and advance, please. Many members mentioned to us the eight can't wait campaign. And I know that the mayor was going to chime in on this one as well. So if you had some things you wanted to mention, Justin. Yeah, no. One of the things I really wanted to mention was that when these came before us, we listened to the community as a whole. And this was one of the items that was brought before us. Shortly after, again, the murder of George Floyd. And it was one of the templates that we were able to use as a starting point. And as we learn, there's a number of these items that the Santa Cruz police had already been implementing. But quickly and shortly after reviewing these, there were additional items from this that we'll discuss later on this evening. But where changes were also made. And so, for example, the banning of the chokehold was something that came shortly after. And as we'll listen to tonight, there's a number of other items on here that were, if they hadn't been implemented already, were taken into consideration and were either acted upon or still under consideration. Thank you. So this was a template. And we could look at these and have something visual that we could study and see what others had done and then see whether or not this would fit with what our community needed. And so, in advance, please. So these are all of the items that we have considered and are moving forward. Now it's color coded for you. The items in black are things that we felt that we could do at the department and that we could get done fairly quickly and in a permanent fashion. The ones in orange are things that we're going to ask you to take action on to give direct and approved changes to city policy. And the ones in yellow are the ones that you're going to provide direction on to me. And then the one in green is what's already been taken care of. And by the way, if somebody would like a copy of this PowerPoint, that can be provided to them after the session. So these are what we're going to go through one at a time. It'll be a little bit arduous, but I think that it will be helpful to particularly understand that. Bonnie, please go ahead. You can go through two. This is to affirm and support policy amendments by SCPD. Step one is we ban the carotid restraint. And the reason we did that is because it can slip easily from a control carotid restraint to hold, as you can see in the picture, to a chokehold. People just don't stand there still when you're trying to apply this. You're normally fighting with somebody. So the risk became too great of doing significant injury to people for the minimal positive effect that it could have. So we banned it on June 3rd. Santa Cruz police officers can no longer use the carotid hold restraint. Joy, I think you were going to comment on this as well. I just wanted to say this came from a direct result from the action that I held on May 30th. And this was something that happened really quickly, as you can see that action was on May 30th. And then this went into effect on June 3rd. Great. Bonnie, if you could advance. Second thing that was done is we prohibited no-knock search warrants. Think of the Breonna Taylor case in Louisville. And that was a no-knock search warrant served at one o'clock in the morning. Our department has been good at not using them for a long period of time. However, we're making a formal policy that is prohibited. The only exception to that and only I can approve it if it's a bona fide hostage situation where we need to make a entry without making no-knock search to protect a hostage. Unlikely to occur, but we still do need that flexibility to do that. So in effect, although no-knock search warrants were prohibited. And Todd, you were going to make a comment on that, I think. Yeah, this was a thank you, chief. And thank you, mayor and council members. This one was really important to me because I think there's, you know, from where I grew up, there was a lot of people who are afraid of these police forces coming in. And there's a fair amount of trauma that happens in the black community from these type of events, even if they're not witnessing or experiencing it themselves, not just the black community, actually, many communities. And so this was a great thing to be talking about with you all. And I'm thankful that we have this now. Thank you. Go ahead and advance, if you would, Bonnie. We've curtailed dynamic entries on search warrants. A dynamic entry, and you see the door knocker there, is when the police run up to a door, use a heavy object to burst open the door, and then they run out into the building with weapons pointed to most often to prevent the flushing of drugs. There are some reasons for this to take place, but very, very limited. And so what we've done is we curtailed it by making a deputy chief of police or hire approve and authorize this before it takes place. And we're telling them they need to use other less intrusive tactics. And so our officers are prepared to do that. Our officers are doing that currently. And then the second part of that is that a uniform police officer, with a marked vehicle, will assist on every search warrant so that there are no mistakes as to whether or not this is the police. They will be visible whenever possible. And so this is a important step forward. Remember the ICE raid that took place on Windsor Street last year? That was a dynamic entry search warrant at four o'clock in the morning. We don't see a reason for that, especially on a paper crime of any kind. So our thought is a deputy chief will have to approve it and that will curtail almost all dynamic entries. Please advance. Warning prior to shooting. Whatever feasible, the officer will shall prior to use of force make a reasonable effort to identify themselves as police officers into warrant that deadly force may be used. Our policy, policy 300 is now up on our website and anybody can go and inspect that policy to make sure that we're doing what we say we have done. That policy was amended just recently and the way we use this is it has to go through Lexapol to actually get published. Then it comes back to us and then we can post it. So it's posted this week and it is now on the website. A couple of things that are interesting in this policy I think that are important to point out. One is it discusses the proportionality of the use of force. That if you're dealing with a person that you're resisting that your force your force must be proportionate to that level of force that they're resisting. And the second thing is that fear alone is not enough to qualify for for the use of a high level force. So there has to be actual fear that you can articulate and we'll go into that in a little bit if you advance please. We are prohibiting shooting from or at moving vehicles. Now it's not 100% clean and I'll explain why. First of all we demand that officers shall not should move out of the path of vehicles instead of just charging their firearm at the vehicle. An officer can only discharge that firearm when no other reasonable means available to avert the threat. So let's just stop right here for a second. The reason we left this in is because what if you're that officer who's pinned up against the wall and a person is gunning it and you really feel like you're going to be killed. There has to be something you can do. Or and we I have seen this before. I've lost colleagues who've been written over by people who intentionally hit them with vehicles. So that's the only way you can defend yourself. I will not do anything to increase the mortality of our officers. So we want them to be able to avert the threat but they shall move out of the path of the vehicle if they at all possibly can. Or if the person is using deadly force other than the vehicle directed at the officer. If you're somebody's doing a drive-by on you we give our officers the authority to shoot back. And then lastly they will not shoot at a vehicle in an attempt to disable the vehicle. The only exception to that is if somebody is using the vehicle to inflict mass casualties. An example of that is Nice France where terrorists drove into a crowd and injured scores of people and killed many as well as others places that that has happened in the United States. So those are the exceptions to that. And all the shoulds in this paragraph have been changed to shell in the new policy which has been posted. So just to make that perfectly clear to everybody. Anybody want to jump in on that? I don't want to. Yeah, I just wanted to say that this this protects officers and it also protects citizens because when I go to a march one of the things that I'm thinking about now is the times when people have been run over by people trying to murder them. And so it makes me a little bit it makes me feel safer if I know that you guys can use deadly force if need be. So this is for everyone. And Andy, I'm glad to hear that you've changed the language from should to shall. It's very important. Thank you, Brenda. And that is correct. It has been changed. Go ahead and move forward with the next slide please. Required de-escalation. This has been a very heavy focus for our department for several years. And in the top left corner of the photograph which you can see is a little pin that says D with a lighting bolt and an E next to it. That means that the officer has successfully de-escalated a situation where a high level of force could have been used. And these are lapel pins that they can wear as a sign that they have de-escalated. We do training every year. We also have equipped every vehicle with the equipment needed to de-escalate rather than use lethal force. This is important. And our policy has a separate section that talks about specifically officers are to de-escalate whenever possible. And then also we also take a look at monthly videos through our patrol officers through TikTok and Instagram where they assess other incidents that have taken place around the country and talk about how they might have been able to de-escalate that situation without using force. And the picture here is an example of a de-escalation that took place down the war some time ago. This is a pretty busy slide. And this was done with the consultation of our use of force experts. And you'll see a couple things in here. I won't go into every detail on this slide but you can study it on your own later. But the intensity of conflict goes up. And this is a, it's not really a step process. It's more of a fusion. So as the behavior of the person escalates, the level of force that an officer can use escalates all the way up to potentially life threatening use of force. We want to do this in number one as often as we can, which is to gain compliance with people or to use minimal levels of force. But sometimes that is not the case. You might have to go to medium level of force or a substantial level of force depending on what's happening. But you can also see that we're talking with our folks consistently about de-escalation and de-escalating these conflicts and driving that use of force back down. That is just because it goes up doesn't mean it can't come back down. And we feel very strongly about that. Our officers do it as well. But we need to point out that the use of force is not static. You don't go from point A to point B to point C to point D. You can go from one to five very quickly. And if the threat warrants that. But our expectation is that they will do everything they can to use the lowest amount of force necessary to complete the task that they've been assigned. A few advanced, please. Duty to intercede. This has its own section now in our policy. And our little mantra is if you see it, you own it. No longer can an officer stand by and say, well, it wasn't me. I wasn't part of it. If you're there and you see it, you own it. And our policy says that you shall intervene when another person that has used excessive force. And that they are to report that excessive force to a supervisor. Including the decision-making process that they have to go through. Which is, do I want to go against my colleagues? Or potentially risk up to and including termination from the police department if it was a serious enough event. And Reggie Stevens, I know you're on the line here and you were going to comment on this. Hello. You're there, Reggie. Do you hear me? Yep. Definitely. Thank you. Chief Mills for having me. Santa Cruz council and mayor Cummings. I definitely want to talk on this because me being living in Santa Cruz for so many years, I've been in a situation like this several times. And one time I came out on the end of it where I felt that when it happened to me, I didn't have any more hope or faith than the Santa Cruz police department. And when the situation happened, it was just one of those things like you felt helpless that someone that knew me basically acted like they didn't know me in the situation. They could have helped me in that situation. Now on the flip side of that, as I went on with my career and if you don't know, I played professional football for the New York