 Order at 6.03 PM, the 25th of May, 2021. Let's see here, we do have a quorum, five out of seven. And that moves on to additions and modifications to the agenda. I have a couple. I would like to remove item 5.03, update the roll of police commission. My reason behind that, I want to actually go through the training with Nicole before I retweak the thing I want to retweak about that. So, I motion that we table item 5.03 until a later date. Do I have a second for that? I saw Stephanie's hands first, seconding that. All in favor of tabling 5.03 till a later dates. Raise your hand to say aye. That passes unanimously. One other addition, I'd just like to introduce, I'd like to have Eileen introduce the new city attorney. And I'd say put that between, I guess, public forum and the chief support. I make that motion. Anyone second it? Seconded by Stephanie. All in favor, raise your hand to say aye. Aye. That passes unanimously. Unless anyone else has any further additions to modifications to the agenda. Hi there, chairman. This is commissioner Grant. I have something that I would like listed as a separate agenda item, as opposed to just being in commissioner updates and comments. And I would, and I'm not quite sure how to put this, but during our last meeting, I expressed some concern about specific rhetoric that was used regarding the city council. And I would just like to kind of expand on those thoughts. Okay, yeah. Let's see here. I'm happy to place that, I think before place 5.03, that works with you. Sure. Thank you. Milo, motion that do I have a second? Seconded by Stephanie Ceguino. All in favor of Milo's amendments to the agenda. Raise your hand to say aye. Aye. That passes unanimously. Any further additions or modifications to the agenda? Not hearing any or seeing any, which brings us on to agenda item 2.01, which is approval of the minutes from last meeting, which is on 4.28, 21. Chair Gamash, I would just say you need to vote on the agenda now that it's been amended. My apologies. Thank you. I don't see this, I'm gonna lose when you leave us, but thank you for that. All in favor of the amended agenda, please raise your hand to say aye. Aye. Aye. All right. So moving on to agenda item 2.01, which is approval of last meeting's minutes. I move that we approve of the minutes. Motion by Randolph. I second. All in favor, raise your hand to say aye. Aye. Aye. That passes unanimously. And this is on to public forum. And with that, I'll give it to Shannon. Good evening. I did only have one sign up and that is Mary Cox and Mary, you're all set. Here we go. Can you hear me okay? Yes ma'am. So my name is Mary Cox and I'm a resident of Burlington. I spoke here a few weeks ago observing improvements I've seen in the BPD response to mental health crises. My son who gave me permission to speak to the commission about this has a serious mental health condition. He's stable and happy now, but last year was in crisis and had numerous interactions with the police. All of the police, as well as the street outreach team members were kind, thoughtful, and they were able to deescalate things nicely. This is in stark contrast to 10 years ago. Since the time that I spoke before, a friend of my son was in crisis wandering down Church Street and had said that they were going to harm themselves. My son called the BPD and asked them to help his friend. He also called me and asked me to call the BPD but didn't mention that he had already called the BPD. So I called the BPD and they said actually they were already on it that my son had called and they had street outreach team members going down to check on my son's friend. On the street outreach team did find my son's friend and that worked out well. What's no worthy about this though, what really impressed me is that my son saw the BPD as the solution, not as the problem. I was really happy about that. I recently read that a member of the city council said something to the effect of mental health calls can be handled by mental health workers and not the police. I actually think that this is true to some extent. However, the BPD has a vital role to play in the event someone has a severe psychotic crisis. Also, this implies a robust infrastructure. So for example, Kahootz is a model for non-police response to many, but not all mental health crises. However, Kahootz works because they have adequate personnel and community mental health resources such as mental health urgent care. Burlington has neither. Emergency department is not an appropriate place to take people who are in crisis. You may have read about the current situation involving children in crises, languishing in an ED. The same thing happens with adults and has for a long time. There are numerous organizations in the Burlington area who could help both, who could help with this if there is community support. In particular, for example, Pathways Vermont has asked the state for funding of a crisis slant respite center, but no funding was made available. I ask that you form a subcommittee to consider, one, what further training would be useful to BPD officers in the mental health context? And two, what infrastructure, including trained mental health workers and alternatives to the ED would be useful? I also strongly suggest this subcommittee include people with lived experience. And I have some particular people I have in mind that I would recommend if you're interested. And then reaching out to pathways would work also. Without these changes, without this increase of infrastructure, both with trained personnel and with mental health care infrastructure, Burlington will continue to experience the same problems as it does now. Thank you very much. