as married couples. I completely agree. We as Black people do need to marry more and to stay together. I think that will help increase our generational wealth and rebuild Black family and our economy as Black people. Okay. Where I slightly disagree, I get the point you were making, but when it comes to Gabby, no shade to her. She seems like a beautiful woman, but her options probably weren't as abundant as she wanted as a 35 plus overweight woman. So I think people were happy for her because they were genuinely happy for her. It's like, okay, she probably doesn't have that many options and in her eyes, it may not be a married down just because it's financially for her. It just may be truly love.  Let me stop you right here. Okay. She did marry down and it's a matter of math and logic. It's not open for negotiation. Gabby's eight million, he's not. That's down. Completely agree. Okay, but you're saying it is though it's not down. And Serena Williams, hold on. And Serena Williams saying she's a multimillionaire marrying another multimillionaire is more of this black female shell game. And it would not work if it was a black man on the other end of these choices. The judgments would be different. I think if Gabby married a black man that had similar stature, financial means or whatever, you know, the gentleman that she's with, now people would genuinely be happy for her because she's just getting married in general. And I guess. Gabrielle Citibet is also not a victim. Man, she is 37 years old, but she has the means to lose the weight if she wanted to. She's already had, I think she's had at least one procedure to address the weight. Her weight is her responsibility. So, so I get, so ultimately saying that she didn't have many options. She has the option she's afforded herself because of the discipline she's put into her life. But do you, are you honestly trying to tell me that you don't think any black men were trying to approach Gabrielle Citibet? Maybe, maybe they did. This woman's from Brooklyn. Yeah, I was like, maybe this. This woman's from Brooklyn. This woman's from Brooklyn. Now, this is where the conversation could go either way. What part of the country do you live in? In the South. What state? Texas. There are women besides the Gabrielle Citibet who have men in Texas. Absolutely. So, let's not act as we just saying that Gabrielle Citibet is a victim that no one really was checking for and so everybody's happy to see it's cause she has a white man. It's not because he's a man. I guess that's where we differ. I think honestly, if she married anyone, whoever her partner would have been, people would have been happy for her. But the way you try to frame this is she's a victim of her weight and her, all this other stuff and she had to basically, she didn't have a lot of options and that's not true because in Texas you can see women of her skin tone and her size who have relationships, who have children. Women of her size and skin tone don't have a problem finding men, black men in particular. You see that where you live. And when they marry down or up, people are happy for them regardless. Okay, now this is where we're gonna, this is where, are you honestly tell, how old are you? I'm 27. 27.  Or happy for them initially, like Mary J. Blythe initially before her husband came out is this, you know, bad guy, people were happy for her. They're like, she probably- No, they weren't. No, they were not. No, they were not. People were talking about, you could do better girl. See- Okay, of course you're gonna have those, the outliers, but I feel like people were like- But hold on, see, but see, no, no, no, they're not outliers, ma'am. Mary J. Blythe is my contemporary. Okay, who is this? Mary J. Blythe is my contemporary. I'm sorry, ma'am, when Mary J. Blythe announced that she was engaged, black women made their opinions known about her being able to do better. Now, maybe you don't know, cause you're 27, but I remember when it came out. And all I'm saying is, even in our conversation, go back and listen to how you talked about it. You know, Gabrielle is a certain age, she looks a certain way, and her options aren't that high. And I'm sorry, in Texas, women of her size and her skin tone have relationships and children. They don't, they don't, it's not like no one, so this whole thing that she had to pick who I was picking and checking for her is just an outright falsehood. I don't wanna call it a lie, it's just a falsehood. It's not true. And she did, Mary, and then she did go with somebody that's less than her. It's down, she's a millionaire and he's not. So, but I wanna be clear. I know what I think, but what you're saying, just to be clear that a black woman, if Serena would have, that when a black woman chooses down, people are happy for them. When they choose a black man who's beneath them, they're happy for them. I think I'm saying when people choose love, people are happy for them. Well, see, that's the problem. When a black man's on the other side, it's never assumed to be love. When Mary J chose her husband, they didn't give him the benefit of love. They gave him the benefit of wanting her money. When it's a non-black man, then love comes into it. Thank you for proving my point though. I don't think that you mean wrong, but ma'am, when a black man has less than a black woman, it's assumed that he's in there for something else. When a non-black man is there, all of a sudden this is when the Disney movie comes out. Hello? I'm here. I don't agree with that. I think that you will always have those people that criticize it, or against it, but for the last majority of people, I think people are just genuinely happy that she found love. So if that's the case, so how about this, ma'am? So let's go with what you're saying. So let's say what you're saying is true. People will be happy for black women who just find love. Then why aren't more black women who are supposed to be the most educated, college degrees earning so much, why aren't they just going to find, why won't they settle or choose a blue collar black man or a black man who earns less than they do for love's sake? Okay, so that's different. So I was saying, I think the outside people you're talking about, the comments were happy for Gabby, but the actual people themselves, the women, that's their choice if they want to. No, no, say again, say again, the comment. Yeah, like the audience, the people were commenting and they were happy for Gabby is what I'm saying. But the women themselves, that's their choice. Maybe those women don't want to know. No, no, no. What I'm saying where Gabrielle Citibé, black women were happy for her because she had a white guy.  There was not the outpouring of love and affection. There was a lot of vitriol. And what I'm saying is when it's a black man who has less than the black woman, it's always looked at with the side-eye, but when a black woman has more than a non-black man, it's always love. Ma'am, that's not, history, you can go back and you can't go, there's no texting available, text records, but Mary J. was with her man. He got a lot of heat. So, and my next question is, then black women should have no problem getting with a black man who has less than her for love. Did you go to college? I did. And I was saying that it's not, okay, in this regard, it's not the audience that were worried about being happy. It's now we're talking about the actual woman. And then that's solely on the woman's choice if she chooses to marry down. The thing is, if women are, but the thing is, man, I'm not worried about, what I'm saying is if the audience was truly happy, the audience is made up of individuals, right? Then individual black women, if they have more, they should still be just as happy to find love if a black man has less than her. If that's what they want in the man, about all women want to marry down. Some women want to marry them before. No, no, see, no, no, see what you just did. First we talked about love, now you're talking about marrying down, which is it, stop, stop, no, no, stop, stop, stop. You're not gonna play the verbal hip hop scotch with me. Look, man, you said love and then marrying down. See, when it's a black man that's marrying down, when it's a white man, it's love. No, I'm saying on an individual basis now. If my friends were to marry down, I'd be happy for them in that regard. But that doesn't mean that I want to marry down or I marry down. But hold on, what's it more important? Okay, should black women marry for love or should black men women marry for resources? A combination of both. No, what's primary? Guess it depends on the person. No, what's primary? Don't play with me. Put them in order, please. In general, don't play the, it depends, gray game, I don't do that. What does it mean on person for me? It would be resources, then love. I said in general, okay.  So then in general, I don't know. I guess the average woman would marry for love. Okay, so if general black women should marry for resources, how old are you? 27. Right, so are you prepared to marry a 45 year old? No. Well, then you don't want to marry for resources. True, but it depends on the resources. No, true, no, no, true. That's it, because the resources come with a man when he's 45 to 65 is a man's financial peak. And not at 27.  Well, if that's what I choose to marry for, then that's what I would look for, but that's not. See, what I'm showing you guys in the audience is when a black man's on the other side of the equation, it becomes all these different things that have to happen. But when it's a non-black man, it can be just as simple as love. When it's a black man, it has to be combination of love and resources, or at least resources first. And then it has to be resources for a man of a certain age. See, I know what I'm talking about. And I said this at the beginning of the broadcast. Black men have to be perfect and it's still ain't enough. So ma'am, I'm using you to prove my point. If black women wanted to do like everyone else, they would go marry for love and they would build together with the resources. But far too often, black women are like yourself, you want resources first, but then you want them from a man that you're attracted to an age appropriate and it doesn't work that way for black women in general. It only works that way for the top 10% of black women at best. You have to look good enough. Your body has to be good enough to make those kind of demands. That's where I'm going with this. Okay.  Do you plan on getting married anytime soon? I'm actually getting a divorce. So yeah, hopefully one day, again. You're getting a divorce? Mm-hmm. Why? Because my husband is 27, 6, 6, and has resources and a lot of women like that. I asked you why you're getting divorced and you said because your husband's tall and your age? No, I'm saying because he's financially stable and he had lots of options and explored those options. Okay. Could you just make it a straight answer? Because I'm not understanding. Infidelity. How often did you cheat? I didn't cheat, he did. Mm-hmm. Well, ma'am, I hate to break this to you. But at 27, 6, 6, you do realize that men who have resources and options, that's going to be with any man that has resources. We have options. See, again, do you want strict monogamy too? Well, that's what he wanted when he asked me to marry him. Well, no, we can get, see, we have the resources. We can get strict monogamy from you. When you have the resources, then you can set the terms. Let's get real. He out earns you, right? Yes. Right, so women like that. So now you think it's better to divorce him and leave the resources behind. And this is why I believe we should go back to fault divorce and no child support, no alimony.  