Giants. I went to Cabrillo College, Santa Cruz High. There was another situation that came up. And basically a judge was to intervene and was able to help me in a situation that allowed me to go on and help me to get my career going and help out. So that basically gave me hope again. So I think this is very important. And I think there's something that should be done because I understand there's a code, but sometimes that code can leave a person in a bad situation. Thank you, Reggie. Moving on to the next slide, please. Independent oversight. The city manager has approved this contract. And so our independent oversight is Mike Chinaco. Mike is a former U.S. civil attorney in the Civil Rights Division in Los Angeles. He's nationally recognized as an expert at law enforcement reform in accountability systems. He already published his first report to city council. And from there, it'll be as you'll see later, it'll be posted to our transparent support should that be approved by council. And so we're happy to have Mike on board and he's a brilliant jurist. And I think that this is very good. What he essentially does is takes our investigations, looks at them for fairness and objectivity, gives us feedback on the quality of our investigations. And if there's anything else we should have done or should do, he guides us through the process. And then he also takes a look at the discipline that was imposed if something was sustained. And so we're happy to have Mike on board and that has already been approved. Part of this, though, is to make sure that we're having discussions with the other chiefs in the county to make sure that we're all on the same page. And so I've had that conversation with several of the chiefs in the county, and they're doing their things that are consistent with their communities. And but I know that they're all very interested in having further conversation and working together and being consistent in how we do this throughout the county. So I applaud my colleagues for being thoughtful about that. Next slide, please. Tom, this is all you, man, because you're the one. This was your idea. All right. Well, I'll say that there was a time where I witnessed a situation with an officer kind of harassing a young guy. And I sat and I watched and I got the officer's card and most officers have cards on them. And it occurred to me that it would have been great if there would be something on the card that just said, if you have a complaint or even a compliment, here's exactly where you go in order to do that. Because I don't know that all community members know that they can actually file a complaint when something happens that's sort of out of sorts. And so I say, hey, why don't we just put this information on the back of every card? And it's just a really simple thing, but it may actually help help someone's life. And so that's that's what this is. Just trying to get a little bit more transparency happening and a little bit more feedback as well. And accountability. That's the word I was looking for. Thanks. You're ticked at one of the crowd. So this will be put on all of our business cards. And so when we make contact with people in the community, whether it's a citation or a radio call, we can have a card. And our policy is that officers must identify themselves by name and badge number should someone ask, but we want to be more proactive with that. And that's the purpose of this. Next slide, please. Implicit bias training for all staff members. We've now presented implicit bias training to all of our staff members. And and the next step will be to continue with different forms of implicit bias training. This was based on the book by Dr. Everhart. We went through multiple police departments and it's now post certified course, police officers, standards and training course on procedural justice, which leads to police legitimacy. And so we've already accomplished that. I go ahead. 72 hour release of body worn cameras in critical incidents when we can. State law on this, by the way, is 45 days. So our goal is to get these videos out within 72 hours. It does depend on who controls the evidence. Sometimes we don't necessarily control all the evidence what DA's office or different jurisdiction locally. But when we have the control over it and won't harm the investigation, we want to release this within 72 hours. And make sure that we're doing this. We had an interesting discussion on this this week with this group. And that is, well, what gets released an edited version or an unedited version? Well, unedited version could be hours of videotape. So what does edit mean? If it's a juvenile, by law, we have to edit it. We have to blow their face. And so they can't be identified. So it won't be necessarily unedited. But I think that there are things we can do to make sure it's transparent. That's transparent. And that's one of the things that we can have a discussion about after this.  Well, yeah, this is one of those situations where, you know, we needed to really go back and forth about this because my first thought was, well, why not 48 hours? You know, why do we have to wait so long?  And it just shows that we need to have this partnership. Because in my mind, I'm thinking, oh, well, this is how it can be. But in reality, sometimes it needs to be a little bit shifted. And the whole intent behind putting this in here is that we have unfortunately seen police departments throughout the country not actually give all of the footage. And so we're trying to finesse this and get to a place where the footage that comes out can be seen by the average person and know actually what's going on. So there's not anything shady happening. It's pretty much that simple. And we concur with that. So we will get together and make this happen in a thoughtful way and maybe make policy that can come out so that everybody can see that and be transparent. What's the normal turnaround time? It can be. It depends. Like one of the things we talked about in our group is I've got one person who does this. That person is not available. They're on out of town. It's going to slow me down. So we have to be able to do this in a reasonable way. But it will take at least 24 hours to put the body wearing camera footage together to put that information out. You had set 45 days, I think, normally? Well, by law, we now have to put it out 45 days without an extension by the courts. The 72 hours is very short turnaround time. So thank you. Moving forward to examine and adjust hiring practices. You know, once you start looking at the things that we do, you start scratching your head. And so there's a few things in our hiring practices that can be barriers to people trying to get on police departments. For instance, poor credit barriers. Now that was originally done to prevent corruption. But, you know, when my kids went to college, the first thing they got in the mail when they got to college was their credit card offer from a, you know, from a local bank. And of course, what do you think the kid did once they got to college? They ran up that credit card and came home and mom and dad are in trouble. I've got this credit card and we paid it off for them, but made them pay us back. Well, don't have that ability. And so that's one of the things we can take a look at is why it's a poor credit. Whether it can be in the completely irresponsible buying boats and, you know, or whether they were they putting school on their credit cards. So those are some of the things that we can do and take a look at to reduce that barrier. One of the things we found in our policy is that you that's a branding was prohibited. Well, who gets brands? You see on the NFL, Reggie, some of your old colleagues had the alpha tattoos that were brands. Well, we don't see a good reason to have that prohibition. So we're taking that out of our policy effect that give us one extra person who may be a person of color. And we are going to now prohibit and touch. Did you bring this up? The excessive force one now? I did. Okay, go ahead, Joy. It's very important to me that people coming in from different agencies that might be on probation or have been fired due to the use of excessive force are not allowed to be brought on to the Santa Cruz Police Department. And so this is something that I discussed with Chief Mills about making sure that this is something that Andy that Chief Mills, you said that you wouldn't do anyway, but I want to make sure that it's also a policy within the council that we make sure that even somebody who is under investigation for use of excessive force is not allowed to be brought on as a police officer to the police department. And this isn't just for the citizens. It's also for the safety of the police officers that they would be working with. You have a volatile partner that you're working with that might use excessive force. It puts the police officer in danger as well as the community. Okay, great. And then the last part of that is, and we won't be doing that, by the way, there is written policy on that, that we will not hire people who have excessive force from other locations. And then the whole goal of recruiting to hire people through community policing, deescalation, and diversity recruitment videos. I'll go ahead and advance, please. I increased transparency. We're going to make sure that all of our CPRAs, our California Public Records Request Act, requests are posted to our portal when they're not confidential in nature. I'll go ahead and advance, please. Up to this point, SCPD in the past has published stop data, but we've actually published citation data, not stop data. So because of AB 953, we will have to publish starting in 2022 all of the stops that we make. The first report would be out, we'd be doing April 2023. Here in the county, we've all talked about it. We're trying to move that timetable up to as early as in the early part of 2021. So hopefully we can get that done, but that is, there is a cost associated with that that we're all working on together with that kind. And then create a recruitment video. I think this was the mayor had talked about this. I know Justin, if you wanted to pitch in on this. The comment I'd make is that one of the things that has come up in these conversations is just how recruitment is going down. And I know councils heard about some of the troubles that the Santa Cruz police department has had with recruiting more officers. And one thought is that, you know, we're moving in this direction of having a, you know, very inclusive, diverse police department that is really trying to ensure equal protection of all citizens under the law, that it's really important that we communicate this when we're trying to recruit. And so one thought is that, you know, we can really demonstrate the desire for our public safety department to change the way that it's conducting public safety and really trying to appeal to a broader, more diverse audience that creating some kind of recruitment video that really demonstrates how our police officers are trying to make a difference and make a change and really highlighting the good work they do in our community could maybe help to increase recruitment and attract more people to our police department. Thank you. As you can might imagine, there are some costs associated with a lot of these and we've cut pretty much what we can out of our budget. What we're going to do is try to find pieces of our budget where we can move forward with each of these, like for instance, the business cards, reprinting those video, there are a couple of other cost items where we try to take those out of our current budget. If not, then we'll come back to council with a budget adjustment at some other time, but that won't be right now. I move forward, please. And then the last part of this particular section is we have changed the policy from immediate threat to immediate threat versus eminent threat. So an officer may use W. Forrest to protect him or himself or others from what he or she reasonably believed to be an immediate threat of death or serious bodily injury to the officer or to another person.  