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. Awesome, thank you for that. If any commissioners have any questions for Ms. Cox, please, imagine the time. Good evening. I'll be my guest, sorry, Ms. Flores-Harris. Thank you, Mary, for those comments. Can you remind me again of the name of the organization that asked for mental health resources in the state that you mentioned? So Pathways Vermont, and they did it actually together with, I think four or five other nonprofit organizations, they did like a joint proposal to have centers throughout the state, but here in Burlington, for me it's like would be the most important one that they didn't get funding for anything. Thank you, thanks. Maybe I could just add to that. Mary, I don't know if you're aware that we have consultants called Talitha who are canvassing the community to understand what the community would like in terms of public safety, and I think they'd benefit from hearing from you. And there is also a survey on the mayor's website regarding people's input on what we are looking for in a new police chief. And again, I think your input would be really valuable if you would like to share that. Okay, thank you. Can I contact Shannon to get the information about the other group that you mentioned? Yeah, thanks. Any further questions from Ms. Cox right now while we have her presence? I'm not seeing or hearing any. Thank you very much for that. Very much appreciated. And Chair, that was the only one that contacted me. I do see a hand if you're opening the floor. Absolutely. Is this Karen? I apologize. Yes, it is. Perfect. I just wanted to express my concern about the parties, lately the street parties on Hickok. I just read again about, there was another one last night, very large groups, 400 people were there. What are we gonna do about that? Because we can't just stand back and hope nothing bad happens, which is what I read in the paper. I wasn't there, I didn't witness it, but I read in the paper and I actually on Front Porch Forum, I believe there have been complaints of three other parties beyond the one that was just yesterday or the day before. So just wondering if the police are feeling that's not, the sense I got from the newspaper was that the police are feeling that wasn't a priority call. So what are we gonna do about that? Thank you for that. And I'm sorry, Shannon, was that the conclusion of everyone that reached out? That's everyone that reached out. I don't see any other hands at this time. Neither am I. That concludes public forum for this meeting. And next is the amended agenda item. And Eileen, I give it to you. Thank you. I wanted to introduce you all to Jared Pellerin, who Jared wanna wave your hand there is showing up on the screen. Jared is the new assistant city attorney in our office and he is going to be assigned to work with the police department and the police commission. I will be available to you as I can, but as I'm sure you know, my schedule's busy and you may have heard that I have notified the mayor and city council that I do not intend to seek reappointment following the end of my term on June 30th. So I will be moving on and they've posted my position and are looking for a new city attorney. So Jared is gonna be our bridge and he comes to us from the city of Albany where he has been in the city attorney's office down there and has done a fair amount of work with the police department in Albany. So comes with a little bit of some background and experience in the field and he grew up in Plattsburg and is looking forward to when we get back in our office coming back across the lake to Vermont. So I hope you'll welcome him and feel comfortable with working with him as things move forward here. Thank you. Welcome. You have some big shoes to fill, but looking forward to working with you moving on to the future. So welcome to Burlington. Thank you very much. And I look forward to working with you all as well. So my email is up and running. If anyone wants to reach out to me, Jay Pellerin at BurlingtonVT.gov, please feel free to do so. And yeah, let's get to work. Thanks everybody. Thank you for that. As this commissioner grant, can we have your contact information emailed to us? Shannon, would you be able to help us with that? Absolutely commissioner. Thank you. All right. Moving on to item 4.01, which is the chief support. So with that, I give the floor to the chiefs. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. I really pleasure to be here. I'd like to just start by saying welcome to Jared and also, I don't know what we're gonna do without you Eileen, so there's that. I really, really don't. So we will really, really miss you. With regard to our activities over the past month, it has been a very busy month for the Burlington Police Department. We announced, I think something that was very important yesterday, but something that we put into effect on May 2nd at the onset of our new tour. As you all know, the year is divided into tours for the officers. They select their shift based on four month increments and the new one began on May 2nd. And at that time, we instituted a priority response plan. And the priority response plan divides the 130 call categories that we track in our