See, in a pre-1960s world, you could have left your husband but you could not be getting payments from him. Because he- I've been married in Texas, I won't get payments from him regardless. Sprout is supporting the children? No. What? No. Not in Texas. You don't get spouse support. Okay, so they help with their spouse support but they don't have communal property, things like that. You're not walking away, you're not walking away with what you came with. I mean, I lived in Texas for 12 years and I was married in Texas. So let's be honest, you're not walking with what you came with. Right? Correct. Right, and who purchased the bulk of what you're walking with? Who shared? Who shared? Okay. Shared what percentage? 6040. Okay, 6040. So is he an athlete? Not professionally, courageously. 6040. And I'm being serious, man. At 27, infidelity, and I don't expect women to like infidelity. I don't, I really don't. But I expect black women to understand that white women, Hispanic women, Asian women, Middle Eastern women put up with infidelity because they expect men with resources and means to have other women. They know that, so it happens. And they accept it. Black women, if you want men of those levels, you need to get on board with women at these levels. They will tell you. A lot of these women know the other, the women that the men, as long as he's not bringing home any diseases, outside children or scandals, as long as he's not embarrassing you in public, that should be, I'm gonna be dead honest. That's the affluent, high value way it goes. You have to make an agreement about these things up front and you may have something on the side too. Happens all the time. Because I now see a 27 year old woman who's going to get back out on the dating market and how long were you guys together? Six years. Okay, so six years, you're gonna have a lot to detox from. Do you ever want to have children? Yes. All right, well, based on what I'm hearing, ma'am, has he apologized for his infidelity? Is he still doing it? I don't know, or not in the same home? Oh, I'm gonna tell you what somebody should have told you. You might want to check, you might want to think several times before going to find this divorce because it may sound like it's a good idea right now, but at 27, you're not the 21 year old you were. You're just gonna, you're another dangerous on black woman out here and it takes time to get through the issues you have. And all I'm saying, ma'am, is marriages are messy. People are messy. People make mistakes, people make errors, but unless you already have somebody else you're seeing, I don't know, I'll leave it alone. Did he make any babies while he was out there? Not to my knowledge. All right, and he apologized. And you didn't want to forgive him? Yes, I did forgive him, but that I don't trust him anymore. So no, I didn't want to continue with the relationship if I don't trust him. All right, well, I'm gonna say it anyway, ma'am. You could be making a mistake because getting back here out in the dating market, have you, I don't know if I want to ask you that. I don't know if you've actually gone out on a date, but the dating market is far worse than what you have already. So let me disabuse you of the fact that you're gonna find people out here, especially the kind of men you're used to have rotations and aren't really downward committing to older women.  And if you watch this broadcast, divorces are down, marriages are up.  Take some time, think about it, pray about it, meditate on it. Ask, is there anything that he can do to regain my trust and before you go through that process and get back out of here, because as a guy's divorce, I'm telling you, 27 year old woman out in Texas, you're outnumbered. But thank you for being honest, that's, I mean, it shows that a lot of character that you can at least be honest about it. I appreciate your effort. Yeah, appreciate it though.


Good morning. This is Senate Judiciary by Thursday, February 11th, 2021, or Abraham Lincoln's birthday. People forget that now, President's Day. April 12th is Lincoln's birthday. I think we should celebrate that even when it's been going on in Washington. Today's topic, first topic is S7, which is an act relating to expanding access to expungement and sealing of criminal history records. Our witness is Sarah George, the state's attorney of our Lagos County, Chittenden County. So, Sarah, welcome to Senate Judiciary. I think this is your first time this year. It is my first time. Thank you for having me. Happy new year. I guess it's a little belated. That's all right. I'll take it. Nice to have you with us. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I know that this bill was initially discussed on January 14th and I had sent an email. I think to all of you right beforehand, I wasn't aware that it was being heard and just wanted to get one quick thought out or comment out to the committee. I can readdress that, but since I was asked to testify and looked into it a little bit more, I would add just a couple of other things. So with regards to the email that I sent, it was really just an addition of one word or two words on, I think it was line, page 16, line 17, that essentially at least my reading of it prevented state's attorneys from stipulating to expunge felony property crimes. Really ever if you read it in a particular way, the petitioners could seal by stipulation, but could not expunge by stipulation. So the recommendation was just to add the court may grant the petition to seal or expunge without a hearing. And then I also wanted to, I had looked over prior testimony and was given a copy of Attorney O'Reilly's testimony regarding the bill and I would just echo her thoughts on the technical amendment to effectuate the surcharge amendment that was done. There is some pushback within the judiciary around what that really means and whether or not it's really in their discretion to waive the surcharges when doing expungements, they are still occasionally being denied due to that surcharge. So I do appreciate her language that she suggested in her testimony, but I believe was just her post amendment and the surcharges imposed by this section shall not be waived by the court except as part of an expungement or sealing proceeding where the petitioner demonstrates an inability to pay. I do think that would be incredibly helpful for a lot of the expungements that we're doing in Shetland County. And that was a great deal of testimony back before COVID in Manuski when we had the public hearing. I believe you were there. I was. And a lot of the witnesses had significant surcharges that were making it impossible for them to make the payment. Yeah. And our surcharges in general are significant for people. And some of them are surcharges that they got 15 to 20 years ago and still just can't pay them off, which does seem like an unnecessary barrier for, again, the people that can't afford it, where people that can have had no issues with that. And the final thing I just wanted to, I think, I don't know if James Pepper's on this call, but I'm sure that he has also said this. I'm sure the judiciary has said this, but I wholly support the expansion of expungements. I would go beyond this even to allow state attorneys to expunge anything that they deem appropriate really if certain criteria are met. But with that comes a lot of additional work on our office. In 2019, our office processed 3,517 expungement petitions. And in 2020, we did 3,497, which is a lot of work. And it really has been put on myself and Chief Deputy State Attorney Dustin Dyer and do all the review, which takes a lot of time because of, frankly, how complicated our expungement statute has become. But then once we stipulate and file them, which we are now doing a lot more of because of odyssey, it's really difficult for people in the community to file things like this. So I'm actually doing the filing on behalf of a lot of people as well. And then when our office is processing them, Jennifer Buford, our Chief Administrative Assistant, does all of them and it is a lot. It's a lot of work for her, which again, we're all very grateful to do it. I just wanted to, I would be remiss if I didn't point out how much extra work it is on the offices, which I think automatic expungements would be incredibly helpful. Yeah, I personally resisted automatic expungement for a number of reasons. And part of that is that feel like a person needs to show the motivation to at least take some action to the less than expungement. Maybe that's old fashioned. Well, and also, I mean, again, kind of going back to it sometimes takes me 20 minutes just to read the statue and understand whether or not a case is eligible. And I'm an attorney. I think that to some extent, some people might read the statue and their motivation level will go down just because of the complications and not knowing whether or not their case is eligible. And then on top of that, when they call my office and say, I have this, I filled out this form, but I don't know what to do with it. I don't have an odyssey account. Is that the only way I can file something with the court? You know, there's there's a lot of barriers for people that even once they do get that initial motivation to look into it, they stop because of the system, the system that we have. I didn't have anything else specifically yet. Senator Nick has a question. So I'm just wondering with regard to the odyssey account and layperson to file that is the fee there for them or can the fee be waived or is this the there's no fee anymore? There the filing fee did get that got eliminated a couple of years ago, so they don't have to pay a filing fee unless they're stealing a DUI. I believe that still has a $90 filing fee. But so I think she's talking about the fee to odyssey because we're putting in to Vermont Legal Aid to take care of the filing fees right now anyway. The figure out the budget adjustment bill passes. That's where the money is to continue that to mark. Yeah. So I would bring that up too, though, that there have been people who have wanted to seal a DUI and they do have a $90 filing fee and getting that to the court while e-filing something is a whole not like they're right now they're mailing it to me and I'm walking it down to the court so that I know that it goes in at the same time that I'm filing it for them. It's there's a lot of complications and again, I'm happy to do it. It's something I care a lot about, but for a layperson, that motivation level gets less and less as each of those barriers is put up. So I guess my question to different folks that are in the meeting room right now is how can we simplify the process? So without, you know, I mean, I suppose you could say that every misdemeanor other than domestic violence or something was a part of the defense could be done in a different way from some of the problems. Yeah, I know that there is discussion around simplifying it and I don't have, I'm not, I don't have the best answer because I, I know that some people think we should go to an all ceiling and I really don't agree with that because I think that even the ceiling of records gets overused by law enforcement in ways that harm people and so I don't necessarily agree with that particular outcome. I do think that all in most cases, all records should eventually be destroyed, but I do think that the the multi-level and different timelines can can get confusing and I don't, I don't have the, I think there is a committee working on that though. I'm sure they can come up with something perfect. We've got Judge Brierson here. I wonder if you'd like to comment today