This was a pretty big change and we have many discussions about this internally, but we believe that this is a good change as part of the Sean Alt lawsuit. And we believe it's the right thing to do. And it's also consistent with the Supreme Court decisions. So we believe that we're on a good track there. That may not seem like a big deal to a lot of people, but I can tell you it's a big deal to your police officers. And we want to make sure that they are understand that and they do. So let's move forward. Council action direct staff to incorporate policy changes to council policies, items B, one through three. Change the standard of public safety unit, IA findings. And go ahead in advance. At the suggestion of the independent auditor and the NAACP from the university, change the evidence or standard from clear and convincing to preponderance of evidence essentially mean this. In order to sustain an allegation against the police officer, you'd have to have almost the evidence in my mind of conviction in court, whereas preponderance of evidence would be more like a civil suit. You're weighing the evidence to see which tips to what one would believe. So in other words, 51% you may sustain that allegation. Now, if it's only 51%, then your discipline may be adjusted as a result of that. It is the same standard, by the way, that is used by the rest of the city and the city government. It's also the same standard used by most of policing in California. We did an informal poll of police chiefs all over the state and every single one of them came back as preponderance of evidence. And effectively it's kind of been what we've been doing anyway. So the POA supported this. So that is a pretty big change. Any thoughts from the panel on that? Anybody? Okay. Go ahead and move forward, please. The controlled use of military surplus equipment in the city. This policy would mean that all of the 1033 program of military surplus equipment being requested would have to go through city council. It ensures that the purpose of the equipment would be conformed to the standards of city council. I believe would bring greater transparency to the acquisition process that would be helpful in terms of making sure that it's in line with what this community expects of us. I'd like to say something about that. Really to speak frankly, this speaks to the militarization of the police department, which all over the nation people have talked about. And this would make it just one more step so that instead of the police department just saying, oh, we're going to go get this really big crazy thing, that it actually has to go through council first. So that's why this one is kind of important. It may seem a little small, but it could help in a larger picture. Thank you. Go ahead and advance, please. And then we're going to publish our PIA, our public standards unit findings to the city council and to the community. So it used to be a confidential memorandum. The names will be stripped out to comply with the police officer bill rights. And then it will be posted to the transparency portal. And it would say something like this. Officer Mills was accused of doing, I won't say the name, but Officer A was accused of doing such and such. And it was investigated. Here's that the findings were sustained, not sustained, exonerated or unfounded. And then that will go on the website for everybody to see. According to law, we cannot give the names or the discipline associated with that person, but this is, I believe, a significant step in accountability and transparency. Moving forward, provide direction support to the chief of police for further items. One more step, please. Now we're asking you to pass the discriminatory reports to law enforcement act that will be coming up in the next session right after this. San Francisco has already done this. And you know, some people ask, well, why is this necessary? I can give you three examples off the top of my head in the last year and a half or so, where people have called in based on a person's color.  Somebody called in and said, there's two black men creating new disturbance. And so Rick Martinez and I were together. We, I think we had just grabbed lunch and we walked over there and we said we would handle this call because we knew what this was. There were two guys that were selling CDs and had shirts on that said end white slavery now. Nicest fellows on the planet doing absolutely nothing wrong. There was no doubt in my mind that was based on race. First of all, by the description that was given out first, there was another call that went out not too long though where there's a quote unquote black man walking down the street in the upper west side. And that's all the call was. There's a third call that went out. There's a Mexican man standing next to a car, not trying the doors, not looking in the car, not under the car standing next to a car. Those are the kind of calls that cannot continue to take place that puts our people of color in a bad spot, nor puts our police officers in a bad spot for having to confront that. What good can come of that for either side? And that's what just creates that hyper vigilance on both sides. So this would be a good step in the first direction. I don't think we can quantify how many calls we get, but it certainly is not unusual. Go ahead and advance, please. Improve racial diversity and equity training. Mayor, do you want to cover this one? As someone who came in and as someone who has done a lot of work in diversity, equity, inclusion, I've done a lot of advancements in this kind of training, and there's been a lot of advancements in the types of trainings that our officers maybe consider whether we need to update. I think that the training that we receive is good, but I also think that there are other people out there. I've heard from members of the community a desire to consider whether there are different people who might be able to conduct this training, the frequency of the training as well, and so whether or not we need to consider. Thank you. And we're currently searching for a vendor to present some of that, and we'll evaluate that and then bring it back. And if you move to the next one, I know that Brenda has some questions that others have given her that she may want to ask at towards the end here, so I think that'll be important for other panel members as well. Assist with research. Many people of color have commented that that the arrest, there should be the word arrest in there, and incarceration rate is much greater here in Santa Cruz than other locations. So why would that be? This would be a look at the complete system, not just the sheriff's office who houses them, but the complete system. It's my understanding that the sheriff already has a study underway to find out the numbers that are currently in the jail and so forth. It's not necessarily not an issue of his doing. It's more of an issue of how do we understand the entire justice system here in Santa Cruz and what does that look like? There are a couple things that this will be dependent upon, dependent upon. One is collaboration and two is cost. A study like this won't be free. We would want this to be from an academic institution, so it has the rigors of science behind it, and so we would want to see where we can get money and then push it forward from there. So this would be a collaboration between all the departments as well as the district attorney's office, the courts, probation and parole, and maybe many other people as well. So this was a kind of a longer term perspective and certainly not the near term. You'll have to find money to do this, and I would guess it would be pretty costly. Then lastly, if you would move forward. Next steps is to serve our community. We've got several things going on. I'm a partner with Warriors and Reggie Stevens Foundation to create a mentoring program. Reggie coaches a lot of young kids in the community, and thanks for all the service that you're doing, Reggie. Continue to listen to community and make adjustments. This is not the end of the beginning, and so we want to make that clear, and then lobby for the changes as needed. So I'm going to move it back to Council on the second, but I really wanted to give Brenda and others the opportunity to ask questions. Should you have any that maybe aren't clear in this presentation so that Council can consider those? Thanks, Chief Mills. I have more of a comment on the data, the data collection and publication. Yes, I believe to me it's important that the data that is published is not only demographics, but also it needs to include, you know, other information like the nature of the stop and what did you find when you searched a person? Also, I think it's important that you publish the use of forest data. That's very important to the community as well, as far as the data is concerned. You talked about a council policy for the acquisition of military surplus equipment. Isn't there already a policy on that? Am I thinking of something different? I'm not that I'm aware of. Okay. I thought that there was a policy developed when the department purchased the Bearcat. Yeah, that wasn't a 1033 program that was purchased through a grant, a Yawasi grant. So that would be a little bit different. Okay. And then I guess my next comment is regarding the procedural justice and police legitimacy training. I would recommend that you post a curriculum online. It's a great idea. And I think that's it for now. Of course, you know, I do want to talk about use of forest policy, but that's a longer conversation. It seems that it always is, isn't it? Thank you. Thank you, Brenda, for those comments. If you would advance. So we turn it back over to council and we're asking you to affirm support policy amendments. One through 16 direct staff to incorporate policy changes to city council policies. Items B one through four and provide direction and support to the chief to further account further items C one through three. So I turn it over to you, Mr. Mayor. Well, thank you very much for that presentation. I want to thank all the members of the community who have been able to join us on this panel and provide some feedback. Chief, I didn't want to point out I was looking at the agenda and looks like there's 17 items under a that were in the report. So I just wanted to make sure that was a clarification. That's one through 17 for council. With that, I'd like to see if there's any questions and council members for the chief or in general regarding this item. None. Well, do is I'll open it up to public comments. So if there are members of the public who like to speak to the council on the item before us, which is police policy changes related to racial equity and social justice and the criminal justice system. Now is the time to call in using the numbers on your screen if you haven't already done so. Once you've entered the room, please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. And once you've been unmuted, you'll be given two minutes to comment. My name is Michael Shirley. I have lived in Santa Cruz, California, all of my life. I want to thank Mayor Cummings, the members of the Santa Cruz City Council, special thanks to chief mills and Ben Rice. I would like to discuss or reiterate on improving racial diversity and equity training. I have been through the justice system. I have also done time in federal custody. And after post incarceration, I have made very, very productive changes through academia. I'm currently looking to get into Cal Berkeley in Stanford. And in doing so, I wanted to implement a program that can help with improving racial diversity as far as making a basically a bridge between the community and police. And I think by doing that, we can't just rely on training in the classroom. There needs to be some type of volunteer work. There has to be a bridge where you can make a relationship, not just formal training. And I've had a unique situation where I left Santa Cruz Police Department and went over to Capitola to obtain an incident report, and it resulted in a stop by a police officer, and it was unwarranted. So if I can't feel safe at a police department, where can I be safe at? And there's instances like that that have to be addressed. Yeah, this is Garrett again. I personally don't think most police departments are systemically racist, or the Santa Cruz Police commit racially motivated misconduct. I don't think this ingenuous, violent, radical Marxist anarchist, any police mob chants alone are a basis for vast changes in policy. The reality of black people disproportionately encountering police is largely due to the vastly disproportionate violent crime committed by some black men. And yes, that is an ignored hard reality to accept for them. I personally believe the claims of widespread systemically racially motivated police brutality by the BLM are largely improving and have other motives. And the BLM itself is really a destructive revolutionary movement who has and is using incendiary methods to sway public opinion with violent protest and mischaracterizations with a very different than stated political agenda, none of which particularly applied all to the police and Santa Cruz. That said, excessive use of force always merits examination and it does occur. As to the bloated numbers cited wanting major police reform, the survey said 33% of 18 to 34 year olds favored abolishing the police. That is purely a goal of anarchy. I blame squarely on a BLM anarchist targeting impressionable young people having already been brainwashed by leftism. A year ago, these numbers would not exist. In general, though, I applaud and support the bulk of Section A policy changes. As to item 13 and Section A changes, you know, I disagree with any diversity policy that would involve quotas that rejects a more meritorious candidate in favor of diversity because it breeds mediocrity besides being unfairly prejudicial as unfairly prejudicial as if that what is hinted at may have occurred historically. The