computer aided dispatch or CAD, which is called VALCOR, into three priorities. Priority one, the most important and the highest risk kinds of calls. Priority two, many of which actually can go in one direction, excuse me, in two directions. They can go to priority one or to priority three, depending on whether or not they're in progress, depending on whether or not they have a public safety component. And finally, priority three. Priority three are calls for service from the public that are incidents we track that don't have an immediate safety component. Many of them are quality of life. Many of them are things that we can, when necessary, stack. Stacking means that our dispatchers will not dispatch an officer to those kinds of incidents. And the rationale for this is simple. It has to do with our diminishing headcount and with the increasing volume of incidents. So we knew that we would get to a point where we would have too few officers to continue to provide the kinds of services that we've provided in the past. And I've said for quite some time and a number of different presentations to this body, to the city council and to others, that that would happen sometime around the point where we get to 77, 76 effective officers. I presented the budget to the city council last night. As of April 1st, using that as our marker, we had 82 officers on our books, 77 of whom are effective. So that means officers who are on military deployment, who are on long-term injury, who are away for other reasons, are not counted in that effective number. We are now at a point where we are staffing our day shift and evening shift with seven officers and we are staffing our overnight, midnight shift with four. When you factor in our 0.863% availability factor, which is just a mathematical calculation that is predicated on the amount of leave that every officer is granted by the contract, those seven officers become six and those four officers become three. When we have six officers to patrol a 15 square mile, 44,000 person city with thousands of more visitors, we're simply not gonna be able to respond to everything all the time. Now, we will continue to respond to everything when called as long as officers are free. But when we get to a point where fewer than two officers are available for service, we will not respond to those priority three calls. They will be stacked by dispatch for a response once additional officers become free and available. Sometimes those calls may have disappeared by that time. It's quite possible that a noise complaint will no longer be a noise complaint by the time an officer is able to address it. Quite possible that a vandalism in the past, the person who called may not wanna make the report at that point and they have to call it another day. But when we get to a point where priority one and priority two calls, domestic violence, assaultive behaviors, crashes with injury or with somebody dead, incidents of disturbance or of disorderly conduct that include a safety component, burglaries that are in progress when those kinds of incidents are happening, you're not going to be able to spare officers to answer other kinds of calls for service from the public. The list is up on our webpage. It's at the very top of the Burlington Police Department page on the city of Burlington website. And you can see how our incident categories break down both with regard to the alphabetical incidents themselves and with regard to the frequency with which those kinds of incidents occurred in 2020. So the presentation that we gave to the media and shared with this body and with the city council ahead of that media presentation demonstrates the volume of those incidents over the past 2020, during 2020 to give a sense of what we're talking about. Essentially, priority three incidents comprise about 50% of the calls to which we respond. Priority one comprised about seven and a half, 7.7% of the incidents to which we respond. And the priority two incidents make up that middle. So we presented that and the reason is that we had a really, really busy week last week. There were a couple of days where we had multiple calls for service involving very complex incidents. It's not simply the volume of incidents, it's complexity and the degree to which they absorb officer resources. Domestic violence, for example, is a two officer response. When you have six officers on shift, two simultaneous domestic violence incidents in different parts of the city absorbs your resources very quickly. And so one thing that I've pointed out to some people is at Smuggler's Notch ski area, the Madonna Lift requires six people to operate. That's just the Madonna Lift. It's not the entire area, it's not its ski patrol, it's not its base lodge functions. You have one person who is administering the line and leading people through the line. You have another individual who is in the booth, watching the lift, you have another individual who's working the actual chair and ensuring that people get on that chair. You have another individual who's in the midstation and you have two individuals at the top. And that's just the lift line. We're spreading that level of resource across our entire city. And so we're at a point where there have been some incidents that have happened. We had two incidents of gunfire over the weekend. Those are the fourth and fifth gunfire incidents that we have experienced this year. Last year there were a dozen, but in the years prior