and I think it's a strong part here and one that's it's worth noting that kind of of contribution and tenure but he had his walk out we had a younger officer who left for federal law enforcement and worked his last day earlier this week we are both of those one of those gentlemen is still on our books actually they're both still on our books right now but they're obviously not effective anymore for deployment purposes we are at about 80 staffing wise on the books and we are at about 74 effective we talked a little bit about plans that we are in development that we're working on we're constantly trying to determine how we're going to address that continued staffing decrease as you know the city council authorized the onboarding or the we're allowed to attempt to hire five CSOs in the first half of the coming fiscal year and five CSOs in the second half of the coming fiscal year and we are engaged in that process and trying to identify candidates for it but we know that our staffing will fall before we are able to onboard any of those it will continue to fall and so how we address the call volume that we are dealing with the incident volume we are dealing with while we are also having that decrease is an ongoing discussion and in the leadership circles here we talked a lot about that in that all in in order to share those discussions with officers again talked about the CSO and the the one CSL community support liaison position that we are able to bring aboard the department and are working to that was posted but we are now working on what our hiring process for it will be I talked a lot about service with the officers and my expectations for for service and reminded them of something that I think is important always to keep in mind for officers which is that we currently don't have any real rookies right now our most recent hire was a lateral from Colorado who's been a police officer for a very long time and she's got a lot of experience under her bill and so the the folks that got out of the academy got out of the academy a year ago now and we have people who now have have been to a lot of calls for service they have covered a lot of incidents and what I implored all of them to remember is that it may be the tenth or hundredth or a thousandth time that a officer has gone to a call of type X or type Y but it may be the first time for the person with whom they're dealing and there's certainly people that we deal with who have been on the other side of the equation almost as often as the officers have but they are a they're not the the the larger group the larger group of folks who we deal with people don't call about a stolen car or people don't get into car crashes or people are not the victims of assaults every single day and they are oftentimes in experiencing it for the first time it may be among the most stressful and sometimes traumatic days of their lives and I implored the officers to remember that as they approach these incidents and to really concentrate on making certain that we appreciate that they're coming at this for the first time often. Other expectations talked about data entry the need for improved data entry we are working on on some quality control initiatives inside the department and are going to be pushing that making certain that officers are doing the parts that they need to do so that what we are able to put out and what goes into that open data portal for example is accurate and talked a little bit about overall talk to with regard to service and other issues and data the the continued gaps that we see in data particularly with regard to racial disparity and again what I've told the department in the past that the staffing crisis is not our primary crisis the staffing crisis is a symptom of a of a larger issue with trust and how we work to earn and re-earn and double down on the trust of the people we serve is an ongoing conversation inside the department and last but not least because it definitely was not least I had a long conversation this morning with several female officers who we had sent to a training program in Boston called Women in Command and it was for them a really terrific two-day course they gave me a lot of feedback about it gave me a lot of feedback about the ways in which what they learned could be carried into the department and in which we can work on that I joined about a month ago a program initiative called 30 by 30 and it is a program that's supported by NYU and the policing project in New York City and it pledges what its name says to have a 30 percent female representation in the profession by 2030 that is a lofty goal and frankly for us who are not even allowed to hire it's we can't even begin to address its its crux for the time being but it doesn't come only with the idea of bringing people aboard it also comes with ideas about what you do within the workplace and within the profession to make certain that we are leveraging every single one of our teammates in ways that really get at the heart of what they bring to the table and that was a great conversation that I had this morning I was really really happy to have it and that's my chief's report we do have some things to talk about in executive session but that's what I have and thank you very much for the opportunity to share it. Thank you for that chief. I see Randall's hand raised followed by Shareen so Randall get the floor. Thank you thanks chief so I guess two different areas of questions the first when you said that most of the personnel at BPD now is vaccinated so one question is just do you have any members of the department out of sworn or non-sworn who interact with the public on a regular basis who are not vaccinated and do you have because is there a requirement that for example patrol officers be vaccinated and if if there's no such requirement and if there are some people that interact with the public regularly who are not vaccinated do you have kind of plans for how to mitigate any potential risks to the public if they're back out without masks for example later on in the summer or in the fall etc so that's the first question. The second question and I'll try to ask this question without asking any hypotheticals and without asking kind of weigh-in on cases in other departments but the second question is is it currently a viable are there any BPD policies which are violated if an officer mistakenly deploys a firearm rather than a CEW rather than a taser and of course I'm asking this independent of the question of whether or not it's permissible in that circumstance for a firearm to fire right so putting aside the question of whether that's a permissible use of force is there in and of itself a policy violation for deploying for mistakenly deploying a firearm rather than a CEW and then is what would the kind of potential sanction for that kind of error of policy be if in fact it's a if in fact it's a violation of policy so it's my two areas of questions. Sorry you're muted. Thank you Mr. Chair I apologize. So the first question we are do we cannot require that officers be vaccinated or that any employee be vaccinated we can ask and demand answers so there's no privacy protection in that but we cannot then ask why a person is or is not vaccinated we have a very very small number of officers currently who are not vaccinated it's many fewer I think it's five or fewer and we are although we are following guidelines with regard to mask usage we are still masked in any interaction with the public you are still masked in any operations outside the building and we are and that will that will maintain for the time being even though the CDC has said that vaccinated people don't have to be we will continue to be masked in the public that will continue to be the posture of this agency I don't yet know what we will do once we have gotten as a society to a point where where nobody has to be masked anymore where every mask mandate is removed and yet I do have officers who are unvaccinated I am not certain that I am able to require those officers to remain masked I think that we probably could have a city requirement and frankly the city has been ahead of the curve and has been more generally prescriptive than other entities and that goes for both the state and the CDC and I would not be surprised if the city maintains a mask posture longer than even the federal government does but I don't know for sure that that is the case and it's not my place to speak definitively about it we will follow the city's policy on that and we'll be guided entirely by that and by the law but I can say that for the time being irrespective of vaccination officers are continuing to use masks in public when interacting with the public as I think that answers the first of the question is that okay so as to the second question so you know I think there are very different parameters in which one uses a firearm versus a CEW and if one uses a firearm when that is not a permissible weapon then there's of course consequences if a person to the I think that in both cases in the case you're outlining there are going to be criminal consequences and there have been in the most high profile ones of which we know and that's the two we have the terrible incident with Oscar Grant in Oakland and we have this now horrible incident in Brooklyn center and so those two incidents you know more than more than 12 years apart each led to the officer being arrested and although we're nowhere near a trial or a conviction for the officer in Brooklyn center or whatever that trial outcome will be the officer in Oakland was convicted was convicted and obviously was terminated because we can't criminals don't serve as police officers so that's I think that's the simplest answer is that it's a crime and particularly if the situation is one in which the officer was using or trying to use the CEW because that's what was allowed at that moment not a firearm then to use a firearm is likely going to be a crime I'm sorry if I just follow up really quickly so it's so good so I was hoping to more directly to the to the hypothetical case in which in which it is unclear whether or not the circumstances as they unfold would permit the deployment of a firearm but and so there might be questions about the criminal culpability in this case but at least the officer attests to intending to deploy a CEW instead deploy as a firearm circumstances are unclear whether or not that meets the conditions for use of force but they do say I made a mistake in this case right I used the wrong one is that in itself like is that mere kind of use of the wrong instrument at that moment is that itself a violation of policy it is if the instrument used was not the appropriate instrument was not the allowed instrument you know if and I'm kind of reluctant to tackle a hypothetical simply because every situation is so different and ultimately both the investigation and the due process of that and then the due process of any outcome is going to have to be has to be followed but you know if there are very different parameters for when each of those tools is appropriate and you know I think you're requesting for me to sort of talk about a very narrow hypothetical in which conceivably either one might have been appropriate that's a very narrow set of circumstances and I'm not entirely comfortable talking about a sort of hypothetical outcome there but I'll say that using the wrong tool when it's not when when it's not appropriate is entirely disciplinable and certainly if it's the use of deadly physical force that's something where that discipline is going to include probable termination. Thank you. I'm sure we've got again for a question. Yeah a couple of things the first is Chief I'd just love to know who the was it an officer who retired after 20 years you can just tell us who that was. Sure officer Dominic Broder. Okay thank you. So I think we had several callers tonight and they all spoke about the resolution and they may not have heard at the outset that that was removed from the agenda 5.04 on Mr. Jean-Marie so I'm wondering Chief can you speak to what I'm I'm wondering if you could speak to what could help a smaller agency so maybe not specifically that case but if a smaller department were at a dead end or whatever you might want to say about an investigation could they look to other departments could other departments offer any services. I think folks were thinking this could go to the FBI but I know I don't believe there's jurisdiction in that regard so I'm wondering if you can speak to that because I don't want I know folks have called in with this specifically and I'd hate for there not to be any discussion whatsoever. So I do want to be very careful about not speaking to this case and specifically but speaking about the interactions between police departments you know police departments with sworn officers level two level three police officers independent agencies of independent municipalities are just that they're independent we work together all the time and and we are routinely giving one another assistance when skill sets aren't present in an agency and not necessarily because the agency doesn't have them because it doesn't have them at that moment. We have two canine officers and our neighboring many of our neighboring departments also have canine officers if we need a canine to do a track for example we have a elderly person with onset Alzheimer's who is missing in cold weather we are going to go and help with that one of our officers did just that year and