really shocking ignored justice system part not working here at the present is too many turnstile catcher releases of the same offenders. Penny Bale in some cases dozens of times accuses some pretty serious crimes only to offend again and again and again and really needs a high priority examination. Strangely, the justice warriors don't care about that. Okay, that'll be it. Bye. Hey, Reggie here. Can you hear me? Yes, good evening. Yeah, thanks. So, you know, I think a lot of Santa Cruises are sort of watching this presentation and earnestly believing that these proposals will make a real difference in how the city treats our community. And I want to just acknowledge that. But I want to sort of remind the community that, you know, the standard for a policy was not it's not this, you know, Minneapolis, Minnesota, that's where George Floyd was killed, and they are defunding their police department. And I want to remind everyone what happened with Sean Arlt, the man who was shot and killed during a mental health crisis by SCPD. Just like any of these other police departments, he was not charged with criminal offenses for the sorry, the police officers. And the police union and mills himself ran to the defense of those officers, saying things like we still bleed and victimizing the police in this effort. Under these new proposals by mills, Sean Arlt's death would still have happened and the officers would still be unaccountable. Jay Rortia, local lawyer, has written a letter demonstrating how these accountability measures by the motion mills has presented are written intentionally loosely, leaving them largely unimpossible from a legal perspective. The thing is, mills cannot be trusted to be entirely on the side of public good, because he's a police officer. That is his role in society. And he's a member of the police union. And so it's this relationship that prevents him from being fully on our side. He just can't be. And you can see it in the watered down reforms that are being presented here. Or you can see it in why the police budget increases every single year, even during major budget deficits, like in 2019. You can see it when mills suggests that we need to hold on to extremely dangerous uses of force, like shooting at moving vehicles. Anyways, let me just end this on SCP and fund public good. Good evening. My name is Jay Ritchie. I apologize for having called in earlier to make my remarks now. I'm going in to amplify Reggie's remarks and give a little bit more context to that. While I disagree with Chief Mills' vision, I'm grateful to the Chief for recognizing the need, pressing need to act to improve our community, and especially to provide the safety measures that community members who have been unfairly targeted deserve. That said, Chief says that this is a process, but I'm not seeing the roadmap from where we go from here. It can't wait was great. They were well branded proposals, but they couldn't wait. Now we've waited months and now I believe it's time for the next step to consider the legitimate plans of non reformist feedback and look at the path forward beyond what can't wait and look towards the future we want to see for ourselves and live in. Chief Mills says that he's found the middle path for our community to come together between those who deny racism and those who seek to eradicate it. I cannot believe that we're settling for the middle path when we've spent a year of travesty watching time and time again the exact actions that he is proposing fail to actually materially protect community members across this country. I'm deeply ashamed of anyone who seeks to charter the middle path between those who deny racism and those who eradicate it. Community members are killing themselves to think that anyone with a vision in this country is looking towards his decision, the one that aligns with glorified police violence and blog posts about the criminal crimes against officers and violence in the community as a roadmap for what the future of community safety looks like. There is a vision for that. There have been proposals to the council along those lines and I plead and beg community members or council members please to listen to the community members on this issue and defund the police. Thank you. Hi my name is Jasmine and I am a woman of color in Santa Cruz. This whole presentation was in bad taste in my opinion. Chief Mills surrounded himself with a few BIPOC members of the community with whom he had already been working and was already working with Mayor Justin Cummings so it feels like this was limited to people who already agree with him. Also are you even trying to listen to the public to other people of color to what we the people of Santa Cruz want? You give lots of examples of reforms that seem to have all too many loopholes. There are some things that are now banned like carotid restraints and no knock warrants but they can be overridden. Where is the accountability when that happens? And you said black participants from the community were not a monolith. Indeed they aren't. However you didn't listen to or convey the opinions of black folks who demand defunding of the police. You had level conflict of a poor meaning uncooperative imposing a threat which could justify strikes, kicks and use of weapons. The way this was written could encapsulate individuals with a mental health crisis. We really need a cahoots program instead. They would never use force to deescalate a situation like that. I'm a therapist and know how erratic people with mental illness can be and I would never even consider an option to be killing them. These reforms barely sound good and they don't seem likely to lead to meaningful change and they certainly don't represent what the public wants. I can say that I as a person of color who has many friends of color who agree with an abolitionist perspective do not agree and do not feel heard. Thank you. Hi, my name is Vicki and I'd like to thank all the community members for engaging in this process but particularly what Joyce Lynn said about needing to change the culture of the police department really resonated with me. That's why Andy Mills's recent blog post which the police department paid to promote Facebook really troubled me. In this post Chief Mills describes a story about an attack on a policewoman in which a citizen of veteran conglosing at home trains a sniper rifle site on the attacker. It's not clear whether this incident happened in Santa Cruz or somewhere else or if it happened at all. My question about this went unanswered by either Chief Mills or the department but many commenters assumed that it took it at base value and assumed that it happened here to a Santa Cruz police officer. My question is this type of post really doesn't seem to be something that someone who really wants to de-escalate tensions and bring the level of tension down that they would post and I just want to quote what a fellow police officer who actually killed a drunk person waving a box cutter in San Diego in 2015. He reacted to this post by saying, I applaud citizens who take action to jump in to protect and save lives of officers who are being violently assaulted even if it means taking the life of the assailant. Now I think we have enough trouble with police killing civilians. I don't think we need to bring into this armed citizen into this melee just shooting whoever they feel like. This is not de-escalating tension. Hi yeah I'd like to uh just echo what the last couple callers said especially does mean I really agree with her and her point of view. I think at its root policing is a system designed to uphold oppression. I do not believe that anyone deserves to be caged. I don't prescribe to the state's notions of innocence and culpability. I recognize that the system of policing is heavily intertwined with the military industrial complex both here and abroad. In abolishing policing we seek to abolish imperialist forms of police such as militaries responsible for generations of violence against black and brown people worldwide. As abolitionists we recognize that reforms that do not reduce the power of the police including those proposed by eight can't wait simply create new opportunities to surveil police and incarcerate black brown indigenous ports labeled transgender oppressed queer migrant people and those who work in street economies will believe in a world where there are zero police murders because there are zero police not because police are better trained or better regulated. Indeed history has shown that ending police violence through more training or regulations is impossible. I think to build an abolitionist world that prioritizes the lives of black people we have to draw upon the decades of abolitionist work to compile the list of demands targeted towards city and municipal powers and I think these are one to defund the police, two to demilitarize communities, three remove police from schools, four free people from prisons and jails, five repeal laws that criminalize survival including here in Santa Cruz where 80 percent of the calls for police are regarding homelessness, six invest in community self-government governance like Jeff said because who and provides safe accessible housing for everyone and invests fully in care cops. Thank you. Kim in the essence of time because we still have one more item after this item I'm going to ask that we reduce the time for public comment to one minute so we've got about 10 people who are lined up so if we can get through these folks move on to action deliberation and then we have one more item and it's 9 20 so hopefully we can continue moving through and get through these comments and deliberate and move on to the next item so if we could change the clock to one minute we'll go ahead and continue on public comment here on the line we can hear you. Hi this is Joan Peterson speaking about the the police policy proposal I'd like to urge the city council to adopt the amendments detailed in the letter written by the concerned expert attorneys that you have I'm sure you have a copy of. The proposal states require officers to exhaust all other reasonable alternatives before resorting to deadly force. Now this would be came to amend use of force policies to incorporate as a core principle that deadly that deadly force will be used as a last resort at only when other reasonable alternatives have been exhausted first when feasible. Also in addition an additional thing added to the proposal could be require use of force reporting including threats with a firearm post SCPD use of force data regularly including race ethnicity gender age weapons force injuries underlying crime context on a website including analysis of trends policy policy and training issues. These details matter because it's important that police make substantial improvements and aren't accountable. Thank you so much for the work you're doing and I think that more work to be done thank you. Thank you. The assembly line process of not allowing the public to speak is really deplorable and bad news. Missing from the recommendations the homeless harassment ordinance is empowerment and funding which even mills it takes up a large chunk of police time and money. Missing any serious consideration of even token shifting of resources to the nonviolent alternatives like the Kahootz model in Eugene buried in last Monday's study session. Missing any real examination of racial discrimination in the SCPD instead the SCPD continues its policy of not summarizing racial data and missing is the mention of the word H the homeless word any corrective measures stand to stay away orders from the parks the empowerment of vehicle seizures by right-wing ideologues like Deborah Elston and her next door vigilante volunteer cops missing is any real input from the public instead of the closed meetings with comings and mills behind closed doors with select group instead you have a laundry list of self-promoting claims by mills rushed forward even the conservative local ACLU is urged to wait until the community gets more time to examine these so don't be fooled by this cosmetic clowns mask of pseudo reforms as long as lethal force continues to be funded we must be on the streets demanding real change that this council refuses to even consider and thank you community for listening. Hi my name is Madeleine I want to start out by expressing my appreciation for all the community members who gave up their time to go through this process with chief mills as previous color jasmine said there were other community members involved in this process but didn't seem to be asked to appear tonight some who have different views about these proposals and I noticed something to me that is really missing from Santa Cruz I believe we need to have a civilian police review board to hold the police up to more accountability we have volunteer cops in Santa Cruz going out doing cop things I think we need just some regular community members reviewing police actions especially if these so-called reforms are passed thank you. Hey can you guys hear me?  