to that, the average was two. From 2012 through 2019, the average was two incidents of gunfire per year. So with five in mid-May, we're on track to keep up with the dozen that we saw last year and nobody wants that. We're very thankful that nobody was injured in those incidents, but we have descriptions of subjects. We have people who are associated with these incidents, who are also associated with previous gunfire incidents. And we're concerned about that. We had large parties. There was resistance to being dispersed on one of them. And we are operating from postures of making certain that we have to deal with our community in ways that don't exacerbate tensions. And so those are complex decisions that are made at every stage by officers and supervisors in the field. We had some protests during this time period since we last spoke in April, including some incidents of criminal trespass that were politically motivated at the city place site, some incidents of obstructing roadways in the vicinity of Church Street and Main Street. And we're learning how to deal with those. But we're also forging ahead with a lot of very good programs and things that give us a sense of progress to be made, including our hiring of the CSOs that the city council authorized after your recommendation that they do so. And we are actively pursuing those positions in order to onboard them. We're examining the tests that we give, talking about how to comprise the meetings that excuse me, the interview boards and talking about the kind of field training that we're gonna provide since we intend for these roles to do a little bit more than our current very invaluable CSOs do. We are facing the prospect of bringing aboard CSL, the community support liaison as well. And we are cooperating with CNA, the company that is producing the full operational and functional assessment of the Burlington Police Department. And we're finding some places where we don't have the resources or the technology to be providing them with exactly what they're looking for. So that's a good experience for us too, to see where we have some deficits, to hope that we can work with them to provide a good, clear picture of what we're getting done right, what we need to grow on, and then finally get the kinds of results from that assessment that we hope lead us towards a more robust public safety posture for the entire city, depending on irrespective of what that posture is or how it looks. And then last, I'd like to point out that today, excuse me, that's my radio, just one moment. Last, I would like to point out that today is the one year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd. This day last year began with us working on the largest single food distribution that the city had ever seen and assisting a team of people from around the city, excuse me, around the state in putting that together so that we could feed people on the belt. We closed down the whole belt. And then that horrible, horrible thing happened in Minnesota and an on-duty police officer murdered George Floyd. I took part today in a nine minute and 39 second moment of silence for him in City Hall Park that was motivated and put together by a person who had led the committee to review policing practices. Initially led that committee that we worked on diligently together in 2019 and 2020. It was a very moving ceremony. It was simple and it was honest. I think that that has indicated that we have come a long way. There's so much farther to go but there are things on the horizon that I think represent changes for the department that do meet some of the changes that our community and that the country as a whole has been asking of the police profession. This department's already done a lot of those changes. We've done that together with you as a body including the use of force policy, different kinds of directives and trainings. And I think there's more to grow. I'm looking very much forward to what happens with these NAICOL trainings. And I am hopeful that that is indicative of a place for us to move forward towards together. Thank you for that Chief. I welcome any commissioners with any questions or comments with the Chief's report. I'm not seeing or hearing any. Chief, thank you for your report as always. Thank you. You're very welcome. Moving on to agenda item 5.01. This is the beard request for the Department of Director of DD02.02. It was very, sorry, very straightforward. And basically does anyone have any questions or comments over this? I don't think the Chief has spoken. I don't think we've really talked about it. I would like to hear from the Chief about it. Okay. Chief Flores-Ros. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Commissioner, for that request and referral. I am not in favor of this. I'm not in favor of beards on police officers. I think there are both cultural rationales. I think there are appearance rationales and there is a strong safety rationale with regard to wearing masks. So not the kinds of masks that we're talking about with regard to cloth masks or surgical masks, but sealable masks do not seal over beards. And we do have sealable masks that we are required to wear in certain kinds of situations. For that matter, N95 masks do not work well over beards either. And so it's not merely the highest level of masks would include gaskets or rubberized seals. It's also N95s. That is a significant rationale for me. And then frankly, I think that there is a, I don't particularly care for it with regard to appearance. I think it is something that some officers have expressed preference for. I have allowed it in the past with regard to a November movement where we allowed beards to be grown in November for money as working with a group called, actually I've got a baseball cap on it, home base, which is veterans care and veteran and family care. We raised a lot of money for them with that. And I do think that that was a bit of a morale boost. Something interesting to do. We did it in, I believe it was 2019. I wouldn't have done it in 2020 because of the mask issue. And in fact, home base and others changed their, November mustache or the beard that month to address that issue and did not do it. So I'm against this proposal, but I did bring it to you as a, because I had told the officer who requested it that I would. Thank you. Randall, followed by Mila. Thank you, this is Randall. Yeah, so a quick question to follow up with that. So the current policy does allow for properly groomed mustaches. That's correct. You're muted. Apologies. I believe so, commissioner. I'm pulling it up right now. Yeah. And so it's about, so my understanding would be that, that properly groomed mustaches can also interfere with the wearing of protective masks with some. That is correct. Great. Thank you. Commissioner Grant, I believe I saw your hand up before. Yes. Thank you, chairman. So I have a question. So you're saying that a single officer has requested this. Did they give a specific reason for their request? I believe I forwarded the request to the body. Can you say when you sent that? It is on board docs. It is on board docs. Okay, hold on. Who is on board docs? If I may just offer a clarification. Thank you. Let me, oh yeah, go ahead, sir. Mr. Chair, if I may offer a clarification to commissioner Harp's question. Flawzures. Full face would not be interrupted. Full face masks would not be affected by a mustache. An N95 type mask might be, that is true, but most sealable masks are full face masks. They're the gaskets operate at the neck and sometimes around this part of the face, but generally they include a face shield as well. Stephanie. Chief Merrad, as I understand it, the NYPD as of November of last year has allowed beards and there have been some prior lawsuits and I just, you know, as a hypothetical question for a person with a religious background that required a beard. So those would be my thoughts on this that they are actually allowed in a big city like New York and although we may not have seeks, for example, who are currently police officers that that certainly is a consideration. How would you respond to that? So I'd have to check on that. I know that in the NYPD during my time there that we did allow seeks and Hasidic individuals to wear beards if there was a religious exemption for beards. There were also doctor notes exemptions for beards. There are skin conditions that are more prevalent among African-American officers than among other officers that prohibit shaving or make shaving uncomfortable. And anyone with a doctor's note like that was allowed to have a beard. Officers who were in regular and routine plain clothes assignments were often allowed to wear beards. It was sort of a perk of being able to get to a plain clothes assignment whether that was an assignment to the detective bureau or an assignment to street crime or anti-crime. But the, and certainly under covers. We have a number, there were a number of under covers in the NYPD who had incredible hair that was very, very different than anything that would otherwise be authorized in order to be undercover officers. But with regard to the rank and file they were prohibited from having beards. If that changed last year, I am unaware of that change. I would answer with regard to our policy that clearly the any kind of religious exemption would take precedence. It simply would. And I wouldn't even deign to fight that. A medical, medical exemption would take precedence as well nor would I deign to oppose that. I am opposed to this. All right, I'm not really sure other people's thoughts are on this. Me personally, I'm always pro-beard. So I don't know if I'm biased on that one. I mentioned that last week, Mr. Chair. I do recall that. I also think too, I mean, if it helped, I mean, if it's any little thing that helps morale too, I don't see that as necessarily a bad thing. So I would have to say that I, I have no reason to turn this down. So I think I'd be in favor of this. And I guess with, sorry, Shireen. Are you looking for our recommendation? This is a level of, I don't like getting involved on something like this because this seems clearly within the chief's purview. But if you're looking for our opinions, I'm happy to provide an opinion on this, but I don't know that this is for the commission. I think it is before I answer that, I'll give the floor to Randall. I think I was just going to say what you were going to say, Chair. I mean, so it is a Department Directive. And so it's revision or adoptionist is, I think within our purview, I think it's certainly within our right or within our capacity to defer to the opinion of the chief on this. But I think that it is set out as within our purview. So we can certainly make an opinion on that if we don't choose. Yes, I agree on that. I just, when the chief is, I have a hard time, you know, but we're ruling the chief on something like this, but. Stephanie. I'll