a half ago now and saved an elderly gentleman's life in the Shelburne area. When we have that situation and don't have our canine officers on we call other agencies to assist with canine tracks and so we help each other and bolster each other like that all the time. There's also of course the sort of the largest backstop in the state is the state police and bringing the state police in to assist with evidence collection sometimes with interviews as well is also routine giving a case over to the state police is a little bit rarer usually done when there is some kind of question of jurisdiction or conflict of interest but it does occur even when a case has just sort of reached a cold point and would certainly be the case for example for a cold homicide those the state does have cold homicides that it continues to investigate even though they happened in you know town A or town B. For example now we're a large enough agency and one with enough resources and a history of being able to do things that are cold murder are cold case murders are hours and we have a number that we work on routinely and whenever DSB is sort of not looking at immediate cases in front of it it starts looking at its cold cases again a tiny handful of of murders that have occurred over the past 40 50 years but so we don't necessarily need the state police for that but other agencies do and and use them routinely in that capacity with regard to federal authority you know my my understanding is that there the congress has has very clearly outlined when the FBI has authority when it doesn't and it's it's jurisdiction for state law is generally only for felony killings of state law enforcement officers violent crimes against interstate travelers or serial killers and then there's also a certain and then other than that there's got to be a federal law so terrorism for example that's a federal law that's being broken and therefore the FBI is going to come on in and and generally take that over from a local agency. Serial killers is there's something that there's that's specifically written into U.S. Code but other than that you know they don't do state work now when I work with federal partners on a number of different issues whether it is narcotics investigations whether they are assisting us in something that doesn't have a narcotics nexus but for example maybe narcotics knows individuals who are involved in a case we work together on those kinds of things all the time but that's not a that's not giving jurisdiction or having them take that case that is us requesting assistance from them and and we do that routinely we leverage that kind of those kinds of relationships all the time that is one in other discussions that we've had about for example equitable sharing my biggest argument for that program is that our task force officer creates long-term relationships with our federal partners that allow us to leverage those kinds of extra resources in really really useful ways for keeping the city safe. Thank you Chief. Thank you Stephanie. Thank you thanks Chief Mirad for that and I wanted to reiterate Commissioner Hart's comment that this was removed from the agenda this Ralph Schummery resolution was removed from the agenda in large part because I think we felt we didn't have enough information and I think Commissioner Hart's question and your response Chief Mirad helped a bit I want to just ask you I think you've answered this but just to clarify so some of the discussion sometimes is around jurisdiction but what you're saying then is any agency could consult with the FBI it's not a question of taking over the case but they could consult with the FBI or any other agency to get additional input or support to solve cases. You know we the for example here in Chittenden County the FBI is a member of a group of Chittenden County law enforcement executives we meet on a regular basis and we exchange ideas and exchange you know information and do that kind of thing routinely. Okay thanks. All right any further questions for the Chief with regards to their report. Yes this is Mila Grant I have a couple of questions so the training that you refer to is there a way to get information or documentation that's being provided during that training I'm interested in seeing more detailed about that. Yes I will have our training our administrative lieutenant send you the materials associated with new loving. Okay thank you and then I just had a question so we had a report just kind of an excel sheet that pulled a summary of trainings that have occurred over the last couple of decades and I asked for it to be fine-tuned a little bit with some additional information. Do we have a status update about that I'm not exactly sure who was owning that project was it Shannon? I think I think at the next meeting there's a plan for that. Okay thank you very much. Awesome I see you I see Randall's hand raised. Yes thank you quick follow-up question so if with respect to the training that you and Commissioner Grant were just discussing if a commissioner wanted to attend one of one or more of those training sessions would that be something which was possible? I think we could yeah we could discuss that it is a training that is designed to have the officers training with their groups that's what one of the things that we did with this program was to break it up as opposed to a one and done or a one day we have done it iteratively so each session is done multiple times with the different groups and the rationale for that frankly is to allow the officers to try to feel as as comfortable as possible in a group of folks with whom they work every day and whom they know. I worry frankly that any outsider would and I don't mean to say that it's a loaded term and it bespeaks a problem it bespeaks a problem which is you know one that I felt that bringing not I didn't feel I ended up recognizing that bringing director Dotson in for example was was really important for that for a the ability to get somebody inside who was able to see things in a different way and also become a person he did attend some of those trainings and and was able to sit in on them I think he attended each of the ones that was iterative prior to his his departure and so I'd like the chance to think about that commissioner. Thank you. Hi this is Mila again if it's okay for me to ask well not necessarily ask the question but just to to make a statement we don't have any reporting on director Dotson former director Dotson's experiences so I would be I would following up on what commissioner Harp just requested I would be very interested in that or at least some sort of report on the experiences thank you. Thank you all right any further questions or comments for the chief with the rest of his report I am not seeing any which moves us on to agenda item 5.01 which is the approval the mayor's press conference items which is the misconduct policy and sorry oh sorry thank you chief my colleagues um and so attorney Blackwood um sent us um an updated sorry copy with her revisions and to the document and I guess I guess my question which is directed towards one of the chiefs I'm not sure who can answer this but um with uh with attorney Blackwood's um copy and her updated draft that is um our does the union have any contractual objections to what's what's in this policy right now maybe I think you can answer that I'm not sure who can answer that but um I haven't heard anything I don't know if the department has heard anything back from from the union yes they have expressed some concerns that they feel like portions of it at least violently the collective bargaining agreement okay is it possible to get to exactly which parts that would be and I guess I guess I'll come back to you on that one then honey it go ahead take it chief no you can go ahead so essentially they take issue with section five um and then they reference in the cba section 15.4 g which speaks to employees who are ordered to be interviewed in internal investigations um and they feel like much of the language in section five may violate 15.4 g in the cba because the only people uh that that references the release of the information to is the chief of police city attorney human resources director and department investigator thank you for that uh Stephanie see your hand raised as far as yours uh the comment I was going to make was with regard to the number seven on this so this differs substantially from our original motion and I just want to clarify with attorney blackwood uh with regard to that my understanding is that that language you changed because our original policy which made all disciplinary records open to public records request it contradicts the union contract is that was that the reasoning sorry you're talking about paragraph seven yes uh it was number four I think or five in our original policy but uh it's now number seven um okay and I I am not entirely certainly what I saw of your original and how much it had already gotten changed by the time it got to me so I apologize that I'm not may not be entirely clear on what um on on what originally you said but I think number seven um talks about retention of records and there are um there is in the Burlington um in the vpoa contract right now some information about retention of records and then in addition the city has adopted uh the city has works with the state archivists to determine how and when records have to get um retained under state law um and so generally those are the the guiding ideas I think if the it it certainly has been a a flash point for a number of folks that they want to see uh they don't want to see disciplinary records removed from officer files as quickly and that will have to be an issue that is a collective bargaining in the next collective bargaining round thanks if I might just follow up um so you're correct I was referring to something else not the retention of records so in our original policy uh we had a component of this on release of disciplinary records and following New York state what we were trying to do with this policy was also to make disciplinary records uh public information and I don't see that in the revised version uh that you sent us and I guess I'm not I I think we did we do talk about um in number six release of disciplinary records going forward and and and the idea of this is that that right now and the reason that we put in going forward is meaning so that officers are on notice now that that going forward disciplinary records be released um through public records request because they have not been being released um except that um and then we put in these qualifications for when they couldn't most of which have to do with various legal constraints and happy to walk through those no that that's okay I think it was our intent that this referred not just going forward but also retroactively and I think that yeah that's a little bit of a problem because you know to date no one has been on notice that disciplinary records were would would be released and therefore they didn't have an opportunity to to address that um at at a right time now that doesn't mean we can't and you know we certainly have released disciplinary various records that under this definition that fall under this definition of disciplinary record we certainly have released some of those in individual instances so you know maybe I I'm not sure because you know I apologize that I have I was not able to be involved in your earlier discussions about this um the the the issues here are that the Vermont Public Records Act allows a municipality to exercise certain exemptions to the Public Records Act but some of those exemptions also involve legal requirements to um to not for not make in information public that you know they're easy examples like social security numbers of people identities of witnesses and victims um there there are a number of things like that personnel records at what is private and a personnel record is a little bit more tricky um the there is Vermont Supreme Court case law that suggests that police officers may be slightly different than other employees and or that many public employees may have some rights that are somewhat more limited but it is all on a case by case basis in other words it depends upon the level of misconduct and the level that the balancing between the privacy rights of the individual employee in certain information and the public's right to know about the conduct of their public officials so one of the challenges we had as we were looking at this was how do we write a policy that says we're going to do xyz when the law says it's a bit of a balancing test and if the employee's privacy right outweighs the public interest in getting it then then the we the employer probably can't produce that record but it's not like it's uh black and white does this fit within that or not uh so that's why we that's that's part of the hesitation that that what we've come up with but we are trying here to say we're going to be releasing more than we have been and and that was sort of the idea that i understood from all of you um i might be asking well let me just ask this question in a straightforward manner um some states have made disciplinary records uh part of the public record retroactively in new york state is just was one of the most recent states to do that so i'm curious um what exists in vermont that would inhibit us from doing that that did not exist in new york it seems to me that they had similar hurdles and uh you know just wondering