or wait until next week. I can briefly comment. Good morning to the committee. Good morning, Sarah. Good morning. For the record, Brian Grierson, Chief Superior Judge. It's interesting to hear Sarah talk about the workload on on expungements because I can't agree more and as the committee knows and I believe more recently Pat has, Pat Gable has testified in appropriations. I don't know if it was house or senate appropriations. Tend to be house. Yeah. On the the cost involved to process these so I won't belabor that point. I've made that point to the committee before but what Sarah is really saying, we use this word automatic and whether it's her even with the stipulation that she's talking about, even if the state and the party agree, there's still a work effort involved and there is a committee, if you will, a informal committee myself, David Shear, Matt Valerio, Marshall Paul, May read O'Reilly and maybe some others have been meeting informally while this bill is pending to talk about trying to simplify the process. I think that's probably the best way to put it. Whether we'll be able to or not, I don't know, but I think Odyssey opens up some doors that were clearly not available to us before and at some point in this discussion with this group, I will make sure that we get somebody from Odyssey involved who is intimately involved with what the program can do and not do and so far we have not done that but I understand Sarah's concerns about ceiling. I think what this committee has been discussing and you probably hear more from others involved, it's really a discussion of who has access for what purpose and for how long. Because in the final analysis, whether you call it expungement or whether you call it ceiling eliminate any access, it's going to amount to the same thing under the Odyssey system. The court system will be an electronic system. There will be no paper files per se to be destroyed. It's a matter of an entry in a system that will say this file is confidential. There is no access. So we've got to figure out between the time of conviction because that's the triggering event until whatever the sentence is has been executed or completed, whatever term we want to use, it's that second point that is the triggering point for the time to start on to what extent is a file sealed or do we wait just by way of example? Conviction today, do we wait three years before sealing and then you have a period of sealing where you have to determine who has access during that sealing period before it reaches a final point that the system can trigger. The system can say three years after a conviction on a misdemeanor it can be sealed and these are the people that have access during the sealing period and at some point in the future, let's say two years after sealing, all access is denied. The system can do that. The problem is is picking up the intervening charges that may come in that may impact that. That's where you get into DUI that normally maybe could be expunged but because of an intervening charge or another conviction won't. So we've got to work out the details of that but the system will be different in the sense that it won't be destroying records, it will be denying access to those records and I would like to think there's a way of simplifying this and make it more. I don't want to suggest to anyone that it's going to be completely automatic but we can go a lot further than we have in the past and we would like this committee would continue to work and I think there's a provision in this bill as it reads now Senator that talks about referring to the sentencing commission to decide if other offenses that could be expunged and I would suggest I think I did in my earlier testimony that is part of that referral to sentencing commission that they explore this process of sealing and expungement so that it can be simplified and I agree with with with with Sarah. I can remember when a request for expungement would come in before the stipulation or even when a petition came in and going through the statutes to figure out whether someone is eligible at that point in time is a time consuming process. The only other two points I'll make now and I'll be glad to talk later. I do agree with Sarah on the surcharges that was as you indicated Senator Sears part of the bill last year and I think I'd got lost so we're comfortable with the language that may read as proposed. The only other issue that I wanted the committee to be aware of as long as Sarah's here I think she'll be familiar with it. It's come up a couple of times in the last six months I've heard from VCIC the state and the defense are stipulating to a sealing of a case but the individual has a sex offender registry requirement that is not addressed and so VCIC is caught in the middle. They get an order that says seal this but it has it says nothing about the impact on the sex offender registry and I don't know what the answer is but I think it's something that we need to discuss. The Manhattan laws federal law as well because there's certain consequences to not placing people on the registry who have committed certain acts and we we are as I remind myself we forget it but because we don't put minors on the sex offender registry we are docked I believe 10 percent of the burn grant every year. Yeah and I don't know the details of cases.  Yeah we've had a couple we've had a couple that came out of Chittenden County that's why I referenced Sarah and I think she's familiar with them but what they're finding is that person for instance might have a 10-year registry requirement but there's been an agreement to seal the record within that 10 years and VCIC said what are we supposed to do? So I just wanted the committee to be aware of that issue and I think it's something that needs to be addressed. The more expungement that we get into there's some of these collateral consequences that we need to be addressed. I'm glad you brought that up. No actually next week we're going to hear from the Justice Center they've been doing some great work looking at barriers to employment and structural barriers and Josh Grimes will be with us next week and Peggy will I hope will post by Monday he has three power points one is a playbook of national barriers to employment one is a playbook for Vermont specific to they looked at Vermont specifically and what we do to prevent people from getting jobs much of this is going to be in the government operations realm so we're lucky to have Senator White on this committee but it's amazing the work they've done and there are actually some kind of a grant that I'm not sure what it is but willing would like to work with Vermont on these collateral consequences occupational licensing business license and employment health care banking transfer insurance adult care nursing homes the whole bunch of things so there's three power points Peggy will post on our website I believe he's going to be with us next Thursday is that right Brent or Peggy um he is on Wednesday it is hold on one second um Wednesday so um if you could post that so people can who are interested can look at that um before he testifies um do you want me to post it before Wednesday typically yeah why don't we post it on on Monday to not confuse people okay what's going on this week okay but Brennan and I met with he and the director of the justice center and they're excited to work with Vermont on this it may hold up passage of the bill but I think it would be good to be able to include some of these tendernesses and it goes beyond expungement but many of our barriers are unrelated to whatever job the person's looking at senator I can just add to the comments Sarah made about the self-represented litigant who doesn't have access to Odyssey I checked while we were talking and much like a person comes to the court now with their petition for expungement or used to they can bring their hard copy their paper to the court and the court staff will scan that into the system so it will become without charge so essentially for the self-represented litigant without access to Odyssey it's the same process they come to court with their paperwork and will scan them by the staff I don't know I don't know that they can do that right now but they could mail it I assume right well they as long as they get the paperwork to court it'll be scanned in and process would be the same I agree with everything that we can do to simplify the process for the person um it's it's it can be intimidating trying to understand and I I've worked with a fellow who's getting a record expunge and he was thrilled to get three of his four crimes expunge but then he finds out that one of them can't be expunged under the current law and this bill would change that to allow him to expunge everything he had no problem getting three of them but then the fourth one is a hindrance and that continues a barrier for him to be able to do certain things so I you know I think that you should do whatever we can to simplify it both the the judiciary the state I'm interested in one thing you said Sarah that I'd like to expand on further is the effect of sealing versus expunging and how you that I um we've been talking about both sort of as a g if it's simpler to seal than let's just do sealing can you comment further on that why you're opposed to sealing I'm not opposed to it I think that I would echo what Judge Grisham was saying that I think it more so depends on who has access to that while it's sealed because right now my understanding at least is that all law enforcement have access to that even the the individual who's out doing traffic stops and can access somebody's sealed record from 15 years ago and use that as a pretextual stop whether that ultimately holds up is another question but I think that they're even within law enforcement really needs to be limited by by who can see it and for how long I think that really the only reasons we should be able to see particular prior conduct is if it's a subsequent offense and recent and otherwise I just I think that they are going to continue it won't hold people back necessarily in the community and housing or other issues but it will continue to hold them back within the legal system in ways that I think only perpetuate all of the same problems that we already have and certain prosecutors will use old old offenses against people that they in my opinion shouldn't be able to so I just think the people that do a lot of the harm from prior using prior convictions against against people are still going to have access to it and can still continue to harm them and I think that especially when it comes to it actually does ultimately hurt them in housing because if we're using those to ask for for example a case we maybe would have done some other alternative process for but we see that they have this prior case that's similar from 15 years ago and so we don't we require that they go through the regular system and get another conviction it just perpetuates the cycle for those individuals it really doesn't allow them to fully move on when the people that can use it against them have access to it but if it's recent and it's a subsequent offense then I understand the importance of that and I think those cases we should be able to see that somebody got a DUI two years ago and you know it's getting another one and that that makes sense to me but somebody having a felony from 20 years ago felony property offense for example that has long since done what they needed to do on that case and just ran into some other issue 15 years later I don't think we should be able to use that against them and it will get used against them by some prosecutors yeah do you