Okay that's better. So I'm calling I'm a community trainer in town and I just really wanted to specifically touch on the discussion of including implicit bias training de-escalation trainings and racial equity trainings I don't think that these are sufficient because the system that we have for policing itself is flawed so if you're having things like implicit bias trainings that you have somebody who's armed it's not enough to completely remove the biases that lead to disproportionate people of color that are being killed by police officers so the real reforms that are needed are not surface level like recruiting more diverse police officers you know recruitment campaigns feedback you know email addresses on the back of business cards it's really about completely uh re-looking at the system that we have uh defunding and looking at something like a the Hoots program that doesn't like by bringing a cop into the situation you're automatically escalating the situation so de-escalation is kind of a uh an oxymoron in this area. You're being asked to unmute your phone so if you can unmute your device you'll be given one minute. Okay can you hear me now? Yes good evening. Sorry okay it's Peter Gelblum calling I sent a minute of email urging the council to put this over for more study for to release the next meeting and I reiterate that based on what I saw because I just put up I don't know when it was put up it wasn't up when the agenda came out this is in the use of force policy it's now on the transparency portal section 300.3.1 the de-escalation section it's just complete garbage the first half of it is nothing new with de-escalation it has to do with protecting officers better the second half is so qualified when reasonable when feasible consider alternatives it needs to be wordsmith it needs to be studied it needs to be looked at this was put up maybe yesterday today I don't know when it was put up but the public has not had a chance to review this and the council needs to study this without just rubber stamping it thank you. What a lot of other people said that these changes mean that almost nothing that a lot of the time when you have someone reform themselves they're going to choose within their own best interest not what's in everyone else's best interest that it's just giving them more funding and more power through that and what we're failing to address is why police are responding to these situations where there is a racist call into 911 or where there is a issue of homelessness or mental health that should be addressed and that's not being talked about here and I would like to see something more like cahoots model something towards defunding and de-escalating in that way rather than counting on people who are trained to look at us in ways as us the rest can handle the situation. Andy Mills I'm wondering if you've had a change of heart in 2017 three years ago you complained about firefighter Matt McFarland wearing a BLM plant bit pin while you continue to wear your blue eyes matter bracelet when you arrived here in Santa Cruz you said you cared about our houseless population would not give them camping or sleeping tickets. I'm going to pause you for a second. I'm going to relate it to police exchanges related to racial equity and social justice so I think if you have personal comments about the police chief maybe there's another venue for that so if we want to talk about the policy I think that's appropriate otherwise maybe you can find another time to call the chief and talk about these other issues so if you'd like to continue happy to um allow you to continue your comments so long as they're related to what's on our agenda and so if you'd like to press star six you can unmute your phone can you give me one minute please yeah you can have one minute to comment on the agenda item these reforms that you're presenting are unenforceable what good are they if they're not forceful please refer to many of the emails you refuse we received from several different attorneys um Mills blogged recently about certain stories um including the last blog regarding vigilantes um it's it's uh I won't go into that because you told me not to speak about things that personally about him but um Brenda Mills commented that there's a current policy in place regarding after the bear cap um and Brenda Mills is correct that there is a policy in place already whether or not it's part of the 1033 program please check on that I know that Mills became chief of police after that policy was put in place but it worries me that you're not aware of this policy I watched a young black suicidal man be surrounded by 10 cops with absolutely no mental health officials present I've seen this over and over again none of you are going to make a change I'm white and privilege and pretend not to know what it is like to be stopped by the police there are many members of the black community who are meeting since 9 30 this morning it's now 9 30 p.m and we need to be sold one more item so my name is Lisa uh I'm calling about the police department's proposal for the reforms I read the city's proposed ad sponsored ad promoting chief Mills horrifying cop fan fiction blog post where he advocates for an increase in vigilante violence and supportive cops this is deeply disturbing a police department that believes that they need vigilantes a la kyla written house or warriors as the chiefs calls them out in the streets obviously doesn't have any interest in actually implementing any checks on their officers I urge you to listen to the many bypass groups in town when they say that the police's presence even with the proposed reforms leads to increased violence and harassment against community members of color more needs to be done to hold the police accountable and define alternatives to their presence hey can you hear me yes good evening hey I'm Garrett Stevens I wanted to put an idea out there I've been talking to some friends about several of these issues and one thing I think would help with the follow-up in terms of what's on the agenda today is if I know police ride-alongs are a thing that are possible and I'm not sure during COVID how possible that is wearing masks obviously we'd be a part of it but it would be great if community members were encouraged to do ride-alongs so that we could get a more first-person knowledge about what goes on throughout a shift and what goes on out there on the streets so that that can inform the conversations we're having we can have better informed community conversations around policing and possible reforms so I wanted to put that out there and we'll hopefully follow up and see what what options there may be to do that but I think it would be great if more community members got an experience doing a ride-along or something of that nature to try to just inform have that have the community as a whole particularly become more informed thanks hi this is Emory I'm a Santa Cruz community member and calling to echo what a lot of people have said here as long as as well as Reggie and the NAACP's letter to chief mills and the sdpd we need to defund the police these reforms outlined here the half-hearted seven the dark and really don't achieve much as far as what the community has been suggesting I think the chief mills blog post was disgusting and dangerous and we need to defund the police and refund at the community thank you council for action deliberation I'd first like to thank all the panelists for joining this evening I'm going to ask if the panelists can all move off in their mics off and just listen for the rest of the meeting as we take action on the following items in addition to that I do want to just based on some of the comments that we just heard I do want to stress that last week we did have an extensive presentation by cahoots we had an entire afternoon dedicated to mental health crisis response and alternative like what we're doing in the city what we're doing in the county and then hearing from cahoots on an alternative model there was direction given that we would continue having those conversations and just like with anything that we're trying to address here in the city things take time there needs to be an opportunity for us to have discussions with the community work with our partners throughout the community and so regardless of what happens there's going to be a lot of time that's going to need to be taken in order to make further changes but this what's before us tonight it was in response to what we were hearing this summer and throughout the fall and which is where how we've gotten to the place we are tonight there's nothing stopping us from continuing to move forward having discussions with the community and finding further ways to improve public safety but this as we mentioned before is a step in the direction of trying to implement changes that will make our our community safer and make people from underrepresented and diverse backgrounds have a better relationship with our public safety officers um with that i will turn it over to councilmember walken well i'll just um thank you mayor for your comments and then i want to also extend my gratitude and appreciation for taj and brenda and joy and reggie and cheese mills for your presentation this evening and i um just really recognizing the you know the historical um context of race relations in this nation and the deep-rooted uh racial uh systemic racism that we've seen throughout a housing education and the m police and policing in our nation um where we are today is a step in the right direction and uh it does uh there's always room for continuous improvement and training and better understanding how we as a society can remedy and um and create more equity uh and improve black lives from all the spectrum and i um recognize also though we have to start with with what we can do right now and i appreciate the thought that went into creating the policy recommendations before us um recognizing that we also have had a very long meeting i'm happy to kind of keep the agenda moving and go ahead and provide a motion to accept the recommendation as presented in our staff report and um and welcome any comments or uh further discussion amongst my colleagues by councilmember walken councilmember brown sorry hands up i um i do have some comments and actually a couple of questions now um and so i'm gonna hold off until there's a second on on that motion i i'd like to see us go a little bit further okay councilmember matthews we'll go ahead and second motion and um uh my comments can be very greek so make them now i just want to thank everyone involved with the cheese the mayor other councilmember the community from what i could tell i was not deeply involved in the process it seemed to me that everyone approaches them genuinely good faith a genuine openness to listen to hear to try and understand and move forward it's a significant process so obviously this is not an end point but i just want to personally personally thank the um the spirit that everyone approaches very challenging situations thank you uh council brown then vice mayor mires thank you um yeah so i i want to start off by appreciating the efforts of uh the mayor i know you you've um hadn't uh quite arrived as your term as mayor um and you managed to kind of keep this uh you know this real you know in front and center for you and um for our community so i appreciate that i appreciate uh chief mills efforts to uh kind of move move things along here and i know there's a lot of uh you know kind of conflicting uh you know we're not necessarily conflicting but different perspectives on how how does that we proceed and what uh meaningful change might look like um a lot of community members have turned out i really appreciate all of you for and those of you who are here tonight um and and weighing in as well um and i i really want to echo um branda griffin's comment uh related to reporting and i'll get back around to that in just a second um i also want to appreciate all the community members who have come out and um and and have weighed in who have weighed in um kind of pretty consistently uh for the past uh many months now um about the limitations of this kind of incremental policy uh change and kind of you know and the generalized um policy changes that um that that are difficult to um kind of pinpoint what specifically will change would change and you know how to evaluate that what kind of metrics how we know um that these efforts have been effective or successful um and you know and i and people have you know there's this this um insistence that this is a process and this will be ongoing and i absolutely support that and i agree but i worry that we don't have um any real structure channel or or structure uh to um ensure that there is ongoing engagement and deliberation about these issues so um i'd like to see uh uh do something that that kind of helps reassure um you know me certainly me but members of our community that there will be ongoing dialogue right now um it's like we can walk away from this meeting we'll pass