if we can address those hurdles i'm not i don't know the answer to that specific question in terms of like you know i don't know in what way or how but i will say a couple of things one is that as a municipality our authority is somewhat is less we is less broad than a state and a state can pass a statute that overturns other privacy rights that we as a municipality cannot so we have to be concerned about what privacy rights exist number one number two we have a collective bargaining agreement that does have some limitations as to information and in um DC Sullivan cited uh from the union want the a paragraph in the union contract that we are in dispute with the union about exactly what it means and what the extent of the of the right and the release of information is under that um certainly the city has um and the and the union have operated in one way for a long time about certain amounts of information but that doesn't mean that the whole um that there isn't still that there aren't still areas of dispute about that and that is part of why we have had to reference the union contract in this policy okay thank you that's helpful thanks thank you um sorry i have shereen's hand up that's been up for a while she has the floor followed by uh DC Sullivan DC Sullivan were you going to speak to what they were just talking about because i can wait if you were going to yes i was just going to add one point in that the union also brought up that this would be a complete departure from past practice and um city attorney blackwood just touched on that to to some degree and can i follow up that with a question is that specific to um paragraph six on the disclosure of records just preemptively for example it seems like this policy would allow preemptive release of disciplinary records in in some entire manner right as prescribed by this policy which we have never done before so in that sense it is a complete departure from past practice i mean even internally employees have no idea what the outcome was necessarily of internal investigations regarding other employees okay so i wanted to go back to when we first started this conversation i was trying to make comments on the actual document so i forgive me i'm behind about 10 minutes what was the the paragraph from the collective bargaining agreement it was 15.1 that's an issue for paragraph five for section five 15.4 section g point four section g and so there's the um union is saying that section five violates 15.4 g of the cba that is one of their concerns yes okay so we never got through the list it would be i'd like to know you know because if we had one thing that we could carve out and at least get some of this policy adopted i'd be in favor of it if we had advice of counsel to do so but but are there it's more than just five uh they they also express some concerns regarding section six that it's not exactly clear what the intent of the language is which we just touched on also in our discussion here they mentioned going forward disciplinary records of officers shall be released in response to a public records request but then it also i guess they they point out that it also states any information the release of which would violate a statutory or common law privilege or other legal obligation will be redacted so i'm sorry chair do you mind if i ask a couple more questions so um attorney blackwood in a case like this we're so part of the city attorney's review was there back did you say when i was trying sorry not following along very well did you say that there had been an attempt with the union okay so there hasn't been dialogue with the union so i presume you're not advising that we adopt this yet or what is your position on that my position was that i i needed to be clear whether or not these changes would be acceptable to you because there was no point in my trying to bargain something without you know or go back and forth with the union about something that i wasn't sure would even you know pass muster review so so the you know the first issue it seems to me was to get something that you all say to me yeah this is what we want yeah and that we would then be able to see what we could sort out and if we could um okay reach some agreement i apologize if i made you say that twice and so then i want to talk about the unfortunate news that you're leaving end of june right and we all know that it's better to stay you know to have this stay with you well you know so is there any way that we can get i'm asking a question where i think the answer is no because of how much back and forth this takes but i'm doubting that this is something that if we were to say yes go ahead as a commission tonight what are the odds that we can get this um anywhere by our main meeting for example yeah i mean i have no clue but what but i will let me let me give i don't know what we would do our best right um yeah i would i i do want to say one encouraging thing to you which is that uh we have um hired a new assistant city attorney who's going to start at the end of may who currently has been um spent the last um couple of years working representing the city of albany police department so he's coming with some stuff ready you know and willing to to work um and and hopefully be up to speed when he walks in the door to work with that will certainly hunt the you know my we what he and i will have a month of overlap for me to get him up to speed with you all so that if you don't you do have that next time all right thank you for spoon feeding me i apologize to everyone i'm gonna go back in my corner um and i guess just to clarify for desolvent uh the objection to section six was that a contractual um objection that they had or was that just a overall objection i i i couldn't quite differentiate that no i believe it was just the language itself okay thank you found that it that there was ambiguity in the language thank you i appreciate that um milo see your hand raised floors yours uh thank you chairman uh so uh just a couple of things can we get in writing of the union's concerns is that a possibility so that we can review that and they can be more specific about which like when you say that the language was um you know not clear or what specific language uh do they have questions about and that they would like further clarifications on i just think it would be helpful to i don't have my huge binder in front of me but i would want to you know go back and you know look at 15.4 section g uh reread that and then reread the part of um this document but i would also like to know you know what what additional questions they have i think i just think it'd be very helpful to have this in writing is that something that we could get we can certainly ask for it could i respond sure yeah so my understanding is that we would vote on this would vote on whether this language is what we intended is an acceptable and then it would be up to attorney blackwood to work with the union they would share their concerns with her and she would revise accordingly and that would then come back to us again so in some ways i'm not sure that we're any help in this because there is some these are legal issues with regard to the contract and simply language uh that i i'm not sure i certainly not position to uh work through so my sense is that as long as we feel comfortable with the intent of the way that this is written now she will work out those issues with the union and bring this back to us okay um the other comment i just wanted to make in in general uh while i appreciate the concern um just because something is a departure from previous practice doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing if we don't change we don't change um thank you uh thank you attorney blackwood um uh commissioner great i i think um dc sullivan's use of this term past practice is a term of art in collective bargaining and it it means that besides what is written in the contract there if there are matters that that legally could be in the contract legally are a term or condition of employment that that someone has a right to bargain about and the parties have a what is known as a past practice of how they have dealt with it you can't unilaterally change that you have to bargain that change in in in a bargaining setting and and so they are trying to assert that i have not fully i'm hearing that for kind of for that argument right now tonight for the first time so you know i'll have to think about that and look at and try to understand what's talking about uh thank you and and so noted for the the next contract thank you for the clarification um okay um so what i'm hearing is that uh looks like we shall uh devote on the uh if we're comfortable with language or not and if we do that uh then i guess it moves to attorney blackwood if we do i guess work with uh the union yeah we'll see if the union we you know if i can get some clarity on the union's position and and uh and get come back to you um i guess do i have a motion um for this then for anybody uh shirin are you are you making a move sorry i am yeah i feel i but then it occurs to me that i was not one of the original it might not be my place to but if no one else i i'm happy to move that um this be advanced at this point as written but i don't i i apologize to anyone who worked on this so if they would rather bring it i i'll second it i worked on this but i'm happy to hear you say that so she motions it um do i hear a second any discussions on this not seeing any all in favor of moving this forward i've stated raise your hand to say aye aye that passes unanimously yeah thanks for all the work on it everyone including attorney blackwood very much so thank you um moving forward brings us to agenda item 5.02 which is uh approved by the war on cam with footage release policy and um i'll start this off the same way started the last one um are there any union does the union have any contractual objections to this policy no we we're um of any objections to this policy our concern for this policy remains uh our ability to actually affect it um we are working with the city uh with the cao in order to uh make certain that we have an allotment for staffing or for some kind of services contract in order to bring somebody aboard uh but until that happens we cannot comply with this i would like to and it would be my preference just to put everything out honestly um without the need for redaction but uh we can't do that uh the law doesn't permit it and frankly sometimes um i say that somewhat blithely because there are instances in which i do not feel it's appropriate when we are dealing with ongoing criminal investigations and witness statements etc um but uh we cannot meet this requirement currently uh and we're we're hopeful to be able to get the resources to do so. Randall see your hand raised floor is yours. Yeah thank you no i mean this is this is i suppose it might be a virtual whole question but uh do you think that if the policy were in fact good you know adopted policy for governing the if ever governing ppd but that would strengthen your bargaining hand requesting the resources that went that you would need to comply with the policy would it be better to have the policy actually be affected than to wait for the resources prior to adopting such a policy? I i don't know the answer to that the mayor has made it clear he wants this policy and and he has made it clear uh that they're that they understand that we can't do it without the resources so we're making those resources they were working to make those resources available in the budget process but until the budget is the budget uh you know at the beginning of the fiscal year i i can't say um i i don't know what it means to have a policy with which we cannot comply and and that the impact of that versus having a policy that's there to to sort of um be something that is either whether it's a goal or whether it's a deadline or whether it is a coming as soon as you have the resources to do it i i don't know which of those is is best frankly understood thank you i guess this next question is for attorney blackwood um i'm not sure if you heard uh she merits comments just now but um how would we go about that then um or i guess what would you recommend as a course of action then i uh the the way that i look at this is that um generally they're going to have to be specific circumstances why something is delayed beyond 30 calendar days but that specific circumstance may be that the camera footage is very involved and they don't have time or the personnel to get it done in time but so i i guess i don't see it as a problem um if there's not the personnel to do it they're going to be coming to you saying there's a specific reason we can't get it done uh thank you for that um uh for us you're sharing um attorney blackwood do you think we'd need to change that language into it says in some rare cases but under the circumstances where it's probably not going to be rare do we think it's better to add any qualifiers there are you comfortable with it saying in rare i'm comfortable with it saying in rare cases for now because we're talking about between now and and july and you know knock on wood we hope we don't have a lot of these okay i'm sorry i'm i'm laughing at my husband in the apron sorry sorry um so you don't think could you say that again i'm just the hot mess right now sure uh what i said was i i i think because they're they're trying to address it in the in the budget uh which goes into effect in july that you're talking about