have that same experience with the juvenile records too which have been sealed I mean we never I don't think we ever expunge juvenile records I don't know we certainly don't in Chittenden County we don't look at those when somebody is out of the system I mean we've certainly had conversations if a particular prosecutor knew that they had a case with that child they may they may mention it but we don't use that information in the criminal cases but we could you know I'm speaking on behalf of Chittenden County they we could use it against them and law enforcement could use it against them if they cannot have access to it they can if they have access to it they I mean whether they're actually using it against them like they they have that in their head they can their biases could be triggered they can they can use that information whether they say they're using that information or not they I have had law enforcement say I saw that this kid had this particular violent offense when he was 15 like this isn't his first time those types of conversations happen when we're trying to get a 19-year-old especially now into youthful offender we've had law enforcement bring those up like well this isn't his first time he shouldn't get a youthful offender status because he did this sort of thing when he was 15 so that's what I mean by they they do use it against them in wanting a particular outcome that's helpful I thought this was a simple bill we passed that last year and there wouldn't be any problem I guess maybe I'm making it more complex but there are problems with the current system and I hopefully we we take another look at the bill and do whatever we can to make it as simple as possible for somebody to get their records and move the barriers if they're eligible for expungement state agrees the judge agrees there's no reason anybody else would like to comment on this right now senator the only other thing I would add yeah the only other thing I would add is under the current statutes as to both ceiling and expungement the the the phrase is that if a person if the court is asked the phrase is there is no record and that applies to whether it's a sealed or an expunged record and so in that sense they're similar and again I'll just repeat myself that with the case management system it should be easier to to manage that electronic file and hopefully eliminate some of the steps that are now part of this process but I would agree with with this George that it's it's a question of access who and how long and what do they have to do to get that access we can resolve that part then I think whatever we call it sealing or expungement is not critical it's it's the access and for how long thank you thank you uh James thank you thank you sir I appreciate your being with us James Pepper did you have a comment I had uh yes for the record James Pepper from the department of state's attorneys and sheriffs and I just wanted to thank Sarah George for all of her work on expungement her office uh you know I think had I think she mentioned 3500 expungements just last year which is an incredible undertaking um with the help of legal aid of course who's been just so incredible getting um all of our state's attorneys on board and comfortable with expungements and ceilings and has held I think expungement clinics in every county of the state um helping people navigate this very complex process um I have one substantive uh comment on the bill if that's appropriate for this time yeah absolutely we've got about 25 minutes to continue talking about okay so and I've raised this with um at least some of the stakeholders that are in this uh you know kind of informal subcommittee on sealing um and what this bill does is it allow it expands eligibility to a number of crimes in fact all the crimes except for the non-listed crimes and uh it applies to all non-listed and non-drug trafficking crimes so it also allows a the respondent which could be either the state's attorney or the attorney general to stipulate to uh to waive the time period um the waiting period uh for any crime and that that is a good thing and it's something the state's attorneys have asked for in the past the ability to waive certain time periods where we get a little bit nervous is that there's this concurrent jurisdiction between uh the state's attorneys and the attorney general for waiving those time periods and so the office that prosecuted the case is not necessarily the office that would be allowed to waive that time period and that gives us a little bit of pause um especially considering the victim notification that's required under uh 7608 um so you know it's our it's the office that prosecuted the case that I think should be in charge of determining whether uh to waive the time period or not and do that victim notification you know it's uh the office that prosecuted the case that has the victim advocate that has the relationship with the victim um that should be the one reaching out to that victim and seeing if there's any objection to the ceiling or an expungement and I would say that um I think without exception when people are eligible eligible for expungement and they don't have any disqualifying um criteria and the victim has had an opportunity to weigh in it's very very rare and I think um it would be difficult to find many cases where a state's attorney has not granted an expungement or a or a ceiling but I do think that it should be the office that prosecuted the case that is in charge of determining whether or not to waive that time period friend do you have that um as a possible amendment um I have not talked to bren about that but I'd be happy to no I do now but um yeah okay I'm sorry I thought um I understand what about when they do the clinics though I mean you have an attorney and attorney general there if that's the case then if there's that open line of communication um that's fine with me it's just we've seen a couple of times where uh an expungement petition has come through where the state's attorney had not been notified and it was because it was done and I don't know the specifics of of maybe you know there was an attempt to notify uh that just didn't happen but um we've seen one or two instances around the state where you know a ceiling order or an expungement order comes through and the state's attorney had no idea um so can um David did you want to comment on that since you're the one you're the attorney you're not the one excuse me you're the attorney you're representing the attorney general's office sure thank you senator uh and for the record david chair with the attorney general's office um on that point it is the case that we have concurrent jurisdiction the way the statute's written to stipulate two expungements if we chose to it's my belief it's my understanding that in every case in which we've done that there has been consultation with the state's attorney's office involved I have and you know I understand there's different evidence being put in front of the committee but that that is not my understanding of what's happened it is the case that um I have excuse me I have standing permission actually from the chitlin county state's attorney to review and stipulate to expungement conditions sorry expungement petitions out of chitlin county uh and when david cahill with state's attorney in windsor county I had similar standing permission to do that this was especially relevant during the clinics that you're talking about where even though they take place in one county you know people don't often realize that they're uh or whether they realize it or not that we get we get petitions for cases that were coming out of all counties so at at these clinics even if they're aimed at one specific county so it was often very useful for me to be able to do that and in cases where we didn't have standing permission there have been times certainly when um the attorney general has felt that a expungement or stipulation was was warranted but my belief was that in my in what I witnessed as being president at the clinics is that the attorney general would call the state's attorney and say look I really think this is a one that's worthy of stipulation and I'd like to sign it and and talk to them about it so I I don't know you know I don't I don't know the specifics of the cases that attorney peppers talking about um I do think it's useful in um volume management especially for some of these big counties to be able to have these cooperative agreements it's certainly I would certainly never stipulate to a petition unless I had some sort of permission from the state's attorney and I my belief is that is the policy of our office um and really nobody else in our office frankly deals with expungements other than me um but yeah so our our our position would be that it is useful and helps deal with volume management and can be a useful tool to have the attorney general's office able to review these as well I understand that's a perhaps a point of disagreement with with us and and some of the state's attorneys um but just wanted to put that out there thank you uh pepper I I just I would actually agree with um most of what uh attorney chair has just said and that I do think it's useful for there to be this concurrent jurisdiction with respect to um ceiling and expungement what I'm I'm just talking about this additional provision that would allow uh the respondent which is either the state's attorney or the or the attorney general under current law to waive the time period I I think that that you know that could mean a person is um convicted of a crime today and then tomorrow um the attorney general could come and seal the petition or stipulate to seal the petition when when that office did not was not involved in the prosecution so I'm only concerned about this additional new authority that's being granted that would allow um either the state's attorney or the attorney general to to waive that kind of waiting period which is permitted under s7 all right we should highlight that when we get to markup um there was a discussion about trellis and negligent driving um where are we with that matt larry I think somebody brought it up is that expungible are we talking about negligent operation with serious vital injury or death resulting that that's what I think we were talking about it's I believe those are listed currently um and if listed crimes were being excluded then they wouldn't be um expungible but to me those are usually negligent acts that over a period of time if there are no further problems should be subject to treatment like other negligent acts and and allow and allow expungement um you know there's not a criminal intent necessarily and what uh there's not a criminal intent necessarily but you know by definition it is a negligent act um that we have chosen to criminalize um so you know to me at at some point they need to needs to be something that comes off the record if uh you know if there aren't any other problems I mean there's what I think about what I think about you know worthiness for expungement or for or ceiling is what type of uh are you intending to commit a crime are you intending to do something that is criminal is there some sort of criminal thinking or uh you know uh I don't want to use the Latin but the bottom line is a a criminal element to your thinking that gives rise to what the state has deemed to be a crime and to me that the negligent or unintentional type acts are the types of things that are not the product of criminal thinking they are the product of mistake they are the product of of of uh inadvertence or negligence or um not paying attention where if you can get that under uh control and