just venture another comment on this. You know, I want to second Chair Gamash's concern around morale and that what we could do to support that is a good thing. I think if we had received this request in the absence of a major police department like NYPD, not adopting, not making beards possible, then I might feel differently. But I think that having a divided workforce in which you give some religious exemptions, but other people are not allowed doesn't, you know, seems to me to be problematic. And so I would be supportive of this change. Randall. I'm happy to give a motion if you're looking for a motion, Chair. I am, but I'm going to give it for the Milo first. That's our hand raised before we do that. So Milo closures. Thank you. I just want to say that I agree with the comments that we just said because, you know, we are seeing these changes in other major city police departments. We're seeing major changes with regards to not only facial hair, but hairstyles across the country. So for, and I believe I have faith that an officer, when we talk about mask usage, I would have, I guess I would trust the officers to make a decision that they would know when their beard gets too long, when their beard gets too long to interfere with safely using certain types of mask. So I would support this. Thank you. So I guess the floor is back to you, Randall. Thank you, Chair. So I move that some of the members of the community so I move that the Police Department adopt the revised Department Directive 02.02 with one minor revision. There's a typo in the last sentence of revised policy. So that the beach has changed. The Bureau of Deputy Chief will have the ultimate authority on a case-by-case basis for the keeping of beards and facial hairs, insert the word of. Otherwise, I recommend that that revised policy be adopted as DD02.02. I'll second that. Any discussion over this? I'm not seeing or hearing any. All in favor of the motion. Raise your hand to say aye. Aye. Aye. I believe that's not unanimous. So we have to roll call. Commissioner Grant. Yes. In favor. Commissioner Harp with a P. Yes. Commissioner Hart with a T. Abstention. I vote in favor. Commissioner Saguina. You're muted. I'm sorry. Yes. Yes. We have four yeas and one abstention. So that passes four yeas, one abstention. I'm sorry. Is an abstention a quorum? Yes, because it's the body. We still, body seven, we have four. So as long as there's four in favor, it passes. So thank you all for that. And I believe that closes that agenda item. Moving on to agenda item 5.02, which is NACO training information. I'll say quickly, then I'll let Stephanie jump in and fill up any gaps that I miss. But we have, it's for everyone that's in the public. I know everyone on the commission here knows this, but for everyone that's zooming in from the public, we have some training coming up with NACO that begins this Wednesday, sorry, not Wednesday, that's tomorrow, this Thursday, my apologies. Meeting starts at 5.30 PM with the training from six to eight. It starts at 5.30 so we can allow time for public forum and whatnot. And then after that, the next trainings after that, sorry. Yeah, the next change will occur on June 10th, June 15th and June 17th, all with the same timeframe, starting at 5.30 for public forum and six to 8 PM. And if there's any other little details that I missed, Stephanie, feel free to plug them in. I think you got it all. Just to say that these will be recorded and we'll have access to them later in case we want to review what we've learned. And yeah, they're open to the public and that's that. And I believe the training for this Thursday has been posted on Boredock. So if anyone wants to see the Zoom and all that stuff, that's all that information is there. Randall, floor is yours. Just to clarify, the recordings will also be available to the public. They should be, and I'm just working that out with Shannon, about where they would be posted, but that's the intention is that they be a public resource for us as a community. Thank you. Maybe Shannon and I can talk about where they would be posted to make them accessible. Awesome, there's nothing else to be discussed with that. Can close that agenda item, seeing anything. Awesome, moves on to the amended agenda. And with that, the floor is yours, Milo. Thank you very much. So in a nutshell, and I actually also want to mention, I have also discussed this with the mayor. I'm sorry to cut you off. You might have just given a quick refresher for people that are zooming in that weren't maybe not here in the meeting, sorry. Sure, sure. So overall I have, and I actually am not the only one because during the Talitha doing their town halls, members of our community actually expressed concern about this very thing as well. And that is a concern around the rhetoric that blames the city council for certain decisions that have been made, blames the city council for quote unquote, creating a crisis. During the election campaign, that was something we heard over and over again that the council had created this crisis, the council had created this crisis. And then it was upsetting to hear, and it was not the first time with regards to the chief using similar rhetoric. And then unfortunately, hearing at the last meeting that a police officer who was well-liked and respected felt that they had to leave because of the actions taken by the city council. Then the former chief who was giving testimony to the new Hampshire