the policy tonight but what's you know so then what um how do we how do we decide and how do we actually get to a place where we can keep moving this forward so that's a real concern for me um you know i take very seriously the comments that have come in from the aclu and um others uh um civil rights attorneys and others who have our experts are really experts in these matters um and and i do want to um you know try to try to get us to a place where we can acknowledge that those are legitimate concerns and that we can do better we can do more um and so you know i'm not gonna um belabor this tonight because i you know i i i don't think that um you know offering up a bunch of amendments and giving you a big talk about all of the ways that i think we the other things we should be doing i think you all know i you know i made the motion about because who's on monday last monday didn't get there um but um you know for now i would like to see um or hear more i guess so this is the question um one of the questions um with respect to uh reporting which is i think a huge piece of um you know getting us to uh broader accountability not just around specific incidents and where there may be misconduct and that's reported but kind of generally friends and how the department is doing um and we have a transparency portal and there is a lot of information that is is being shared and i i really appreciate that um you know i've had a lot of requests from folks over the last few months uh asking to try to get access to information that is not readily available um even with the kind of the transparency portal and and it's great and i i'm really appreciated and i talked with um deputy chief of galante i've asked for some additional information and some of it um i've been told is not possible to get because it's not recorded and so i'm just wondering you know given uh you know i think branda just said it the reporting on demographics and outcomes um there's information that people would like to have and i'm just wondering um if you know chief mills if you could talk about your thoughts and how we get there um because i think that i think it's it would be really helpful and it would it would help our community um kind of uh have you know in trust building so thank you councilmember brown but i think and i think that uh this information is available and that we can get much of it it depends on specific specifically on what you're asking for uh obviously the devil's always in the details but every time we use force of any kind it's recorded uh and i know that some members of the community have commented on things like well anytime a gun is is displayed well we capture that um and that goes on to a form and that all that data can be collected now the issue is because of the budget shortfall like my crime and crime analyst position out of the budget um so there is nobody to do that right now but i'm always willing to improvise and maybe we can find a volunteer or somebody else that can capture that data uh an intern or whatever the case may be so we can be creative and come up with those kind of solutions i'm not opposed at all um about um uh being more transparent and give you as much information as we can so people can make thoughtful decisions about recommendations to policy and that's the whole goal here is to make the best recommendations that we can thank you so if i could just add that so the the demographic areas of interest that i hear that i hear consistently about um are uh you know race ethnicity gender age um and you know and and more recently i think um you know housing status and and really observable um uh mental health status are you know and and those are demographics that would be collected at the the point of interaction with um with folks on the ground and so i guess um i'm if i could ask is that information that is possible to um is that recorded is it possible if the resources were made available to make the process that yeah we certainly can put the day the forms together to make sure that data is captured it just becomes a matter of will and and cost and uh but i'm not i'm not opposed to that at all um and i guess on the just as a follow-up in terms of you know evaluation we you know we spent a lot of time kind of trying to come up with metrics to evaluate programs that we fund and you know um and you know the community and wondering if your thoughts on you know evaluation how do how are we going to know um like what does what does success look like you know how are we going to know that we're on the right track you know to which topic reducing uh bias or to reducing use of force or what are you referring to all of the above i would say yeah yeah so i i think it's important for us to capture and one of the reasons we have the use of force form that we have our officers fill out is because we want to assess what uses of force are effective which aren't under what circumstances so we have our officers fill out that form of tasers for instance don't work and or aren't effective then we don't want to use them or if uh let's go to a different tool that might be more effective so there are things that we that we do take a look at i just try to capture that data and uh and i do believe in evidence-based practices so you take a look at the evidence you try to do it in a way that identifies what's most effective and uh but again that takes time and effort and staffing to do and right now because of the budget shortfall we are down a lot of bodies thank you um and then one last question um i have a lot more but i'm not going to keep you're all night with us i i know i can ask you those offline and and it was great to talk with you yesterday um in terms of the de-escalation policy um you know i see the word require in the um the material that we have in the agenda report and but when i look at the policy i it doesn't really match up with requiring um de-escalation and i know that it's qualified with when possible and there's you know uh language around um you know what's feasible what's possible elsewhere um so i'm i guess i'm just wondering how you see um you know the this requirement how you know how to evaluate that i think somebody mentioned with the policy proposal um what happened in the genre case for example um could still very well happen and i don't think there's any policy that you can put in writing that it would guarantee that something like that isn't going to happen so i you know i totally understand that um but i guess i i am wondering how um you know how that the you know what's written in the policy matches up with this idea of like requiring de-escalation so how do we i guess understand that that's actually occurring um you know as needed as you know yeah so i know that one member of the public um you know mentioned it was quote garbage uh and that's fine that's his opinion um it's easy to sit at home and uh you know at least through this leisurely but when you're in the midst of a very difficult situation uh and we have gone to great extent to train to educate to practice with live bait live scenarios uh we regularly do these videos for our officers they have to work through these problems and and look at those things but it's interesting to me that the policy actually states and officers shall consider actions that may increase officer safety and the needs in the let and reduce the need for using force uh so it's not an option for them they shall do that and because in our whole goal of communicating with our officers is that we want to pull them in because there's normally something in it for you and what's in there for you is that you're safer if they're safer and so um we believe that certainly we can always improve our policies and now that people have them they're welcome to give us their uh their thoughtful opinions and how that can be improved but we want to start someplace rather than sitting on our hands for the next six months why um while people debate it in the public square debate it in the public square but let's get moving on something now and we also have to do it in a way that uh brings along the officers who are actually out there doing it every single day they've got 40 millimeters in the cars now all of them have tasers all of them have body-worn cameras all of them have had the training they've gone through a great deal of expense time and training to do this and so there's no doubt in their minds that the requirement is both in policy and in practice is to do everything they can to de-escalate and they're doing it successfully on a regular basis I applaud them for that sometimes even taking risk like a man that threw a knife at them over at the staff of life so um I you know I have unbelievable amount of respect for the men and women who are out there doing it every day and I think that the policy is going to get positioned certainly can be improved thank you and that's a lot final question um just bring it back around and not you know I I also have tremendous respect for the work you do and you know I I um so I don't mean to sound um like I am just looking for something to critique here um but I do want to you know I do want to reflect the community concerns that are expressed to us and the last question I have is just your thoughts on um given that this is a starting place um how you see a process you know the process continuing and you know how it is that um people can give input um you know decision points and kind of how we move forward just what you're thinking about how what that'll look like well I'm certainly always open to any community member that has criticism for the police front or me personally um and they're welcome to voice that but I think that we need a structured process in place and I would suggest maybe knocking heads together with uh some of our you know city manager and the council members to come up with a process that would continue to consider policy changes that would affect and improve the way that we as a government interact with people of color especially African Americans in our community so um whatever that might look like whether it's the American continues with this or or others on council then I'm wide open to that and uh and you know uh again we wanted this as the beginning point it's not the end point and uh as we as we work together thank you Mr. Meyers and before I give you this well I'll just say as well that I'm really committed to is continuing to work on this over the course of the next couple years and so I mean I think it's something we can probably talk about after our new council gets seated but you know if it's something that the public safety committee can you know play a role in I think there's a lot of opportunities for us to continue working on this so I just wanted to put that out there first and foremost so but moving along council vice mayor Meyers and then um let's hopefully continue on next time soon yeah I'll keep my comments brief many of my comments have been asked by other council members I just wanted to take the time to just thank you mayor Cummings and Mills and joy and Joyce and Brenda and Taj and I know I'm missing somebody or a few people here I just think that the work that you've done is important it's timely and I I you know to the extent that we acknowledge this is a first step or a first set of conversations a first set of policies it's it's a conversation that had to happen in our community had to happen throughout the country and throughout the world and so I think to the extent that you you know you recognize the work that you put in the work ahead and you know just thank you for for taking us on and it's incredibly important and I'll leave it at that but just wanted to express my thanks I'm happy to happy to continue the conversation and work towards the motion thank you council member Matthews without trying to amend the original motion I just had some thoughts about that third category and the general concerns about how are we going to measure how are we going to track some of these items it seems to me in that third category improved diversity training and assisting with research those are areas where interim reports back information reports memos back to council and community you'll give the feeling that we're working on it and I think sometimes that that um procedural that that interim steps doesn't happen you know the council with direction and then we think where is but the work being done so um this is on people's minds so the extent that can be just update progress reports on these things um will I think get confidence that work is being done um with the research um it mentions um possible involvement of the court and the sheriff so that's obviously complicated I think to mention that there was some conversation with some of the broader regional public safety entities wanting to ask the same question so there again there won't be a final final product in short order but progress reports on that would be helpful um I would think going forward may be engaging the public safety committee on tracking some of these