between now and july and knock on wood there's not very many incidents that are going to spark this uh this need for redaction i i mean in many ways this is what this is saying is proactively uh releasing a video that that pretty much falls in categories of video we've already been releasing we just haven't been doing it proactively or with a specific timing that's my thinking okay um i had mila to come up next with dc solve are you responding to this okay you have the floor fall by milo yes i just had a quick comment to to provide some context is is that for example um this month's use of force report i want to say there were 16 incidents with multiple officers using force and the way this policy is written uh one b is an incident of police force that involves the use of aerosol agents conducted electrical weapons police batons less lethal impact munitions firearms are other lethal force so the way that language is written many of these incidents would be included because firearms were displayed um and just a display necessitates a use of force report um and so given the the breadth of the statement and the the way it's stated in the policy i think we would have quite a few incidents we would have to produce video for um that that would be problematic for us at this point and if i may if we're funded in july that doesn't mean that we hire somebody in july our hiring process for this position is going to be like any other and not as arduous as a police officer but uh it takes time we we have to do we do background checks for everybody who comes into this building unescorted and ends up with and the very definition of this position is having access to siege's information uh criminal justice information services good point um uh amila you have the floor hi um thank you so uh i have a couple of things first um i actually wanted to make a motion to change um a small section uh the area that's right after one c where it says note to provide citizen oversight the police commission and then it says can and does view i would like to have can and does view stricken and i would like to replace it with will be given access to all so that it reads to provide citizen oversight the police commission will be given access to all unredacted body worn camera footage upon requesting it from the burlington police department etc my apologies what's what part are you looking at i'm so sorry no problem so it's right after one c it starts with a note to provide citizen oversight the police commission and then the four words can and does view i would like those four words stricken and replaced with will be given access to all so that it read the police commission will be given access to all unredacted body worn camera footage upon requesting it and okay um are you making that motion now yes okay um i i will second that motion um floor is open for discussion and i see i'm seeing multiple hands raised so just just jump in so i mean i'll i'll jump sorry commission's agreeing over you're about to talk my head was up for something else so good uh so my my my concern with that amendment is that um so first it's not clear to me whether it is permitted for whether whether it's because in whether it's consistent with collective bargaining etc for police commission given access to kind of unlimited access to any body worn camera footage which is recorded which is unrelated to the incidents that are being outlined in section one so i understand the the current language to refer to um body worn camera footage of the incidents listed in one instance involving police use of force uh use of force involves use of air assault agents cw's police battalions etc uh any incident for which chief police mayor and our majority of police commission determines that the police fine would first address significant public future concern uh so it seems to me that having the commission have access to footage which governs which falls into those cases is sufficient and so allowing so given that one it's not clear to me that it's legally consistent with the bp of contract etc for officers to just view any officers by when your body worn camera footage at any time for whatever reason it's not clear to me that that's uh consistent with the with the contract it's also not clear to me that that is uh necessary and in fact it seems to me as though it's a it's a kind of an overstep for the for the commission to be able to just view any officers camera footage at any time for whatever reason so i i think that identifying the cases that are that it is important for the commission to have access to is important and i think that the categories that are defined one a b and c are sufficiently expansive to cover and all govern all the things that we think are important especially since c points out that if a majority of the commission determines that the police buy one footage will address significant public attention or concern then that falls into the category of the of the documents that the commission can view so i think that expanding that beyond those categories which seem to me to be appropriate to be any footage whatsoever to whatever reason i think is uh is not appropriate and so i'm not inclined right now to support that particular revision uh thank you commission hard uh chair may i respond to that absolutely yes so i i this is what my concern is i want to make sure for these categories and number one that we are able to see the footage if we ask to see it related to those categories because right now we're not um so i understand what you're saying about um i'm not referring to any type of fishing expedition but you know we had an incident recently and a request was made to see all available footage related to that incident and the answer was no and that was just really unacceptable to me and i feel that within these particular incidents we should be able to see anything that is related to those incidents and currently we are not and that's what i'm trying to address um sorry set your hand raised i'll refer to uh attorney blackwood she might be illuminating us attorney blackwood for sure i'm not sure if i'm illuminating you but but this policy is intended to be a policy about the public release of of information not what gets released to the police commission um we can certainly remove that note um if it's confusing that issue and and i think there are there probably are things we should discuss about that your request commissioner grant and and what the hesitations might be about showing full unredacted video i mean one of the questions of course is you know for what purpose does the police commission need to see unredacted video and and need to see other video and that's one of the issues that we have to look at and and how that affects um both individual officers and victims and witnesses who may be people that are known to commissioners so those are all issues we have to kind of work our way through as far as the commission seeing that unredacted materials so would we then need to clarify that right so it seems to me we should address that separately from this policy we should address what the commission has access to i'll jump in now um i think what uh commissioner grants um stating i think that's this would actually roll into the role of police commission policy which i there are a couple updates i want to do to that basically codify codify some things we're already doing and i think that would roll into that um does that make sense i guess that question is for you mila um i um hmm i guess my concern is having something in this policy that doesn't ring completely true to me sorry because i you know when when um when we were told no we couldn't see something we weren't told why right so i do understand that there are sometimes very specific reasons as we previously discussed well we weren't given a reason we were just told no so when we want to talk about transparency when we want to talk about building trust that just did not sit well with me and i feel like if someone reads this they think we can see things that we actually can't see and we're not actually given a reason why thank you i would just say that i just make a friendly i don't know if there's a motion on this but we would just delete that note i think that's an accurate observation commissioner grant and i think the issues that you're raising fall in under the the heading of what we have discussed about an mo u with the police department with regard to the material that we are able to see uh and uh so maybe it doesn't bear re going into too much more detail i think commissioner heart's concern i understand it but as i understand uh commissioner grant people have a lot of similar last names this is hard uh that um that she was referring to all of the body cam video regarding a particular incident that we are looking at a complaint or a disciplinary case so that was my understanding wasn't to look at blanket everything but nevertheless i think it does make sense to develop that um policy and agreement uh separately from this and i think there are a lot of good reasons for which we would want to do that because of this case in which uh body cam video actually was had fallen off and the the information that was on a video that was not shared with us was the observation of a witness uh and given that we didn't have body cam video that should have been important information for us to have so all this to say is that i think this is an item on an agenda for us to to work through uh but i would make the proposal that we delete that note from this particular document if that's a friendly motion i would second i would approve of that um i would be comfortable with that because it would remove something that i don't think reflects the truth so i'm comfortable with um pulling back what i originally moved and support the motion to delete that note all right revised motion is deleting um the note between section one point c and section two um i second that all in favor of that deletion um raise your hand to say i i i i have four eyes and one abstention but no i said it i'm sorry i was sorry all right so that's uh passes unanimously um with that said then um are we prepared to adopt this um i have still so i i'm sorry uh nope so we're still just we're still discussing i might be after christian siguino though so my apologies uh i'm not i let me just say this this in reference to the issue about whether there were resources to redact the videos i think policies are important and what that means is that we feel this is important to do and it is important to do then uh it will it can incentivize the resources to achieve this goal so waiting i don't think makes sense i think actually the opposite that this will perhaps provide some pressure for resources but the other issue is in regard to dc sullivan's comment about the use of force incidences that um this refers to only those for which there is a request from the public to see the video so it doesn't mean that every single video uh body cam worn uh sorry body worn cam fit uh camera footage is going to receive a public a four-year request so i would be in favor of us passing this now uh move the floor back to uh rando thank you this is a question for dc sullivan oh did you want to respond first to that dc sullivan before i ask another question yes i just i just had a question regarding commissioner siguino's last comment the way i read section one is that the brillant and police department will proactively release to the public with regardless of a foyer request my apologies that's correct i was reading a different part sorry so i think that that was our only concern as far as capacity goes right i don't think we disagree philosophically we would love to release all of this um it's it's just the capacity issue thanks so so i'll ask my question now um which was related also to see something that you could set so this is just a question on how you interpret the the phrase so uh is it your adjustment of the judgment of bpd that uh that the display of a firearm constitutes the use of a firearm as as in 1b yes we require officers to complete a use force report if a firearm is displayed in fact the majority of our firearm incidents we rarely if ever have discharged a firearm there have been very very limited circumstances where that has happened over the course of my career um but it's usually just a display or or right no that so that that i understand but i think the question was whether or not the the phrase use of firearm is understood generally to inter to include you know any use including display or whether from the use of force standpoint i would agree with that i would include that as a use okay if however you wish to narrow it by by not including those then that can be a tweak for us that phrase is it it's a use it is a use of force and it's a use of the firearm because that's the pointing of it is the use of force yeah understood but then i think i'd actually so i'd appreciate getting some feedback on other commissioners whether they think that the more expansive uh category there is appropriate whether whether video should be practically released whether every incident of a display of a firearm should be practically released or whether which would be the more expansive uh view or whether uh only those instances which involve the discharge of the firearm should be proactively should automatically be proactively released um i i'd welcome any feedback from other commissioners on that and i and i see that diesel might have a clarifying points