House of their Digiciary Committee and talking about reasons why he left or had to leave, however you want to look at it, describe the city council as socialist with their knives out. And this is all concerning for me because I feel that it's a false narrative. I feel that it does nothing to advance any type of healing or true understanding of what the issues are in the community. We've had a real lack of community engagement and I think if we're to improve it, we have to change some of the rhetoric. So I just would like the chief to be reminded and the officers in the department as a whole and just everyone in the city to be reminded about the birds and the bees. Where do city councilors come from, right? These are individuals who step up in their community who want to perform a public service, who when they make it known that they want to run for these positions, they make their points of view known and hopefully those points of view reflect what members of their community or wards want and then if they're elected, they are delivering upon promises they made to people in their community and they are delivering upon based on feedback that they're getting from members of their community. So if we take for example, councilor Freeman, who has really been far ahead of the curve because they were talking about re-imagining and rethinking our views of public safety even before what happened to the late Mr. Floyd. So and they took tremendous blowback, tremendous blowback. How dare you suggest that maybe officers don't carry weapons? Well, it's to start a conversation, right? Other countries do it. What do we need to do to get to that point? Can we ever get to that point? It's to start a conversation. They were treated like they were some kind of extremists. Well, they won re-election by 60% almost, right? So it's not the city councilors, it's the people that voted for them. So it has to be some respect for the people in those communities who feel a certain way. We have seen that not everyone is policed in the same way. The numbers and we'll be getting to some data shortly. The numbers show that. People have radically different feelings about the department. They're either in one spectrum where they completely trust the department, can do no wrong. They're completely on the other spectrum where they don't trust the department at all and go out of their way, never, ever have to call the department and then there are people in the middle. And if we wanna talk about things about getting guns off the street, you need to have the cooperation of everyone in the community. If you have people in the community that are never gonna talk to your officers, that's gonna make it harder for them to do their job. So you have to be mindful of that rhetoric, constantly blaming city councilors because the people who voted for them, some of them are gonna take that personally because they're gonna feel it's being directed at them because they're the ones who voted for the city councilors. That's how they get back. I mean, if you take away some of the city councilors, but you still have people voting for similar types of individuals because they want certain issues to be addressed within their communities, that's not necessarily gonna change the votes that are coming out of the council. So I appreciate everyone listening to this and I hope we can be more thoughtful about a rhetoric and not create these false narratives and have an understanding and always remember, attack on the city council is an attack on the community that they represent because that community voted them in. Thank you very much. And if anyone has any questions, I'll certainly entertain them. Thank you. Think of that Milo, let's see here. Are there any questions for Milo while before we move on to the next agenda item? I'm not seeing or hearing any. Milo, thank you again for that. And moving on to agenda item 5.04, which is the data report from the Innovation Technology Departments. I'm not, oh, I assumed that was them on the call. So thank you all for joining us and the floor is yours. Hi everyone. I'm Nancy Stetson. I am the senior policy and data analyst for the city and we are gonna present on the first annual report. Brian, I don't know. I guess, should I just go ahead and get started? Yes, please go ahead, Nancy. Thank you. Okay. I am going to share my screen, can everyone see that? Yes. Okay. And I don't know how, I'm not sure if I should make a full screen start. Yes, no, I don't know if it works that way, but I guess I'll go ahead and try. Okay, so like I said, this is the annual report for the police department. It's the first one we've done, though it is based on past incident or past reports over the past few years on traffic, arrests and use of force. And it's reporting on metrics that the police commission asked for in their, in a data request from their January meeting. This report and past reports from past years can all be found on the police department website. We, Brian and I are going to go over this report, but as you know, it's quite a long report. So we're only going to be able to basically just do the highlights. I'm going to talk about general trends and set up sort of the background, what we found. And then Brian is going to talk more about specific patterns that we found that at least we thought were interesting. So first of all, just to set the stage, this trend just shows all police incidents. So in 2020, there were 23,600 incidents