things and I didn't have a method to please auditor but he seems particularly well grounded in civil rights so so he may have also suggestions um to bring forward and again just a personal observation I know just because of the event we live through uh of this year um there's been the particular focus on Black Lives Matter I can think back in police trainings and trying to even start with awareness of bias and then moving um to uh reduce that bias there have been focus trainings on GLBT I'm talking about policing back over time you said GLBT uh victims of domestic violence Latinx etc and I I think also the mayor I think he talked about um um um expanding the net a bit on that topic as well so that's that's I think a good a good place to move the direction we move in when we come in here thank you uh councilmember Watkins I too will keep my comments short and I appreciate the remarks made by my colleagues in regards to um thinking about metrics and how we're going to move forward with with continuous improvement and definitely I'm supportive of going in that direction and then we'll just also add that you know one of the things that this presentation was prefaced with was that this needs to be a holistic approach to how we're um how we're factoring equity into all of our decision making and that when we had our interim recovery planning conversation uh occur several meetings back but also talked about briefly today we really talked about how health and all policies and integrating health equity and resilience into our decision making throughout all sectors of our role as government and that too really will enhance I think the broader hopes and efforts that this as one element also includes so I hope we can not lose sight of that broader uh framework as well as we move forward with tracking how this is improving our government systems thanks for those comments I did before we move on to the vote I did have a couple questions for the chief that um related to some of comments that came up um so chief I was just curious I want to just run through a couple of these real quick one um based on the letter we received one comment that came up was requiring that officers de-escalate before using a force when feasible that's kind of my understanding of what policy is that we've had before some changes were been made I just wanted to confirm that that's the case yes it is now standalone policy and it says they shall consider it it's not always going to be possible but they shall consider it cool the next was um deadly force will be used as a last resort and only when other reasonable alternatives have been exhausted first when feasible is that currently the I believe that yeah I believe that's pretty clear in our policy all the way through the escalation to the matrix to everything else that's in the totality of the of the policy when it comes to the use of force reporting my understanding I guess based on the conversation we're having that's that's something that we don't currently do but we could potentially do in the future so I'm wondering if as an amendment we might be able to add that as something that can be you know worked on moving forward certainly at the council's pleasure we can add that to it to report out to the public safety committee or to full council whatever your choice might be on the data concerning the use of force and that can be adjusted as we go to make sure it captures all of the information that you want but as you can recall that's where I mentioned that we have to figure out how to do it since we don't have a crime analyst now for the motion I was just wondering if maybe we could add to the after the agenda with regards to yeah I actually have a thought on that too as for the future direction for that third category we just ask the chief to report back on what would be required to begin compiling reporting on different different metrics because I remember your comments that we're cutting your records back for the analyst to add also that the I think there was an app that was going to make the recording better it couldn't afford that if I recall correctly with you know two strikes and so I think just giving the chief direction to report back on what are feasible next best steps that we can be making and what would it take to do it whether it's um um qualified volunteer whatever grant money etc so that would be a number four that would be the asset chief to report back on the potential for improving collection of stats on various measures and does the maker of the motion accept that amendment yes never are there any further comments from council members at this time seeing none I'll turn it over to the clerk to call the roll call vote there's a motion made by council member walk-in seconded by council member Matthews to pass the staff recommendations and then also to add another item which was to have the police chief report back on what could be feasible next step to um report on various um statistics council member buyers is absent um Matthews five brown life golden I can vice mayor Myers and mayor Cummings with council members Matthews golder brown Watkins vice mayor Myers and the mayor Cummings voting in favor and council member buyers absent so with that um let's go ahead and move on to our last item and hopefully we can move through this one um fairly quickly I think we've heard a little bit about it in the last presentation um but the next item is discriminatory reports to law enforcement ordinance uh the presenter on this item again is chief mills and so for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if this is an item you'd like to comment on now it's the time to call in using the instructions on your screen the order will be a presentation by staff followed by questions from council and then we will take a public comment and return to council for action and deliberation once you've called in if you it when we open up for public comment you'll need to press star nine on your phone to raise your hand and after you've been called on uh you will be given one minute to speak on this item but before we go there I'll turn it over to chief mills uh good evening uh mayor city council members again I'm actually going to turn this over to uh our city attorney Tony Codati and Kathy Bronson who actually wrote this but uh we talked about we addressed it a little bit in that slide presentation that from the last section but this is a problem that is not only heard here but in other parts of the country where people have called in uh based on a person's race or other protected classes according to the constitution and this is one way we can have hope to reduce the conflict or the potential of conflict between people of color and uh and the police so um Tony or Kathy are you there yes thank you uh chief mills and the city council of Kathy Bronson uh in my office has done I've been working uh extensively with the police department on this matter the ordinance itself is modeled after a uh campus so ordinance adopted by their board of supervisors recently and Kathy here on the student conference and I will turn it over to her Hi good evening um it's a pretty straightforward ordinance um pretty much taken word for word from uh the city of San Francisco um who adopted this under the name uh I believe they called it their the Karen law um in this instance we haven't decided to name it the Karen law because there were some complaints about naming it that but it's essentially the same ordinance um what it basically does it's fairly straightforward it just calls out um that it's unlawful to knowingly cause a police officer to arrive at a location to contact a person with some sort of improper discriminatory intent um the beauty of this type of ordinance is it creates a civil action for somebody who is aggrieved in this circumstance um it says that um they can maintain a civil action and get a thousand dollars plus attorneys fees uh so this is um a nice little remedy for an improper thing that um has been reported to happen to people um across our country and um the nice thing is you know folks can take it upon themselves to enforce it and it doesn't take a lot of city attorney time or you know um prosecution to enforce this type of law I mean you may know already that um it's already illegal to make a false police report right the problem is that um these types of crimes aren't ones that are commonly prosecuted by our district attorneys because they're really quite busy um and so this sort of leaves opens up an additional legal option to folks um seeking a remedy in civil court city attorney's office for bringing this to us at this time um are there any questions from council members we just have one I mean I know chief mille shared with us a few circumstances that um he had some anecdotal information about but is there any quantifiable data that this is a problem in the city of Santa Cruz I mean every time that I've called 911 the first thing they ask is what am I reporting not like who am I reporting and I you know state whatever the issue was and then they ask you to just at first they ask if there's any weapons then they ask what the person looks like and they ask like hi wait ethnicity clothing vehicle description all these other things that's just in this broad context and I just think like um the dispatchers at netcom would be able to weed out calls that are not worth sending out the police department and so I'm just curious is there any quantifiable data that this is a real issue here in our community I'm not denying that it's an issue around the country of the world but here is this an issue or is this um something you think is important well to me if there's three examples that I just came off the top of my head and I'm not on the radio that much because I'm sitting in my office I think that's too many personally and uh and so yeah that does present a problem to me however I do agree with you that um certainly some training at netcom can handle some of these problems by screening a little bit more effectively and asking why are you calling on this person but when we get radio calls of a person walking down a street just because of their color and they dispatch officers on it that's not right and uh we we answer those by telling our officers they're not going to go to those calls um but there's an expectation unless the person can articulate some kind of crime being committed or likely to be committed uh and uh that would be different so that's what that's what I'm kind of curious about so if someone calls in and they're making a report of something like the ones you shared would right now would they dispatch officers out to a call like that or would they say what would they say I'm just curious yeah we've we've sent them a memo over a year ago asking them not to dispatch us on those calls for service it's pretty tough to train their folks in that area when people call and demand an officer respond so this will I believe takes the rest of the way there I cannot quantify for you the number of calls we get a year for this kind of there seems substantial enough to me to warrant this kind of ordinance along with training for netcom to make sure that they don't dispatch officers for just race calls or um lgbtq rights or whatever the case might be we want to make sure that uh and that our supervisors have informed uh if they hear those calls to cancel those calls they'll send an officer if it's if it's solely based on race and there's not a crime that's present are there any other questions from council members okay seeing uh commuted by the way Cassie you mentioned it would be um so the damage is I just want to make sure I understand um would be awarded if the if the um person that you know experienced this actually filed a civil civil suit is that how this would be awarded in terms of that um let's see it's under yeah 9.86.020 uh item c identifies a thousand dollar attorney fees and costs um so I just wanted to make sure that that was clear yes I think that's the idea behind the ordinance is um create a civil cause of action presumably these many of these if they are ever filed would be filed in small claims court which is a low barrier to entry for people okay thank you already be annoying how how is this different than now if someone was to file a false police report and let's say like I was just walking along and someone called on me and then I mean how did I need to I don't understand what's the difference between now we have that's a really good question so presumably now if you were to somebody called the police on on you improperly um it would be a hard to prove that you were damaged in any way if you wanted to file suit um especially if nothing resulted from it um it would just there would be a barrier um to creating to having a theory that would support a legal cause of action so what this does is it recognizes that there's um harm in and of itself and that's entitled to compensation so it basically just sort of clears the way for um most likely a small claim faction um as um sort of um in order to get some