i'll ask him first before opening up to the commissioners i just wanted to add that it's not exclusive to firearms so it also applies to aerosol agents uh cew's for example we we count it as a successful de-escalation if an officer displays a cew they are still required to complete the use of force or for even if they don't discharge the weapon itself thank you Stephanie followed by sharing so um the idea of limiting this sounds interesting to me commissioner harp and my understanding um chief mirad is that when warrants are served that guns are drawn that that may constitute a large percentage of the use of force incidents would that be correct so i i don't know if we could carve out that particular situation since that's just a policy it's not offers a discretion if you will in terms i'm not sure if that's the correct way to phrase it but uh you know i i think it makes sense to conserve on resources with regard to redacting and those aren't necessarily the incidents that people are most concerned about i think that we might consider them some limiting language there um sorry i believe she ran before and unless uh these are some are you going to uh i would just have to provide a little more context to mr. squeeno's statement is that that is true in looking at it i'm in the middle of reviewing use of force from the calendar year 2020 and i went through all of the firearm pointings at least through half of the year um partway through june and none of them were discretionary all of them were associated with uh warrant execution entry into buildings where an open door was found which is similar to a warrant execution so it's it's standard operating procedure their officer would have their their firearm out and pointing it into open space and then whoever they encounter a firearm is pointed at that individual until they're secure and then also high-risk motor vehicle stops and i believe that accounts for pretty much all of the firearm pointing at least through the first half of 2020 um i believe shireen uh dc cell have been touched upon it i was going to ask about the open building i wanted clarification on that entering the building so thank you for that um stephanie i see your hand raised do you have another and sorry that means the floor is yours randall thank you yeah so then based on that feedback i i would be comfortable making a motion to revise the language uh in one b to specify um that the incidents of police force that ought to require a proactive release of body one camera footage would involve the discharge of aerosol agents cews uh llims and firearms uh with the understanding of course that that would not preclude footage from being released if it was important or if it was necessary where firearms are pointed right so that it can still so you know instances of just displays of firearms can still fall under uh one a or one c and so you know it would not preclude any such uh instances from being proactively released but i would be comfortable making a motion i'm saying we're coming i'm about to make a motion a second i'll be comfortable making a motion to revise one b along those lines with the understanding that i'm not hearing any objections from other commissioners so i will now move if i i'll let commissioners we don't like to jump in first do i make a motion yeah i would not i wouldn't support that framing of it but i would support officer discretion or in cases where they're um where the the display of a weapon is uh at the officer's discretion i think those videos should be released but in cases where it's a display of a weapon that is poly department policy i would omit that i don't know if we can say that there's a way to sort of insert officer discretion here as uh limiting the videos that would automatically be released is that actionable so if if the policy were to state that's um discretionary uses of uh so i'm going to go back to the language the discretionary instance of police force that involved the discretionary use of aerosol agents cw's police batons etc like would that be something that's uh is kind of intelligible from uh from a administrative standpoint so i'm asking either dc sell event or choosing around it would be it would just require taking a very close look at every single incident right uh it is sorry so it but in your opinion that that is practical like that that is something that could be could be done and part part of the idea was that i was right trying to make sure that we were limiting our attention to the uh the videos that were kind of most in need of being released while also uh in so far as possible limiting our attention to just the ones which were kind of the highest priority as it were so if this makes if this is no less work then the way that the phrasing is is it right now then i would say okay you know we're going to leave it as it is now but if it is less work to add the discretionary uses of those instruments now i would say let's make it discretionary i think it has the potential to to lessen that amount i would say too you know you you've now heard three or four months worth of of use of force reports you know which of those has has caused you to want to have that information maybe that's an avenue towards revising you know this or or or or approaching what it is that you want the public to be able to see automatically um we're we're we're sharing them every month all of them it's going to be a longer one this this month uh and frankly in some of these i don't think there's been a lot of i think there's been a general sense like these didn't sound like things that are in that that are of interest and and in any one of those instances had you know we would certainly share with all of you that that video um but i'm not certain how many of those you've actually thought were were public were were necessary to uh to give additional public attention to and if there's components that if there's components that help shape that estimation um then maybe those are the components that you're seeking to to articulate here so i i do see the commissioner grant's hand is raised so i i thought i'm just going to follow really quick with this and i will turn it over um yeah so i mean i i think that part of the the idea of course is that um that that you know so it's my understanding your perspective is that you know you release almost all of it's right and that that would be you know that that would be kind of consistent with how you think things ought to go and i think that part of the idea is just in terms of the uh the the community trust building benefits of releasing video uh i think that that's right so so what right whether i think that a video you know kind of is immediately a public interest is secondary to the question of whether a policy of releasing videos proactively helps to build community trust so i think that kind of having a policy which you know releases video um which public might conceivably be interested in but also kind of releases as much video as possible to build community trust is i think a good thing um but i would not want to release it to kind of yeah i would also not want to have any um any any videos that that ought to have attention called to them lost in of a deluge of other videos which get which get dumped regularly so that's i'm trying to find a little balance there i'm done thank you mealy of the floor followed by shireen thank you so i guess my dream is um more than less i would want to see everything and i think people will make a decision um some people will be interested some people won't be um i think we'd have people who would watch every single one and we'd have people who wouldn't watch anything and then we'd have a lot of people who would fall somewhere in the the middle um i i don't want to go into this whole big thing but i i read a lot about uh changing policies and procedures as it relates to warrants in particular um because there's just been a lot of problems with um the way warrants are handled and so that is definitely being looked at at a national level um and maybe we see things that cause us to think about what our policy and procedures regarding warrants are here um can't say it without seeing it uh i think our access to information has been evolving it is what i consider to be significantly better but not fully where um i'd like it to be so i um i i just and i think the information that we got uh regarding the accounts this past week is going to be super helpful but i i guess i feel like there's still some more work to be done in that area to just help assuage my personal comfort level with the process thank you uh sharing closures this might not be a popular view but one of the things that worries me is that there might be folks who are the arrestees depicted in these videos and even though we'll be blurring folks in instances i worry about the privacy rights of the individual who's being arrested in such a small community jabu you and i just witnessed one um body cam footage recently where maybe the individual would be fine with that but maybe they wouldn't be right um and i just worry how do we do we put that in two because two only talks about protecting individual privacy of a victim or witness and maybe i'm the only one feeling this but i just i i don't i think there people have bad days right they there there are things that could happen where they could be involved in one of these and the last thing they want is this footage out there even if it's redacted we all know that it's a small community i don't know if others share this view but it is something especially after recent footage we watched which i don't think anyone would want i can't speak for that individual though i'll just say i absolutely share that concern i mean i've had that concern from the very beginning of this process so um yes sorry about Stephanie and i think uh chief has a kind of definitely pleasure i i share that concern as well shireen i am looking at number three in which it says uh protect the identity of victims and witnesses the personal privacy of individuals which includes the arrestee and um so i think that means that we have to rely on redaction uh as a small community although it is a small community i do think that a good deal of private information or identity can be shielded with redaction i mean we are way i so i do share your concern uh landon i was just wondering if maybe a clause could be put in that somebody within the video maybe the arrestee could request because there is a 30-day window right in that time they could request that they do not want the video released would that be possible excellent point um yeah so i'll just look on that i i would be i think it ought not to be merely up to the individuals who are capturing the video to decide whether or not that particular policy applies to that video uh the video the video is being released for um for public interest so i think that it's it's more important to have blanket protections of privacy rights as much as possible which are applied to everyone in the videos rather than allow kind of individual discretion about whether or not some video stays up or some video stays down i also think that when you allow that kind of level of individual discretion that's going to benefit some and and harm others so people might not be aware they have the option they might not you know kind of be able to take certain steps so i i would prefer that the that those protections be applied uniformly to everyone rather than have a kind of individual by individual decision-making that's that's just my view on that Stephanie um so i i shared that i i shared the concern around privacy but i i also want to note that the research shows that the use of body cam uh worn videos and sharing that reduces use of force so we're in a position of sort of balancing various interests and that is the overall interest in body warm body warm cameras in the first place is to reduce unnecessary uses of force and i think that that um preventative mechanism is important uh i think lend and suggestion of some kind of caveat uh if that could be worked out but i also shared Randall's concern that that not ought to be determinative so i think that maybe if we could find some language um to add to this around that that that would be great i want to just ask this question as well so it says that you know to protect the privacy of of individuals and i'm just wondering if uh legally uh if an arrestee has a lawyer would the lawyer be able to make a request that the video not be shared with the public so in response to Randall's concern that perhaps the arrestee does not know that it seems to me that they're all appointed lawyers and so i wonder if that's an avenue for privacy protection yep floor is yours you know from a from a legal standpoint i mean i i you know i suppose what you're suggesting is not unreasonable but from an administrative standpoint i mean it's just huge um i i mean i i think i will say that my earlier comments were based on my reading of this being that somebody had to use the firearm not just display it in order for this to be within this policy and my my you know my understanding is we're talking about you know a relatively few number of instances where where there is actual use like someone shoots a gun or discharges something and that but as soon as you start talking about every you know um tons of i i don't even know what the numbers are but but you but multiple use of force reports coming in and if you're talking about every incident that's listed in the