understand that you need to pay attention that you need to be um to be attending to detail in the like like when you're driving um those are the kinds of things that down the road would warrant a uh an expungement and ceiling and I use those two words interchangeably I know and it's it just confuses things but um you know I can see we're going to undo ultimately distill this down to what is the equivalent of expungement no matter no matter what you call it so to me I'm trying to get at the concept of what sorts of things are worthy of expungement on their face because of the lack of criminal thinking that went into uh the crime to begin with thanks it's actually helpful sometimes I wanted to have things get on certain lists um you know we've created lists of the big well listed crimes we add to those lists do things with them sometimes is it is it that correct well I mean it's clear over the years that the various victims groups and advocacy groups have had uh you know access the legislature to help expand the list of listed crimes from the old common law mrs baker crimes or what you call the big 12 now um but uh you know that that was a that was a time during the early 90s and the like when um criminalization of a lot of behavior started to uh started to erupt particularly regarding um alcohol uh drugs and domestic violence and I I will and I and we keep talking about this domestic the domestic violence as being one of the things that we uh are uh keep excluding from things I I'm just mindful of a uh seminar that I actually went to attended last friday for with a professor from the University of Maryland who was an advocate during the 90s regarding the domestic violence um issues and was she says one of the people who got domestic violence on the various lists as like listed crimes and and the like and then she's studied the issue over the last 30 years and has now come to the realization that we've done it completely wrong um and uh and that we need to deal with domestic violence in a different way I I really wish that the legislature at some point would uh give her some time to whether it's in this committee or another one or you know depending on the time frame or her name is um Lee uh I'm sorry I am uh Lee Goodmark and she's a doctorate professor at uh University of Maryland University of Maryland law school and uh she talks about uh the ways your certain European countries have addressed domestic violence in a way that has made progress on recidivism where in the United States despite our efforts we really haven't um made the type of progress that you would you would hope on the subject in any event separate separate issue but uh you know it's clear how these lists expanded over over time as um interested victims groups um became more active in the political process I was just looking for the through my file of the last one looking how we the last the bill last year and uh interesting my note from Sarah George need to simplify the system this is 127 20 senator white I was just going to comment on on what Matt just talked about because I have and I know this has nothing to do with the expungement thing but it is a follow-up on that the I I know that we will not allow domestic violence cases to go to the criminal justice center or our community justice centers um they're excluded from that and I know that when the sheriff down here was um doing his ankle bracelet program the um they said you cannot do a dv cases you just they aren't eligible they shouldn't ever happen and he convinced the state's attorney and the everybody to allow this person to do it and it was the best thing that happened both to that person and to the victim so I think that we we lump these things in and it doesn't make any sense and I agree with Matt we really should be um taking a deeper look at that it's one of those things that we we probably just need to look at just by virtue of the fact that we aren't really making a lot of progress on it uh with what we're doing so unless there's no way to handle it ever and we just throw up our hands and say it's something that has no remedy um then look at other things and I as I understand it from the Dr. Goodmark that uh um there are programs that have worked um in in Europe and in other places that uh show good promise with recidivism and and the like on the domestic violence front um but it's not the way we address things here senator if you have my comment on the careless operation carol the negative operation please do yeah uh so the comments just now spurred me to do a quick search through both the bill and current law uh by way of background it is currently one of the perverse outcomes of our statutes that somebody can get a DUI sealed but cannot get a careless and exit operation sealed even though DUIs often get pled down to careless and negligence so it's a bizarre outcome uh but the reason why currently the reason why they can't get them sealed is because their predicate offenses and predicate offenses are uh not eligible for expungement or sealing it was the intention of this bill to include a bunch of predicate offenses and allow a predicate misdemeanors to be sealed and uh or expunged um but looking through the draft I just noticed what I think might be an error uh but if somebody has a knowledge that this was a purposeful change let me know we can discuss it but um on page three of uh of s7 line lines 15 and 16 it looks like there's an amendment to the listed offenses proposed that would in fact expand what is currently limited the listed offense is currently limited to grossly negligent operation resulting in serious bodily injury or death as defined in subsection b of the relevant statute and it looks like there's an amendment that it would open it up so that the listed offense would become any negligent or grossly negligent operation um so I just wanted to flag that because I my sense is that it wasn't the intention to open that up but maybe maybe there's some debate I'm I'm misremembering but if it's like that change were to be made then we would be left with a system where that couldn't be sealed or expunged and I don't think that that was the intention but again I defer to uh are we I'm now I'm confused so I need some help bring um are we saying simple gross negligent operation can't be expunged no so that so that was not the intent um the sentencing commission report uh that was issued last year recommended um an update to the listed crime statute that would correct the cross reference and there were I had quite a few discussions with various individuals last year when I was working on the bill so that removal of subsection b and I and I recently talked to Marshall from the defender general's office about this and in the next draft that um that subsection b that's removed in the as introduced version was going to be replaced um so the intent here was just to correct the cross reference and not to expand um what's considered a listed crime thank you senator sears yes chris uh chris fennel for the record um Vermont Center for Crime System Services I just wanted to state because of the conversation not just what happened but the conversation about domestic violence and um excluding it from from things and you know I've worked in the domestic violence field for over 30 years and we have learned a lot and I just want to assure and I see now that Sarah Robinson is on this call um but I want to assure folks that the network the network programs and then and nationally people are working on these issues they're hard issues just like trying to reform the criminal justice system how to keep victims safe and what that looks like and um how we can make sure and ensure that our communities are safe for everyone is number one thing and there are literally thousands of people working on this issue thank you um yeah in Brattleboro it was the domestic violence network program and I believe the Bennington network program also supported the use of ankle bracelets for domestic abusers who are getting treatment for whatever you want to programming on shipments so programming um it allowed them to continue their jobs pay child support other things and I know the pain and the pain was actively involved in Bennington I don't know what your network program is called the Women's Freedom Center but it also allowed the victim to know at any point where if the violator had straight off and gone someplace where he or she wasn't supposed to go it it was a it was a good program I would agree sorry we lost it yeah me too um it being uh almost 10 o'clock Sarah did you want to make a quick comment then we'll come back to this next week sure I would I would just say uh you know we're very supportive of these ongoing conversations and senator white I know there's been and we've been in conversation with the attorney general's office about the current carve out that there is around not referring domestic and sexual violence cases to community justice centers so I just wanted to assure the committee that those conversations are very robust and ongoing and we certainly hope to come back you know in the coming years uh with a with a very with some policy proposals but those are conversations are ongoing lots of stakeholders involved in those and we very much see the potentials for um diversion and restorative justice to have more of a role in domestic and sexual violence cases than they do right now good thank you with that we'll take a break until quarter after um and and then pick up with one of the yes all right my agenda s18 thank you last agenda third pick up with s18 um which is a bill regarding time we're going to sign off youtube for 15 minutes and be back at 10 15 thank you


Halo stands for High Activity, Location, Observation. Currently in the Halo system, there are approximately 250 cameras that are recorded on a daily basis. In addition to those cameras, through our partnerships, we have access to hundreds of additional cameras. Most of the cameras are what we call PTZ or Pan Tilt Zoom, and that means that the people monitoring the cameras have the ability to move those cameras 360 degrees, they can zoom in and out on whatever is happening in the area of the camera. We have highly trained civilian personnel, not only are they monitoring radio traffic, they have the ability to communicate directly with the officers on the street, and they're also proactively monitoring, looking for criminal activity. For example, there was a monitor that observed animal abuse, and they were able to call that out, and the suspect was apprehended a short distance from where the observation was made. We've had monitors observe robbery suspects coming out of banks. They're able to track those suspects and call that information out so that officers can move in. Camera operators are not to look inside of private businesses and homes. If there's an expectation of privacy, then the monitors are forbidden from monitoring those areas unless there is a crime investigation in progress. The video is audited on a random basis to ensure the rights of the citizens are not infringed. The video is only available to the law enforcement community and for criminal investigations. Halo Video is stored on special storage servers and automatically deleted after 30 days, so we don't keep video indefinitely. There's a list of cameras on our website. There are halo cameras in all areas of the city. However, approximately 80 to 85% of the cameras are in the downtown area at this time. Public safety and security is the primary objective of the halo program, and we are very, very concerned about protecting the rights of the citizens as well as having an impact on criminal activity within the community.