sort of um justice in the situation I think I know where Renee was going with this and um we haven't really had the full discussion but um I have on occasion called netcom 911 for a whole variety of reasons and I think they are good as I think what's the issue first of all do you feel in danger right now and and there's a whole sequence and race is down down the list a bit what are they wearing how tall are they male or female etc um it almost seems like this is on this deals with what's the initial description and concern coming out of the mouth of the caller and it almost seems like it's it's uh an opportunity I mean you watch that video on the parents thing I mean that's enough to drive you crazy so um in this case I think this is an area where um me and the education can be when you are reporting a concern the first thing is what's the activity what's the behavior then the appeal threatened then describe the person that's kind of just keep on set so that people go through and it does that's just my observation and I I think that's kind of what you're getting at she's shaking the hand yes are there any further questions or comments from council members comment on this item now's the time to call in using the number that's on your screen and if you haven't called in already once you call in please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand and you will be given two minutes to speak yeah hi this is Garrett Philip this law attempts to define a violation for specific intent to cause any of six harms based on any of 15 different personal characteristics those harms do not even have to occur specific intent requires proof of a state of mind intent to harm and an act in this case it's calling 911 the act of funding itself in no way supports a claim of a particular specific intent and otherwise the caller is engaged in what we would normally call protected free speech as the basis for intent trying to define speech as a civil violation assuming intent for any speech including references to almost any personal characteristic is an attack on the first amendment this violation of specific intent to harm also allows for damages even if there's no listed harm actually done and please merely show up this doesn't acknowledge the officer's responsibility to protect but instead assumes they are solely for lack of a better phrase no run no responsibility obedient robots doing the caller's bidding no matter those harms without cause are a hundred percent a duty preventable by the officer and the caller cannot can tell the officer to perform any of those harms wow it's very unlikely the 911 caller flat out confesses and precisely connects the dots with these specific intents and explains listed personal characteristics are the basis to get a judgment chief mills 911 feelings are irrelevant this either tries to define legally non-existent hate speech or a much too broadly defined disallowed speech as intent to cause harmful outcomes somewhat vaguely described that are based on personal characteristics commonly mentioned in 911 speech discriminated against the person is very vague the phrase based on is very vague feeling harassed a million or embarrassed our person's feelings i can think of a lot of speech that might hurt someone's feelings that will never be called a crime because we have for better or or you know or we better have free speech also 911 callers are not trained observers and false perception should not be a crime 911 dispatchers routinely ask for descriptions of people there must be laws against calling 911 with false complaints somehow true even perceived true speech should be legal there are infinite reasons to and not looks like taj has raised his hand so taj if you can leave your video off but you'll be also given two minutes to comment on this item um thank you thank you mayor thank you council members so i just want to give a little bit of a personal view on this as a black man um the Karen law at first i thought it was a joke um i know that it's it's going to be uh named something else with lots of numbers and letters but i'll call it the Karen law for sake of brevity but um this this is a step in the right direction i will say that as a young man i got pulled over by police and harassed by police far too often um what we have seen around the country is that these these stops and harassment have led to the dash of many of my people and this is one thing that's going to help codify into law that this this that particular thing won't happen it's going to give some of us a breath of fresh air hopefully and cause a little bit of pause um so that when i'm walking down the street it's not just going to be another traumatic incident when i when a when a police officer gets called to my side when when i haven't done anything it's a traumatic event it it causes me to feel less safe in my own body it causes me to be less feel less safe around police which um strains our relationships as you have seen as many people have commented on there there are very big issues with police being called um on on on people of color uh and and we've seen it play out throughout this country since 9 11 it was it's been a very very big issue and so um i just want to give you my perspective as a black man that this this law is something i am fully in favor of and it's a step it's not it's not the end i'll be all but it's a step in the right direction thank you you care there any other members of the public who'd like to speak to us on this item good evening my name is jay say gave some feedback earlier i want to make this super brief thank you so much for your now 13 hours of service on this uh tuesday really appreciate each and every one of the counselors truly um i really appreciate and want to lift up uh taraj's comments and uh amplify the fact that i'm hearing several counselors mention how they feel safe when they're able to call the police and explicitly ground this conversation and the one that we just had in the reality that many people including queer people like myself and black people like previous speaker uh do not feel safe and do not feel like they can contact the police when a crisis or issue arises also is relevant to the many homeless members of our community who are important voices whom we need to center when we're considering public service uh priorities i hope we're able to pass this uh hope we're able to call it a caron law to identify the appropriate problem that this is responding to uh and move quickly forward after today with immediate actions uh to continue this conversation towards defunding and abolishing the police thank you so much take care good night okay thank you it's like we have one last um speaker a joy plan i'll just ask you to unmute and then you'll be given two minutes as well thank you i just want to reiterate what taj had said and um this again um sets a precedent and aids in the culture shift that i sent out an invitation to everybody to participate in on thursday may 21st that invitation resulted in about a thousand person action and then again created a larger conversation which is leading to this moment now and many moments before again with a greater conversation around um black lives and how we are seen and perceived in our own home of of santa cruz the city and santa cruz the county um it is not illegal to walk around our town in black bodies and this again sets the precedent to um non-black people who um may be uncomfortable by a black person walking around riding a bicycle just being just simply being in a black body so i am in full support of um this law to move forward call it the caron law call it whatever you want but i um as a black woman with black children don't want people calling on um my me or my son my son or my grandson um just because they happen to be living in a black body thank you thank you this public comment and then bring it back to council for uh further discussion deliberation and action and so start with council member gole then council member brown so i just want to be clear it's not that i take issue um with the notion that um people should be held personally accountable if they're making false police reports and making false claims about people for being in neighborhoods or whatever based on their race or other protected classes it's just that um like the way i see it the the community is kind of the eyes and ears for the police department and um i i i know that there's a difference it's like we teach the kids there's a difference between tattling and reporting i don't want people going around being a bunch of tattletales but reporting things that um like for example one of the calls the times i've called 911 this year was i was taking a walk along the levee and i saw a man two men actually beating up a woman and so i called 911 and um and i just have to say like i think that in those descriptors when they ask you those questions when you call i don't know it by heart but race is down there pretty darn low um in the in the description and so in a sense that this will make people feel more comfortable than i'm fine with it whatever um we decide to call it but the only other thing i have a problem with is calling it karen because i get it that it's a funny name and this doesn't mean other but i have a dear friend her name is karen my daughter has a friend on the wrestling team you know only in ninth grade whose name is karen i feel like they get teased and i just think it's not really fair to point someone just gives up their names that's also something they didn't choose i will just say that the the ordinance is the discriminatory reports the law enforcement so um i think if we leave it at that we don't have to get into the conversation around karen uh councilmember brown and then councilmember matthews uh so yeah i'll just go ahead and move the recommendation to introduce republication and ordinance adding chapter 9.86 uh the discriminatory of reports to law enforcement to the santa cruz muni code and appreciate everybody's efforts to bring this to us and uh those who weighed in and you're you muted by the way you keep doing it um uh i'm just a final comment regarding the concerns that your name's grown up i'm trying to think of permissible and not permissible activities impermissible would be you call 911 and you say i want to police your thoughts there's a latino guy they're sitting in the park no that's not illegal to be latino sitting in the park 911 says well why are you calling well he's been here and he's acting weird around some kids that are playing and i mean you know if there's a reasonable suspicion of something alive that would be a reason if others understand what i'm getting here there has to be a justifiable reason and this is about specific intent based on characteristics that have nothing to do with a crime or a problem i'm feeling comfortable doing this i think is the first thing that they say is what is the reason for your call and then they ask the weapons and this and that and the other so that's that was my point yeah if i can just make a brief comment um you know people can ask the reason for your call but if the first thing that comes out of that person's mouth is their race and a behavior that's not an actual crime and then they insist on the person that's taking that call because of that person's race or ethnicity and they're not actually doing anything wrong i think that's that's what this is getting at and i can also say that yeah i've experienced this as a teenager frequently in chicago where police would come out just because they were kids hanging out in the park and a few of them happened to be black so this is really what it's getting at and if it's you know hearing from the police chief that if there's three calls that's three too many and that means that if he's heard those three there's probably many more that are happening so the motion by councilmember brown i'll go ahead and second the motion to move the staff recommendation oh you did okay seconded by councilmember matthews further discussion on this item being none we have a motion by councilmember brown seconded by councilmember matthews to move the staff recommendation to introduce for publication and ordinance adding chapter 9.86 the discriminatory reports to law enforcement to the santa cruz um municipal code with that i'll turn it over to the clerk to call the roll call vote councilmember matthews hi brown hi golden hi so i will make note uh councilmember byer is adopted sorry um what can hi vice mayor mayer hi and mayor coming hi so that passes with councilmembers matthews golder brown watkins vice mayor mayers mayor coming's voting in in favor and councilmember byer's absent and so with that i'd like to uh conclude our um meeting today and i hope that everyone can join us for the last meeting of 2020 on december 8th and so with that i'd like to join the meeting thank everyone for being here today and thank all the councilmembers for for being on this meeting for the 13 hours we've been here so take care everyone have a good night and we'll see you soon happy holidays