use of force report is going to have to be proactively released that's an incredible amount of video um and an incredible amount of work for not necessarily because the videos can often be very long and there's a lot of redaction and it takes a long time to do that redaction okay so i i i appreciate that that was actually very helpful attorney blackwood and i was just revisiting uh randall's suggestion around discharge of the weapon i think i'm going to still stick with the the notion that it should be that we should limit this to discretionary uses of force even if there's not a discharge of the weapon and the reason i say that is because the the the research shows that that the experience of having a gun pointed at you in itself is a traumatic incident and i don't so i don't think that we should treat that lightly um and so i i guess i'm going to stick with my suggestion that we change that to discretionary uses of forces which i think will limit the number of videos somewhat if not substantially um floors your string if me um what if what if we were to have the discretionary notion be on the on firearms but it's it's the use of the others but it's but a demonstration of a firearm is different do you distinguish or like a baton um so that the showing of a baton the showing of an aerosol agent or a ce w and maybe that's maybe we're not making it any easier doing that chief because of the work that's involved and i see dc selivan's raising his hand but what do you think of that notion where a firearm is treated differently what is your thesis open i agree and i would add that really the the discretionary piece primarily comes into play with firearms so pretty much all of the other tools listed there is a measure of discretion involved as far as the officer displaying that that tool or actually discharging it whereas for firearms it's it's more of that unknown right it's it's the search warrant entry it's an open door in a building and you have to clear the building that sort of entry so it's a procedure that is put in place it's the way officers are trained at the police academy and then are trained here at the burlington police department uh and same with high-risk motor vehicle stops um so which generally occur when you have actionable intelligence that the subject may be armed with a weapon or just the circumstances leading up to that motor vehicle stop have demonstrated that the subject is very dangerous so i would say that if the discretionary versus non-discretionary primarily applies only to firearms thank you i i'm still for including everything um um so i i i yeah i'm still for including everything um and i do hear and i appreciate the concern that someone on one of their worst days may decide that that is not something that they want and i i believe that someone would have a right to request that but in terms of of of trying to limit um the amount of footage i could potentially be released i think is defeating the purpose of the policy thank you Stephanie i'm just wondering if we can find a way to reach agreement here i hear um milo's concerns and i i i don't want to treat them lightly um i'm wondering if we could insert discretionary here with regards to firearms and we can revisit this policy as we get more information uh and discuss this further and yet i i do think it's important that we we we make some progress uh this has been several months in the making uh so i want to just float that as an idea to see if that's something that people would be interested in i would i would support that uh shireen followed by randall i just wanted clarification so for the term the use of aerosol agents c e w police batons l l i m those are the actual use versus the showing because i think we need to clarify too if that i mean um one b if that's what you mean Stephanie yeah yeah okay that's what i'm in favor of randall sorry i had it before did you have something to say you wanted to say i think it was what what commissioner hart said um so we're the proposal then would be to modify one b so it's the the discharge of aerosol agents c e w's l l i m's um it is the display the discretionary display the discretionary use i'm sorry of firearms and then or other lethal force right so that'd be that'll remain the same like that's my understanding of what the proposal is right now so make sure then should we sorry to blur i've learned it all right should should we clarify so that we don't have so if we're not on the commission people know that it's it isn't the use of it's the display or discharge should we be clearer about firearms randall because you would just use the term um use but i'm afraid we'll go back into what does that mean right oh again so so okay so i mean again so i like uh attorney blackwood i think interpret initially interpreted those phrases differently than they are being understood by the by the chiefs um i'm hearing the chiefs saying that those phrases are kind of unambiguous within the department how those would be interpreted and given that they're given that i'm being told that they're unambiguously interpreted within the department i think that it's not necessary to add that additional clarifier but it wouldn't hurt so you know i'd be in favor of it i've learned it again sorry i'm gonna mute myself um okay um so i'm hearing a mending 1b uh to yeah to say a discretionary uses of sorry discretionary shows at the gun and actually using of the cw all that stuff is so that that's what that's what we're agreeing on i'm hearing well i mean so nobody's yet made a motion and it has not yet i know that but uh because obviously chris or grants does not agree with that but i i would support that motion if it were made uh force back to you mila i just feel any use of a gun needs to be available thank you all right um so i guess moving forward does anyone want to process the motion and i'm sorry i uh but forgive me i use display discretionary not just but not destroy the use of a gun i feel that needs to be available thanks okay so i guess moving forward with this if someone wanted to make a motion for those changes so uh to amend to amend that because now would be the time because if not i i struggle with how to move forward with this i will so chris a greeno do you want to make motion or do you like me to make motion doesn't matter to me how about go ahead if you have it i wrote something but if you've got it just go ahead oh i mean mine was going to be completely you know vague i was going to say um i i move that we amend uh the the body warrant camouflage release policy in 1b to indicate that um to to refer to incidents of police force that involve uh the discharge of aerosol agents cew's uh i assume that discharge for police baton is understood as the um the swinging of a baton but if not the the um or if there's another way of describing effective use of police baton uh discharge of llims discretionary use of firearms which you know which includes both uh display and discharge and other cases of lethal force so i propose amending 1b to reflect that i move that we amend 1b to reflect that i second that motion any discussion on this all right uh sorry uh i'm just treating your hands raised intermediate i just wanted to hear from the chiefs if administratively given where we are right now is this a um have we addressed some i'm not that we're doing it for that reason but have we addressed have we made this so administratively this is more doable in terms of being able to ferret out these cases i think so i think deputy chief Sullivan would agree i mean if limiting language is will help us stay on top of these in ways that get important incidents out to the public um but also don't uh are more are more achievable i i still until we get a dedicated person to this task i still cannot guarantee by any means that we will be able to be fully compliant with this and and that that i want that to be clear because i'm not i will not be uncompliant out of peak or out of a desire not to be i simply we don't have that ability at the moment but will this make us uh capable of being more compliant i believe so um you look we've got the floor followed by randall um i'll see to randall right now sorry thank you i was going to say i mean i i will also for whatever policy is is passed or adopted i i will also propose that uh some that that the policy be revisited at some certain date in the future six months whatever it is so that people can look at how it was you know about whether it needs to be modified in a way so i i would recommend that that be set after you know at at you know at some points that make sure that get back on the on the commission's agenda at some point in the future so i think that's a great idea and that would be october of this year so i think it would make sense then to revisit how this has been working uh at that time yeah we can build that into the policy at the end just that it will be reviewed in october 2021 all right uh so i guess moving forward i guess voting on this motion and then i am happy to propose a motion inserting that we review this policy at our meeting six months from now so we had uh we had the motion proposed it was seconded um any further comment on on the motion on the floor sorry i'm not seeing any hands raised so we'll take them all sorry mila i'm i'm sorry is the motion including the revisiting in october i was i was going to make that as a separate motion just afterwards just for clarity sake happen to make is a friendly amendment i mean it's it seems friendly enough did i make them i made the motion it's like i can't make it can i make for the amendment of my own motion i don't know there you go that i i amend it um to include language which which stipulates that it will be revised revisited excuse me in six months i would second that that would make me feel much better okay could we um just make that specific to october of 2021 so that this doesn't get lost in the fray agreed so so modified all right um sorry for procedural sake do i have to vote twice now on the amendment to the amendment okay thank you um all in favor of the amendment to the amendment raise your hand to say i right now sorry i i that passes unanimously um all in favor of the original motion on the table um raise your hand to say i sorry which which motion now is this uh the one that was initially made that was with reference to discretionary uses of force um um that that mine got yours yes yours um all in favor raise your hand or say i i i that passes unanimously awesome um with that um i lean do uh would you like one of us to send you those revisions or do you or do you need right to actually write this down i'm not muted so can you hear me now i lean you're muted sorry i was having trouble unmuting um i i think i got the changes but i'll double check with um um with shannon as well to make sure okay awesome thank you all right then um moving on to agenda item 5.03 uh which is it's kind of update on on the call on on a call so with that i guess i'll give the floor to Milo or Stephanie and just uh update where we're at Milo do you want to go first um sure i first i want to thank Stephanie for stepping in as i kind of took a little bit of r and r um i had sent everyone the original uh statement of work that we had previously received um it was pretty broad and the general consensus was that um it was broad enough to include the topics that we were interested in um and that also we would be including in the contract language that would allow some flexibility in case we wanted to um address a specific topic that might not be part of the um original plan and um Stephanie has been working with um i lean with regards to that and i want to thank i lean for the time that she has spent uh getting this information together getting in front of the council and now working on um the contract so that we can um just get the ball rolling to actually start the training thank you anything else you would like to add Stephanie yeah so the city council passed the uh motion with regard to funding the training and the 10 additional hours of consultation um attorney blackwood has prepared the contract and i think we're just about to get it signed so we're ready to go she attached the scope of work that you all have seen and it includes language that that scope of work can be changed if we see the need to do so so we're basically set to roll and the one remaining thing is scheduling the trainings um commissioner heart uh charine had indicated that she was concerned that uh new members of the commission with a couple of commissioners cycling off uh would not be at the training if we started it too soon and i want to propose an alternative position on this uh to accommodate that you know and that is that as of may 14th applications for the police commission are due and because this is open not only to the commission but to the public that any applicants can also attend uh the trainings and that we therefore work to schedule the trainings for some time after may 14th i think maybe at the end of may for example i think then the question becomes what the schedule is for us i'll i'll just say a couple of things about that i think going into the summer is a hard time to do it and i think i i think that we see cases frequently enough that of complaints and disciplinary issues and so forth that it's really incumbent upon us to get up to speed on what we need to know to do our work and that we should not delay in doing the trainings but if we did wait until after may 14th where new applicants to the commission