Hi, this is Greg from N5D, and today we're going to talk about who really runs this world. In ancient times, we were led to believe that the pharaohs had the greatest power, but they were merely covering up the fact that extra terrestrials were on the land long beforehand. As part of their cover-up, they changed the head of the Sphinx from a lion to the face of pharaoh Khaphra. Because this face is so disproportional, it's quite obvious that the original creation was not that of a man-lion hybrid, as civilizations grew while empires rose and fell. The next pyramid of control was represented by the monarchy, with the king at the top of the pyramid. As globalization increased, the new system of power became the Vatican, as crusades and inquisitions murdered millions of people throughout the years in their quest for ultimate global power. If you think you own anything, you're wrong. Even if you paid cash for your house, the pope still owns it, according to the Papal Bowl Decrees of 1455 and 1493. According to researcher Santos Benachi, in the year 1302, Pope Boniface VII created the first express trust in history. When the crusaders left their homes and riches behind, the church developed a plan to help their trusted friends. In essence, I will hand over my estate to you while I go to Jerusalem to fight for Christ. The person that's given the rights to these estates became the trustee, the owner of the property. In some cases, when the knights came back from fighting, they found out that the trustee decided to keep their possessions. The courts would not support the knights because the trustee had the right to keep their property. Because of the Roman Catholic Church's desire to control through their inquisitions, they decided that they would create the first express trust called Unum Sanctum, which was written on a Papal Bowl and placed in their vault. On the Papal Bowl, it says that all of the souls in the world belong to the Roman Catholic Church, and they do because no one has challenged their claim. Your birth certificate is the title of the soul that they own in their registries. They have registered you and that title is the title to your soul. The Holy See owns everything, so while you're lost at sea, the Vatican claims ownership of everything just like they did to the knights who fought their wars. Because secret societies are so compartmentalized, even they have their own pyramid of control. For example, the Freemasons have a Christian Bible in all of their lodges, but at the top of Freemasonry, you'll find the Luciferian doctrine that honors and worships the fallen angel Lucifer. The highest level of Freemasonry is the 33rd degree, where they have a motto of Orto Abcaio, which means order out of chaos. Many people believe the Vatican is at the top of the pyramid. What many people do not realize is that the Pope is being controlled in secrecy by a person known as the Black Pope. This system of control is similar to any democratic election process where politicians are selected, not elected. The current acting Pope is merely a puppet and spokesman for the Black Pope, so if the Pope is so powerful and has enough net worth to feed, clothe, and shelter every person on the planet, then why is there starvation and homelessness? Why does the Vatican own so much gold and who truly is pulling the strings of the Black Pope? According to the Sumerian texts, the Anunnaki came to this planet in search of gold to use as microdust in order to save their depleted atmosphere, similar to what we're seeing here on our own planet. At first, they used their own lineage to mine the gold on this planet, but eventually they decided it would be easier to genetically manipulate the existing species of man on Earth to mine gold for them. This explains why gold is considered such a valuable asset on our planet. It also explains why the Vatican has so much of it because they're simply answering to their overlords, the Anunnaki. So, who's above the Pope? Lower-level malevolent extraterrestrials such as the Reptilians and Dracos have their hands in all facets of our society. We even see how the overlords protect their buildings with gargoyles and how the Reptilian is prominent in ancient symbolism. So, who's above the Reptilians and Dracos? The Anunnaki are the Draco and Reptilian overlords, yet just like those competing for the ultimate power on this planet, these factions are battling themselves as well. In alchemy, there's a saying, as above, so below. Our planet has been in total peace for only 8% of our recorded history. So, if as above, so below applies, then there are numerous wars going on in the heavens above. It once again boils down to power and control. Just like on our planet, the malevolent extraterrestrials use fear as their source for control as well. It's become obvious that this planet is being terraformed for one of these malevolent factions. With their need for gold and through the use of advanced technology, the Anunnaki are above the Reptilians and Dracos. But who's above them? According to the Gnostic text, the Nagamati, Archons are part of the Demiurge, who basically feed off of our fear through various control systems, such as religion, government, the mainstream media, and money. According to Cameron Day, Jehovah plays a main role in this deception, along with every religion that uses fear as a tool for control. They may come through as Ascended Masters or Archangels as well, but basically they are unseen and feed off of negative energy perpetuated through fear. The Archons are basically imposing their dominance over another person or group of people and are violating our personal energy. So who's above the Archons? Just like the Wizard of Oz, there's a malevolent being or race of beings who feed off of negative energy. This explains why you'll never feel good after watching the nightly news or reading the headlines of any mainstream newspaper. It's a vicious cycle of fear, death, pain, suffering, misery, and sacrifices to the overlords. So how do we escape this system of perpetual fear and economic slavery? First off, don't give them your power. Renounce your own personal sovereignty by saying that you no longer agree to be part of their system of control. According to Cameron Day, the first step is to engage the self-clearing system protocols and revoke all agreements that you have made with any beings that don't have your best interests in mind. Next, revoke all agreements to see reality in polarized terms. Every time you revoke agreements, be sure to reclaim your energy that had gone into them. Then affirm your commitment to transcend the control paradigms of the corrupt demiurge without being sidetracked by the pointless polarity battles. You can also turn off your TV literally.  Virtually everything that's on TV is a distraction that prevents you from finding your true divine purpose for being here. Lastly, we all need to come together. As I mentioned in this article, once the bottom of the pyramid unites, the rest will collapse. This is why those in power right now are trying to push race wars and have kept us economically divided. We have the power and numbers to make this world into a literal paradise without the need for economic subservience. But it all boils down to everyone coming together under a common cause and standing up for the best interests of humanity. What are your thoughts? Leave a comment below. Please remember to like and to subscribe to N5D videos. That's it for now. This is Greg from N5D.


We are ready to begin our second talk. Now, you may not know this, but in Astronomy on Top, our speakers don't get pained. They do get pained in fear. This is the first time that we will not be able to pay our speaker with fear. Our speaker today is Dr. Meredith Rawls, who is forming a protostar at the moment. He therefore is incapable of perceiving proper pain. And so please join me in getting the warmest possible welcome to the thoroughly undercompensated Dr. Meredith Rawls. A few months in a revenue situation. So my name is Meredith. I'm a post-doc at the University of Washington, and I also study stars.  I also write software, so if you like software, that's cool too. So stars and software together, that's kind of my life story right now. So this, as you probably may have guessed, I think it stopped playing the movie, but this is the song. Have you guys seen that before? Like maybe every day this month. So this is actually a picture of the sun from earlier today, taken from a satellite up in space. And you can see all the different activity and cool stuff going on in the sun. And what you might not know is there's also a lot of interesting activity going on inside the sun. And oh, it's going to quit moving again. Well, that's cool. We can watch the sun again. So this is kind of the outer surface of the sun rotating. It's sped up a little bit. It doesn't actually rotate that fast, but you know, it would be really boring if I stood here and watched your video all the time. But inside the sun, there's also a whole bunch of activity happening. So this is not an actual crop that X-rayed the sun. I can't look inside the sun with my eyes. I wish I could because it would make my life really easy. But our sun actually rings like a bell. It has these oscillations that go inside it and not to this picture showing you. So not only do we have these cool solar flares and corral loops and lots of activity going on outside of our sun, we also have a lot of activity going on inside the sun. And what's really cool about this ringing of these oscillations is that you can use them to study how our sun is made from the inside out. Which is pretty awesome. So lots of things resonate in the ring, right? I said the sun rings like a bell. Well, it turns out other stars do too. So the sun's great, but it's like right there and that's boring. So I like other stars better. But they're farther away and so that makes it harder to see what they're doing up close. They also resonate. We can study them with this cool Starquake Resonation bell ringing thing. And so this is showing you that our sun has some characteristic ringing frequency like a medium-sized bell, if you will. And then bigger stars have different characteristic frequencies. They might sound like a lower bigger bell like one of those clock tower bells, but it's such a low set of frequencies that even if you could hear it, which you can't because space is a vacuum, it's harder. You wouldn't be able to hear it with your ears because it's too low frequency. And this graph goes all the way up to Viola because I played Viola and Viola's awesome. And they also have resonance frequencies. So you can go home and tell people you learned that stars are like Violas if you want to because that's not entirely wrong. So Starquakes are awesome and I hope that I can convince you of not only their awesomeness but also their utility. And I want to kind of take a step back and remind you like star lifetimes, right? So we learned a little bit about how stars form all different elements like everything, right? Like beer and everything. And that happens, you know, the two categories of things, beer and everything. And for massive stars in particular. So on the right hand side here we have kind of the massive star life cycle. It forms into this big old blue thing and doesn't live all that long and it blows up and makes all those heavy elements and it's really amazing. But for every one of those stars there's like a bajillion lower mass stars kind of like our song. It's a technical term. There's a lot. And they have a much longer life time and they don't end their life quite as excitingly. But they live a long time and they're important because they're like our sun. And even though I know I guess our sun earlier, I apologize because the sun is actually really important. And you know planets orbit, the sun and other stars also have planets.  So the main difference in these two life cycle options is mass. And so the mass of a star is really linked to its fate. And so what we'd really like to be able to do is measure the mass of stars. If you look up at just guy at night you can't just say oh I know how much that star way is. I know how much that star way is right. But it's not something you can just tell. If it was then I could just go home and it'll be done now. So yeah it's a little difficult. So one way we can do it and this is a way that I actually like a lot is using when you have two stars. You can measure how massive a star is and learn maybe it'll blow up in a supernova or maybe it'll be more like our sun and become a white dwarf in the end of its life.   It's really pretty sweet. So I like this method a lot because it's pretty straightforward. I know how to do it. It's always helpful. You know I have some software that does this, right? Like if every star was this way mass measurable that would be really great. Also really good because we understand gravity, right? This is just using gravity. Something goes around something else and we give these back to figure out how massive it is. Which is great and it's a well-known technique. Unfortunately not all stars are binaries so it's not going to work for every star ever and we're only going to be able to figure out the fate of stars that have binary dance partners. And well those are the best stars in my opinion. They're stars too and we'd like to be able to measure their mass also. Also really slow to do this thing on the right. It takes like a lot of telescope time and it turns out that other people also want to use the telescopes for like galaxies and stuff. I don't know what that's about. You'll have to come back another month to hear about that. Okay so this is all leading up to me telling you that I have a cool way to measure star masses using those ringing oscillations, those starpakes. But how does that work, right? That's not a straightforward thing to say. Like we have a bell that's actually a star. It's actually a way to kind of weigh the star. So sure, fine, uh-huh, totally right. It's the oscillation bell. Alright so how does this work? Well here's another picture of kind of the inside of the star if you can see it having all these different oscillations. So the trick is that even though these ringing bell oscillations are happening inside the star, they make the stars brightness change a little bit and we can observe that. You have telescopes, you have telescopes. And so this is like a brightness changing over time thing. And because we like math, frequencies at which that happens, using a Fourier transform, who's scary. And maybe you get a nice graph with locations showing you all the different frequencies. And then you can say, hey, I can characterize how that star is oscillating. You know, is it having a lot of low frequencies because it's really big. Does it have a lot of high frequencies because it's small. Does it have a really weird combination through to these? I have no idea what's going on. All of these are options. We'll look at the star's properties. So this is what it really looks like. You know, I show you the pretty picture and that's great. But this is more what you have to do in real life.  It's fine, trust me, it's fine. So what I like to pretend that graph looks like is this. But this is much nicer to look at, right? This is much more friendly. And so maybe you can convince yourself. Like if you look in the middle of this, there's like more stuff there in the gray. And if you just like zoom in on that and flatten out a bit and stretch it and poke it, then it looks, you can measure the middle of that and you can measure the spacing of those. And that actually tells you something about the star. All I had to do was measure the star's brightness a whole bunch. Turn it into this and then I can directly measure something about the star's surface gravity.  Well, if you are all these different stars, you'd better never mind. But you could have different surface gravities depending on what star is temperature and also it's density, how fluffy it is, or if it's like super packed down on the white dwarf. So that's fun. Are hotter, more dense, have a higher surface gravity, and stars that are oscillate with lower frequencies are cooler, less dense, and have lower surface gravity. So okay, that's a lot of physics works. That's great, big stars.  It's not going to happen anytime soon, you don't have to worry about it. But eventually our sun will become a red giant like this and it is going to be a lot brighter so we can see it with a telescope, which is helpful if you have a limited amount of time on a telescope. And it also oscillates a little more slowly so maybe you don't have to like observe it every second because that is difficult. So we like to be able to study the big ones. So because we want to study the big ones, we're like, well, a evolved star that our sun will eventually be is just a big version of our sun right now because if we're trying to measure the mass, if we know our sun's mass and we can figure out the surface gravity and the temperature and the density and do some math, like if you stare at math you've been to yourself said if you have the gravity density you can get a mass, which is pretty sweet. Then that seems doable. So what we've been doing or what some of my colleagues that I've been doing is using Kepler, everybody's favorite exoplanet telescope, not just new planets, also new stars. You measure the brightness changes. You make these cool graphs that totally look like this and not like that other one. And then you do some math to turn your densities and your gravities into masses and also radii but we care about mass right now. And you can actually get the mass of the bigger star. So that's pretty sweet. And what's nice about Kepler is that maybe you guys know this because you're all experts on exoplanets so they talk about that a lot here. It stared at a lot of stars. It stared at them for like four years and still looking at other ones.   And doing it this way is a lot faster. So that is pretty sweet. The good scientists here maybe convinced you that this could work but it'd be nice if we could like verify the numbers that we're getting aren't completely wrong. So masses. So I made a little class of some stars using starquakes. And these stars happen to also be in binaries.  I broke science. Oh no. 16% on average which was kind of bad if you want to measure masses. And we were like okay, okay this is fine. This is science, this is cool. Sorry. What? What's going on here? Turns out that what's going on here is that big red giant stars so simply just giant versions of our sign. I mean they are infection stuff going on. There's different stuff happening in different layers of the star that isn't quite the same as what happens inside our sun. And it's just complicated enough that you can't just compare them one to one. Even though it would be super handy if you could. So what we have to do is we have to apply empirical corrections in order to get accurate masses. We have to fudge it a little bit but it's consistent. So it's fine. It's fine. Totally works. This technique actually works really great for stars that are like our sun for these smaller stars. It's a little harder to observe them enough to see the starquakes because they oscillate more quickly. So eh, turn it off. So you now, believe it or not, have learned a little bit about astro-seismology which is your word of the week, aka starquakes. And it's actually really useful even though sometimes it doesn't work perfectly because you can measure a lot of stars' masses really fast. So thank you very much. We have plenty of time for questions. So do your work. Oh boy. Why is 16% good enough? Why is 16% wrong good enough? Well, it's not. It's just that it's correctable. So it was, we weren't necessarily assuming it was going to be a perfect one-to-one when we did this. And the fact that it was off by a certain amount was actually really interesting. Because it means there's some physics we don't really understand perfectly yet. So there's more work to be done but it's still a really useful technique. Who else got a question? Sure, back here. Sure, that's a great question. So the question was that I said that we use brightness variations to measure the oscillations but don't other things also cause the star to change brightness like exoplanets or other stuff? And then you absolutely yes. The fact that we were using binary stars, there's an eclipses of those with a lot like exoplanets so we had to cut that out and use the chunks of the light curve, the brightness changing that was not part of the eclipse in order to do this. So yeah, it's a little tricky. Lots of things make stars change brightness but the characteristic frequencies here are in a special spot in the frequency range so it's a little tricky but it's something you have to consider. What else we got? Very good. The question was did I make up this entire methodology? I wish I had and I'm living out of the low price but No, I just use it to I use it and then I tear it apart a little bit and then I use it some more and go into science. But I see a hand over there So do I use just visual astronomy or also radio astronomy is the question? I'm only in working with visible light so it's possible to do why would you know if you do the radio or not? I also think you really could because you need the time resolution you need to have that observation super regularly and I think radio is not really set up to see a set of frequencies What was the most exciting surprise during this process aside from the 16% offset? Oh man, that's a good question I think it was really cool just that we found this many stars to even test it on because we were like there's got to be binaries they're also oscillating like we're going to try to find them like they have to be there and then we found like enough to actually make a graph and make a good conclusion Alright, what does our star weigh? Well, the sun weighs one solar mass Yes, so well it's as much of a standard as anything we tend to measure stars in terms of how many times our sun they weigh just because it's fast didn't seem to talk about it but most of the stars in our study if you just look really closely at this it's really faint here this goes from like 0.8 to like 2.2 solar masses they're similar mass to our sun but some of them are twice as heavy and some are a little less what is the units of what now? oh, so it's the mass of the star measured using star plates compared to the mass of the star measured using binary star thing what physics is causing the star plates? what a fun question so it is these star plates are driven by convection so it's a it's a continually stochastically driven process that's happening in the outer layers of these stars because of a lot of turbulent convection going on and so any star that has a convective outer layer potentially will have cancellations good question so the question is so I have any idea why the starquake mass when I measure the mass of starquakes it comes out higher instead of like sometimes higher and sometimes lower and the answer is kind of complicated but the fact that it is systematically high or systematically low tells us that there's something in the physics that we're missing if it was just scattered everywhere, then it would be like why are we so imprecise? why do we suck at measuring mass? at least this way we know that we're doing it right both ways and there's not getting the same number that's my main takeaway and if you really want to think into some of those papers you can move around it gets dirty clean does the frequency of the star change with its age? the frequency of the stars changes as they age that's a really great question so it doesn't change so yes it does change as the star ages and gets there then the frequencies change but it won't change over the course of the year so in the star time scales are really long and a star like the little yellow sun will become a big star like the red giant and then over the course of that the frequency totally changes do I like the surface of the star? how do you define the surface of the star? how do you define the surface of the star? it's actually not an easy question stars have lots of layers and sometimes it gets kind of dicey up there near the edge where maybe there's some stuff coming out as my business is still going on as you get farther away I don't worry about the edges of stars lots in the sky they're far away it's fine what are we going to do with the masses of all these stars? we are going to know a lot more about stars no that's a very very good question it's actually really important in order to understand how our galaxy has evolved over time because a lot of different astronomy that you want to do assumes that you know the mass of the stars that are going into the picture so if you want to understand how our galaxy form, if you want to understand its future or other galaxies, how bright they are and how many stars they have and what they're going to do in the future you really kind of need to understand how much mass of different stars that you see that we don't how is it going to evolve as we would like a good question which factor in my model has the biggest effect on changing the result? well it's I try to keep equations off of my slides because I don't think you want to know living codes there's no one thing that dominates it really it's a combination of the surface gravity to the density and temperature they have different powers ones like the negative free house but it's really you can't just ignore anyone they're all important players oh man no pressure here by the time I retire what do I want to have accomplished oh basically I've got a little while I I think that we're going to have more and more missions that are going to be able to take this kind of measurement and I hope that the pool satellite comes out soon called TESS that Europe is going to launch pretty soon and it's going to help us measure more stars like this so honestly I don't know why personally I'm going to be able to do this but I think it would be really cool if we could just have a handle on the properties of all the stars in our galaxy like a much better handle on their specific details so that we can really get a accurate model of everything that's happening and how it's all moving are there other methods that we're using that kind of to better results and see if the data is one or some other method the short answer is not really because there's not a lot of ways to measure masses there is another way to measure the size of stars it's radius and all and that's a technique called interferometry and that was one of the closest stars where you can actually measure the angular size of the sky I'd say all stars with dots if you're really careful maybe they have a size on the sky and what I can tell you is that when you measure mass like this you also get radius now and those actually don't light up perfectly either and having another way to see if our radii are agreeing is really helpful we found a little discrepancy of radians as well but interferometry is great it's amazing alright it looks like we have exhausted audience's question about stability and how the star works thank you guys so much keep it going for every day


Appalachian Wireless offers forward pay, no contract, no credit check, no problem. Plans start in 1999 a month and include unlimited talk and text or take it to the max with unlimited data plus for only $89.99 with 50 gigs of high speed data because we are you. We are Appalachian Wireless. Signature smiles in Pikeville will be offering free dental screenings for anyone under 18 years of age this Tuesday. In preparation, Mount Top spoke with Smile staff about the opportunity. Dental health is one of the most preventable childhood illnesses that there is if not the most and it is very crucial to educate because education is the best form of prevention so educating the parents and the children is going to prevent this issue so getting them in here if we can get them in the door then we can get that's the first step in preventing this and treating this. In the 20 years that Stanley has worked in dental care she says many kids have signs of neglect as they can't brush their teeth properly. Dental hygienist Keana Prater says kids don't need insurance to be seen. Kids and parents take advantage of this opportunity. Well you don't have to have insurance so anybody can come in it doesn't matter if you have insurance or not you can come in and get the x-rays and you can get sealants. Sealants are very important they prevent future decay so we can we want to sell all the teeth that we can. And while Signature Smiles hopes to help kids with their teeth the hope to provide skills that will help their teeth stay healthy for years to come. Well I hope that we can see all the kids that we can see and that we can help them and their parents to better understand their health care their dental care they really need to know that you don't go to sleep with bottles in their mouth they don't give them Mountain Dew they don't give them all these sweets and stuff without brushing their teeth. It's okay to do it but you've got to brush their teeth later and little kids can't brush their teeth parents need to so we hope to educate them as well. For more information you can call Signature Smiles at<PHONE_NUMBER>. For Mountain Top News I'm Joel Corjol.