could attend i think it would accommodate that concern as well so the next step basically is to schedule the trainings um i i support that idea of um holding trainings us after the 14th so anyone that apply could could directly join this um yeah so i guess i guess in regards to that um i'm happy to take i guess should we vote on that now um before we sign the contract i guess do we need to sign a contract for it before we accept the timing for the trainings now no we we want we can you know just uh sign the contract and then we could just work this out maybe with a doodle poll uh you know i think it might be helpful to hear from people uh i think it doesn't make i don't think it makes sense for us to just hold these during uh commission meetings uh once a month i think it just it would be helpful to hear from people how what their schedule what it would look like for them one possibility is there two hour trainings each one possibility is that we do four weeks of two hour trainings beginning let's say the end of may for example um that's one possibility we could do one every two weeks uh i will just add this that the public safety committee contacted me and asked if they would be able to participate so they have an interest in this as well as well as i think probably some city counselors um so it'll be a group of people and quite frankly nicole is really happy to have the public uh be at these trainings because it's really about the community being trained about what the possibilities of civilian oversight are but i think it is the commission that is being trained and so we would determine the schedule so i think i would welcome hearing from people how um how rigorous a schedule they would be willing to have i will just say this that if we do it uh once a week for four weeks we can avoid having to do this in july and august when it's hot uh sure yeah i want to thank you stephanie for being flexible about scheduling it so we can have folks who are interested in the commission and i am completely flexible in terms of i would rather defer to other schedules in terms of i can do weekends i can do evenings and i'm and i can just i'll work around others so it doesn't matter for me um this is a side question for eileen um seeing how it involved all the commissioners do we have to worry about meeting laws do we have to i guess it's going to be in the public but um would a training have to would it require like public form before the training you know seeing how there's going to be a quorum of commissioners there so because there will be a quorum it will have to be noticed as a public meeting you will have to have an agenda and if there are members of the public um who have something to comment on they i mean they can there is no action being taken so there's nothing really for anybody to comment upon um so you don't have to have any kind of general public forum about about that but if members of the public are there and they have questions about something i would suggest that you might want to ask nicole to build that into the to the end of the training or something and i i guess my next question will be can i schedule public form i guess for like after like i could say a meeting like change two hours right six to eight and then at eight p.m sharp public form would that work you you certainly can if you want to include a public forum like that as i said you people have to have an opportunity to comment on you know any business that comes before before you at a meeting so generally you know if you if the training provides a a section where somebody members the public could ask some questions that would satisfy it but you could do it the way you're suggesting as well okay thank you i'll be lost to your andres closer thank you i just wanted to say that um i agree with doing the trainings sooner rather than later and i also wanted to let everybody know we can have these trainings recorded um which is great so if we schedule them for four consecutive weeks and there's maybe one week that someone can't attend there will be a recording that people can would be able to look at so if we have potential new commission members who aren't able to attend the live sessions they will have these resources to look at at a later date that is more convenient for them so i just want to make sure everyone was clear on the fact that that will be something that will be available and i guess in terms of the recording i like the idea of having a public forum afterwards um to get feedback on the trainings from the public and um any additional questions that couldn't be covered during the training thank you shana nice to hear you just was gonna say um tomorrow i will go ahead um and do the membership or i understand that there's a membership that needs to be purchased as well so i can take care of that tomorrow um and i'll do that sign everybody up i do think that attorney blackwood said that we need to appoint one person was that for that and so i would ask that the commission do that so then i can register tomorrow sounds good i was getting to that uh momentary thank you uh and yeah so email here sorry sorry um okay so yeah so basically uh we need to designate one person to exercise membership rights of the commission within naco i guess they have like a board and they vote on things and every miss pad or every group that's a part nicole has one member of that group that sits on the board and i was going to nominate stefanie to be that uh the doesn't need for that seeing as um she reached out first to them to get up to get up here and so i think she'd be a good fit for sitting at the table with them um anyone else who want to put their hat put their hat in that ring please speak now but if not i would entertain us i motion that stefanie be that person i would second that does that need a motion i guess it wasn't uh technically the best motion um i motion that stefanie is our design to be clear i my suggestion is that that does not seem like the sort of thing that needs a motion but if you want to do it oh sorry i mean let's make it official right um yeah it does yeah awesome question and answer so yes i nominate stefanie to be that doesn't need to uh the naco to nacole i believe they're seconded by milo um all in faith sorry any discussion not seeing any all in favor raise your hand to say i i all right that passes unanimously um so i guess back to uh training schedule um i guess i'm happy to start it as now as soon as possible i guess being like the 15th moving on or something like that but um i think yeah reaching out to all the applicants what's the 15th uh what's the 14th sorry what's the 15th hits and it's officially closed i think then we need to yeah do the poll us up just kind of figure out what goes on next um do do we need uh do we need a motion for that or i think just i don't think so i don't think so either i just have one question for attorney blackwood so is it up to me to forward the contract that you sent to me to nacole or is that ready to go um i think it uh yeah i think it's ready to go okay um great i guess it does any other discussion on uh nacole i think this agenda item is done all right moving on then to agenda item um 5.05 uh template for data reports and um i know um sorry so sorry let's see if it's fun uh because i know uh nancy uh wasn't prepared i think to have the report for this month but it was going to come have it run for next month but there was still some questions about pedestrian data moving forward so i guess this one is for the chiefs um and i guess someone can phrase it better than i i'd uh recommend them taking over yeah so i think the question was with uh how far you've gotten in beginning the collection of pedestrian data that was in our motion for data requests we have a system in place to do that i don't know that we have actually tried to pull that data i have forwarded to nancy so she is aware of what we did to to attempt to immediately capture that data um and then my hope is that that also transfers forward to the new newer system our newer cat arm rest system that will be coming July 1st is my understanding uh that will be statewide great um just to clarify so that's not likely to be in her may report to us because her i think her may report is for 2020 data is that correct okay yes that is correct i would have to look at it but it was i don't know it was initiated by the valport programmers probably two months ago maybe so uh sorry to describe are you saying that then this pedestrian data will start uh start being collected like in earnest and on July like when this new system comes in or no i'm just i'm just unfamiliar with the new system i believe it's uh it should just be a newer version of what we currently have and and the idea to try to capture this data was to get something in the system as immediately as possible so there's a valport program group and they're the ones that really are the the programmers that can modify certain aspects of the cat arm rest system to attempt to capture data uh so i had once that was put in place they explained what they the the method that they were going to allow certain fields to capture this sort of data i then put that out to the police department so that all the staff was aware that we wanted to capture this but again it's gonna it's gonna be dependent on good data being input into the system and as i mentioned in my chief's remarks that is something that we are we're undertaking some internal quality control measures to ensure that we're getting good data this is a field there this is a box that says it's an incident code for field detention so it's an extra thing that an officer has to check when those kinds of incidents occur and they occur very rarely but when we have a field detention it's going to be up to the officer to actually insert that when he or she is filling out the data um it's been live for as DC Sullivan says a short period of time we're certainly not going to have comprehensive annual data even in next year's report simply because we missed the first couple months and there's also going to be an adoption period um anytime a department unveils a new sort of method of capturing data there's usually a year or two where you're sort of having some kind of learning curve but it's there now and and we're we'll be able to ascertain uh when those incidents occur and as part of the quality control measures that we're going to be talking about it will be one of the things we measure mention as a supervisory responsibility that if the supervisor sees this incident and says that's got the hallmarks of a field detention why is field detention not checked uh that supervisor will go back to the officer in question and say i'm not approving this until you check this or check it him or herself if if the supervisor is quite clear that there was in fact a field detention regardless that'll be a component of this we're looking at um you know Nancy's work is is really great and we're we're eager to see that come out for the uh the 2020 report uh that is the 20 released in 2021 but covering the year of 2020 for all of the three current major categories that we're dealing with traffic stops arrests and uses of force uh this will be a new component of those but we want that and that data to be accurate and to any to the degree there are inaccuracies in it it's not Nancy's fault it is the fault of the entry and the way in which the system processes it so we are as any data intensive entity is beholden to the the the premise of Gigo of garbage in garbage out and if we are putting in uh if erroneous data or incomplete data that's what we get so we're we're working on that right now it's a topic of concern uh well rather of focus uh amongst the deputy chiefs and myself and uh it will be a component of some leadership meetings going forward but the the actual specific tool that you're talking about is a tab for field detention that does now exist but i don't know what we've got with regard to data about it thank you um Stephanie for years um this is this reminded me of something chief mirad i just saw an rfp um that's coming from the state to hire uh someone um to train police officers in the state on data collection traffic data collection and i just wondered if you knew about that i wondered if that was an initiative of mike shirling um to support local police departments in uh data quality and traffic data because there are you know a lot of concerns around a number of agencies just wondering if you were familiar with that i'm not familiar with it um i i don't i don't know i'm not familiar with it thanks um do we have any further questions or comments with regards to this agenda item i'm not seeing or hearing any um so with that we shall move on to agenda item 5.06 which is the use of force incident report and with that i'll give it back to the chiefs so i apologize in that um i did not author this report dc lebrecht did i have not had a ton of time to go over it it is very extensive so i don't know as as chief mirad previously mentioned if you would like me to to work my way through this i'm more than happy to do that for the commission i'm also more than happy to email it to you if you would prefer to receive it in that form um but it's entirely up to you um we're we're here so i'm i'm happy to hear here here now i'm sharing this on our handrails briefly i was just gonna ask if it's something uh and maybe is is attorney blackwood off to call oh okay i was gonna ask her if we posted it to board docs tomorrow would that suffice for an open meeting in terms of sharing it with the public but because i'm more than happy to go through it i would be fine with um with posting it and we could all ask questions next month but if anyone wants to go through it i would defer to them i said i'm happy to hear it now unless there's significant objections to it so this report runs from the time period of march 1st through march 31st over that time period bpd had 1584 incidents there were out of those incidents 16 involving use of force the total uses of force out of those 16 incidents were 29 the percent of use of force incidents in relation to the total incidents was one percent of the incidents involved force and the breakdown as far as gender is white female two asian female one asian male one black male five and there is not a category for white male but given those numbers white male must be seven and just bear with me as i readjust my screen here so the first incident was a caller complaint officers dispatched to a 911 call of shots fired and a lot of blood in residents upon arrival officers observed a female who was shot through her upper thigh officers took lifesaving measures officer were able to determine the arrestee shot the victim through the door of the residence striking the victim the arrestee fled the scene officers began to canvas the area and they located the suspect operating a motor vehicle the suspect fled crashed the vehicle and officers conducted a high-risk motor vehicle stop on the crash vehicle due to the fact that a firearm was involved in the initial incident this type of stop where a weapon is suspected to be known involves officers pointing their weapons at a vehicle again this would be considered non-discretionary the arrestee exited the vehicle with a firearm in his hand but officers lost sight of the firearm the arrestee refused to comply with officers orders once out of the vehicle and began to move away from officers as if he were ready to flee this posed a risk to public safety due to the fact that the subject had just discharged the firearm striking an individual and the officers ended up deploying a CEW the first time the CEW was deployed the probes did not have the desired effect and the subject was wearing heavy clothing at the time and the officer deployed the the CEW a second time and this temporarily incapacitated the suspect and the suspect was taken into custody a loaded handgun was located on the suspect the suspect is a black male age 31 five officers were involved in this the first officer pointed their firearm second officer displayed their firearm third officer gave verbal commands displayed the CEW and deployed the CEW twice the fourth officer pointed their firearm and gave verbal directions and the fifth officer also pointed their firearm there was no injury to the arrestee and no injury to any officers the next incident is categorized as gunfire mental health officers were dispatched to a disturbance occurring at a residence nearby while on the phone a female could be heard yelling that someone just shot a gun responding officers were able to call into the residence and make contact with the subject who was in a mental health crisis the male came to the door of the residence and without provocation began to walk downstairs towards the officers due to the call with a firearm being involved officers pointed their firearms at the male again this will be considered non-discretionary once it was to certain the male did not have a firearm in his hands officers holstered their weapons and took the male into protective custody and transported the male to UVM medical center for screening this was a white male age 61 there were two officers involved both pointing their firearms neither the arrestee nor and I don't know that arrestee is really the proper term here although I don't have that level of of clarity but the subject was not injured and the officer was not injured the next is categorized as an arrest felony aggravated domestic assault in the second degree officers were dispatched to a call where the caller stated she had been assaulted and choked by the arrestee and that the arrestee currently had a knife dispatch could hear the arrestee verbally threatening the caller in the background upon arrival due to the knife being allegedly held by the arrestee the officer drew their firearm as they made contact with the arrestee the officer was able to learn the arrestee no longer had the knife and holstered their firearm the officer proceeded to take the arrestee into custody without further incident this subject was a black male age 33 one officer gave verbal directions pointed their firearm and handcuffed the subject neither the officer nor the arrestee were injured the next incident is an agent agency assist to the wanooski police department where they had a barricaded subject armed with a knife wanooski police department called for assistance in containing and negotiating with an arm barricaded subject relenton police department supplied negotiators and after approximately one hour we're able to talk the subject into coming out due to the subject just displaying several knives during the incident officers pointed their firearm at the subject when he came out of the residence once it was discerned the subject was unarmed officers holstered their firearm and were able to take the subject into custody without further incident and this was wanooski police department's incident this subject was a white male age 38 one officer pointed their firearm neither the officer nor the arrestee was injured the next incident is a protective custody mental health incident officers were called to a subject who was running on the street bang on doors asking people to call 911 about an emergency in the area the male was located in a dumpster and stitted to the effect that he had been stabbed with needles or had needles on him an officer drew his CEW concern for the welfare due to the possibility of the male having needles on him officer did not point the CEW but held it at the officer's side once the male observed once the officer observed the male was not armed the officer holstered their CEW and took the male into custody and the subject was transported to the hospital by ambulance this was a white male one officer displayed or held the CEW in their hand and neither the officer nor the subject were injured in this incident the next incident is categorized as mental health and this subject was taken into custody for emergency evaluation officers were called to a female subject that was throwing items from her residents and destroying her own property bpd then assisted first call and taking the female subject into custody for an emergency evaluation warrant officer had to assist in carrying the subject to the bottom of the stairs and placing her hands behind her back to take her into custody this was a white female age 37 one officer used mp hand control techniques neither the officer nor the subject was injured the next incident is a mental health suicidal juvenile female bpd was called to a residence by a mother who state her daughter was suicidal and armed with a knife officers located the female in a back room holding a knife officer was able to de-escalate the female and remove the knife from her hands while doing this the officer squeezed the female's hands together around the knife to make sure she could not brandish it and remove the knife from her hands this was an asian female age 13 uh officer used empty hand controls neither the officer nor the subject was injured in this incident the next incident is an arrest uh operating without owners consent and petty larceny for motor vehicle caller stated an arrestee had stolen packages from a us postal service truck while officers were unseen the arrestee stole the motor vehicle in an attempt to flee the scene but operated the vehicle only a short distance the arrestee then fled on foot a perimeter was set up a short time later and the subject was spotted by officers running with an unidentified object in their hand the officer chased this male subject into the rear of a building where the arrestee started running up a set of stairs but stopped abruptly the officer pursuing them was close behind them and the momentum carried them into the arrestee where they used a body fold technique to take the subject to the ground and rolled them onto their stomach and used a shoulder lock and ground hand cuffing technique to take the subject into custody this was a white male age 22 uh again the officer used verbal commands empty hand controls and ground hand cuffing technique as well as a body fold technique and the officer was uninjured and the subject advised of shoulder and wrist pain the subject was screened by burlington fire department but not transported to the ER the next incident is a domestic disturbance caller stated her ex-boyfriend had used a copied key to gain entrance into her apartment and was using a knife to enter the bedroom where she had attempted to secure herself away from him upon arrival officers met with a caller outside the residence caller was unsure if the male was still in the residence and whether or not he was armed with a knife officer attempted to call the male out from the doorway to of the apartment numerous times and receiving a response the officers made entry due to the allegation of a knife officers used a shield with one officer armed with a CEW and per training one officer had their firearm out for lethal cover as officers began to clear the apartment they located the male in a back bedroom they called out to the male who complied with commands it was taken in custody without incident further investigation officers found that the female had fabricated the entire story the the subject who had the firearm pointed at him and who the allegations were made against him was a black male age 25 there were three officers involved in this incident one officer actively pointed their firearm one officer displayed their firearm and a third officer displayed the CEW and gave verbal commands no one was injured in that incident the next incident is an arrest misdemeanor disorderly conduct while attempting to locate a male for a welfare check the arrestee go from the male attempted to assault a male friend of the missing male an officer on scene used compliant armed escort and then compliant handcuffing to take her into custody this was a white female age 36 one officer used empty hand controls and verbal commands neither the officer during the subject was injured the next incident is a mental health taken into custody for emergency evaluation the subject had been acting aggressively towards neighbors but had not risen to the level of criminal action subject was experiencing mental health episode an EE warrant was obtained by medical professionals and called officers to assist in serving it on the subject officers attempted to negotiate with the subject but he refused to exit the residence two officers were later able to make contact with the subject in a hallway of the building the subject attempted to flee back into his apartment but was stopped by officers officers were able to place one handcuff on the subject before he began to struggle with officers two more officers were required to hold the mail to safely place them in handcuffs the subject refused to walk and had to be transported the ER on a stretcher by BFD this was a white male age 40 there were four officers involved in this one officer used empty hand control controls and handcuffing another officer used force holding the subject's feet against the wall another officer used empty hand controls held the subject against the wall as did the fourth officer two officers received minor injuries a bruise and an injury to an elbow and a forearm and the subject received a minor laceration to his wrist the next incident is an assist to us martial service on an arrest warrant the bpd it was a bpd case a suspect in aggravated domestic assault with a firearm us martial service was following a wanted subject in a motor vehicle arrestee had used a firearm in commission of the domestic assault the subject was also known to law enforcement to have a history of firearm offenses and violent offenses based on this the officers conducted a high-risk motor vehicle stop arrestee was non-compliant after exiting the vehicle but a short time later responded to commands and was taken into custody without further incident again because this was a high-risk motor vehicle stop officers pointed their firearms at the vehicle and the subject their the subject was a black male age 35 there were three officers involved one officer actively pointed their firearm while giving verbal commands another officer also displayed their firearm and the third officer also pointed their firearm no one was injured in this incident the next incident is a felony arrest aggravated assault and aggravated disorderly conduct involving a retail theft a convenience store reported two african men came in and took a bunch of items threatened to shoot up the place on the left officer located the arrestee and another male with items from the store and approached them the arrestee fled on foot with officers pursuing him officers yelled and repeatedly officers yelled repeatedly for the arrestee to stop the arrestee tripped over his own pants and fell the officers caught up with the male who was attempting to get up the officers wrapped up the male and used his body weight to bring him back down to the ground an officer was able