Here's another Thrive Tip from Kaiser Permanente and Fox 12. Millions of people live with chronic pain that can disrupt their lives, cause anxiety, depression, and even lead to abuse of prescription painkillers. There are many healthy ways to manage chronic pain. Chronic pain is any pain that has lasted six months or longer. It can be very mild. It can be devastating. And sometimes the actual source of the pain cannot be identified, yet it still persists. Prescription medications treat a small portion of the pain, but there are many other approaches to manage chronic pain. They can range from healthy diet, exercise, physical therapy, mind body, meditation, and connection to use the mind to naturally control your pain and develop better coping skills. Choosing natural pain remedies instead of drugs can give you greater peace of mind by helping you regain control of your life in a healthy way. This has been another Thrive Tip sponsored by Kaiser Permanente and Fox 12. Visit kptv.com slash thrive for more information.


I'm currently homeschooling my kids so I need all the time that I can get. And I was asked a question about like do you even sleep on a 24-hour shift? Like how does that work? And so that is what I will be answering in today's video. Okay so again I had a question posed to me by one of you guys, one of my subscribers, talking about what exactly like do I do really I guess you can say on a 24-hour shift? Like am I able to sleep? And so I'm going to read the question for you guys, put it up on the screen and then we can get into answering it. This one is from Steven Wilson. He said, I am a firefighter slash paramedic and work two to three 24-hour shifts a week but get to sleep. How does the 24-hour shift work for you as a PA? And so I mean maybe pretty similar to what it might work like for you Steven. I honestly don't know because since I don't know what a paramedic's 24-hour shift looks like I can't really compare but for me I can talk to you about what my shift looks like. So typically we're doing a lot so as a trauma PA again really I'm an acute care surgery PA so I deal not only with trauma but general surgery and then we cover thoracic and vascular surgery at night when our day thoracic and vascular surgery PA goes home. So with that being said there are four different services that we're covering at a time and that means that there are a lot of patients that we have to deal with. Now granted there are three of us there's usually a trauma PA like down in the trauma bay and then trauma floor PAs who are covering the other three services but there are a lot of patients and they require a lot of things and so during the day there may be times when our census is extremely high that we are extremely busy and so you know we go and we start rounding we get to know what's going on with our patients what happened to them overnight you know what their labs are looking like we're looking at all of this information to really assess what's happening with them and then after that we are finishing up like all the various different things that need to be done if any chest tubes need to be pulled or you know if a chest tube needs to be placed if a line needs to be placed there are all these various different nuances that have to be done wound vac changes and just local wound care depending on if it's something that we debrided or not so all of that is happening throughout the day now that may have like the rounding process we literally could have started rounding out like nine o'clock and maybe not nine a.m. and maybe not have finished until like noon or one and so the time to like eat and get breakfast and then maybe even get lunch is really shot and so you're kind of just going through these motions because sometimes you miss those things and you're eating on the fly or eating on the run because remember that we are still a trauma PA and we're still a trauma hospital and so trauma still get called and so if my trauma bay PA is inundated with traumas and has at least two that they're running on their own then another one is called we have to go and do that like I said there are other people that are involved we do have residents there they're typically in the OR and so sometimes they're not able to help with those traumas but if they are they can also take a trauma or they're rounding with us but that is typically how like the day goes and throughout the rest of the day once you finish rounding and you've written all of your notes on all of your patients and you've done all of the various different nuances of things that need to happen then that's when you're kind of just in this lull and you're waiting for traumas and so the question was asked do I get to sleep all right well sometimes I do I mean it all depends so you have like your floor patients that you're always typically getting called for by the nurses you know they may need a medication or may need you to renew a medication maybe the patient is fibrous they you know you want to go see when check what's going on with their patient and it various different things can happen and so even though you're in this break from traumas or you're waiting for traumas you're still dealing with your floor patients okay now on top of that as you continue to go on throughout the night you know where like let's say six o'clock in the evening or so traumas are typically coming in at that time you know we get a lot of motor vehicle accidents because people are coming from home and some of them are just driving ridiculous and you know that's what we have to deal with um we do get you know GSWs or gunshot wounds and you know stabbings and things like that those are they're regular but few and far in between um you know as respect to our falls and our motor vehicle accidents so we'll be dealing with that it's typically we'll go like be kind of done for the night essentially at like 10 o'clock sometimes there are traumas that come in at like 11 and 12 but for the most part I'm finished at 10 and that's when I can go and just really chart check my patients or go up to the floor check on anybody that I was concerned about throughout the day and then come and wind down to try to sleep and I say try because that is not always the case okay um and so sometimes we're we're there I literally just get back up to my call room and then the annoying beeper sound goes off and a trauma is called okay and so at that point it's like all right okay let me run out there is to this trauma and see what's going on we do take turns in traumas to try to get each other to at least get some type of rest um but sometimes it's not always the case sometimes you know there may be one of us that's down in the or with our attending because somebody's really critical and then we also had two of the traumas come in and so the two of us that are left are in the trauma bay dealing with that trauma um so do I typically get to sleep I mean yeah I get to take like little um naps here and there like always interrupted either by a phone call or a trauma um I think the most that of hours like straight black that I've gotten to sleep was maybe five hours um you know woke up at six I would say uh went to bed around one which was amazing because that's like a good night you're like man I got some good rest but typically you'll get traumas called at 3 a.m. you'll get traumas called at you know four uh you'll get that inarbitun trauma called at like 7 a.m. when you're about to get off and you're like why are you outside like you know shooting at each other or stabbing each other like this is like not okay you know or like I need you to be in your house and these are the things that are kind of running through your head but you still have to take care of your patients and you have to make sure that they're safe um and that you're you're ensuring that you know you're taking care of their lives and so ultimately yes and no I get to sleep okay it all depends on how many traumas come in and how my floor patients are doing um it's always interrupted for the most part and you know never really good sleep that's why anytime I go home um if you've subscribed to this channel or if you've followed me on instagram you've seen me like post call I'm tired okay I'm extremely tired I'll sleep without fail for four hours it doesn't matter what time I go to bed throughout the day on my post call day if I come off of work at night and I do stuff throughout the day and then I start like I go in the bed at 12 um then I'll wake up at 4 that's typically how it happens and I feel a little bit rejuvenated but you really take that post call day like that entire day to recover um and some days we work back to back where we're on call one day we're off and then we're on call the immediate next day and those are brutal but you do those days so that you're able to get like a nine day period off or an eight day period or even a five day period off that you can either spend with your family rejuvenating um you can you know go out on a little mini vacation if you want to whatever the case may be but that's your time and so that's why I really love 24 hour shifts and yes although I don't always get to sleep uninterrupted I do get some naps and um it is a fulfilling job I get to do a lot I get to see a lot and I'm really excited that I chose this career or I guess it chose me all right thank you so much thank you Stephen for this question I really appreciate it if you have any other questions for me leave them in the comment section below follow me and gtcu on instagram at get that see university and check us out on get that see university dot com like this video and subscribe if you haven't already done so and follow me on instagram at adana the pa thank you guys so much for watching I will talk to you guys next time