of all types. This is down quite sharply from 2019, it's down 17%. And it's about two thirds of the amount of incidents that occurred in 2016. However, that, what that doesn't show is that not all incident types are following the same trend. So we looked at what the chief calls priority one incidents which are the most urgent types of incidents. And these are largely flat. They were down 2% compared to 2019. There's about 1800 of them each year. And yes, and these include calls or incidents like aggravated assaults, overdoses, these like most serious types of incidents. Part of the reason there's a difference between those two different sets of incidents between all incidents and those higher level incidents is that some of the lower level incidents that our officer initiated have dropped even more steeply. So for example, traffic stops are down 42% from 2019. There are about 1200 traffic stops in 2020. And they're down 80% from 2016. So the Burlington Police Department is doing about one traffic stop for every five traffic stops they did in 2015. So it's just a different landscape. Arrests show somewhat of a similar pattern. Again, down quite sharply from 2019 to 2020. There are 1,159 arrests in 2020, which is about half as many arrests that the Burlington Police Department did in 2016. I also wanna pause here to talk about arrests versus citations. In this report, Brian and I in the department wanted to make sure that the difference between arrests and citations was clear. In the past, we've reported arrests all in one big group, but arrests generally include citations as well. And it's a different process for how that happens. An arrest means a physical detention where a arrestee is held, whereas a citation is basically a person being assigned a court date. They're being charged with a crime, assigned a court date given a piece of paper, but then otherwise free to leave. And about 60% of Burlington Police Department's arrests are in the form of citations. The arrests are arrests on warrant, lodged arrests, or there's a small percentage that are direct referrals to alternative justice. Finally, we have use of force. Again, as you might expect with all the other drops in police activity, use of force also dropped by about a quarter compared to 2019. And it's about half as many use of force incidents as there were in 2012. So with all that drop in police activity, that's sort of the background. One second. Okay. That's the background, but I do want to make clear that there's still clear disparities in this police data. And so this is just a table that shows the breakdown of how the disparity changes with the severity of police interaction. So the black percentage of the Burlington population is 6%, about 6%, which is about 2,400 people who live in Burlington. We also sometimes compare it to the estimated driving population for traffic stops and about 8% of traffic or 8% of drivers and motor vehicle crashes in Burlington are black. And you can see what those are based on that's out of about 1,800 motor vehicle crashes. And then, and that is in comparison to the Burlington Police Department activity where 10.7% of traffic stops by the Burlington Police Department are of black drivers, which is about 131 stops out of that 1,200 total. And that's for 2020. And then the next three lines of that table just break down arrests and increasing severity. So about 15% of nonviolent misdemeanors, arrestees are black, 19.5% of all arrests and citations are black arrestees. And about 29% of violent felony arrests are black arrestees. But those numbers, the numbers are smaller for those more severe arrests. There's those that represents 32 black arrestees out of 111 total violent felony arrests by the police department. And then finally, we have use of forced subjects. So of the 160 subjects of force by the Burlington Police Department, 50 were black. And then this last line, Brian will talk about more in a minute, but of 40 incidents where the only use of force used by the police was a pointed firearm, 19 of those subjects were black. So that's 47.5% of those subjects. So that's the general background. And then I'm gonna turn it over to Brian to talk through some of the more details of the report. Hey, thanks very much, Nancy. Let me pull up my notes here. So do you mind going to the next slide, Nancy? Thank you. So the first pattern of interest and all this is detailed in the report as well, but we wanted to pull out a couple of these patterns for presentation to the commission tonight. This looks at the ticket rate for traffic stops. So about 82% of all traffic stops result in a warning rather than a ticket or an arrest, but of those that result in a ticket, 111 of those tickets went to white drivers representing 11% of white drivers stopped, whereas 24 of those tickets went to black drivers representing 18% of black drivers stopped. So we were curious to know more about what is contributing to this disparity in tickets from traffic stops. And what appears to be driving this disparity is the driving with your license suspended or DLS on the slide here. So when a car is stopped and a driver has a suspended license, an officer has very little discretion with that outcome. If it's a civilly suspended license, the officer must issue a ticket or at least is generally required to issue a ticket. If a car is stopped and the driver has a permanently suspended license, the officer who stopped the car has to issue a citation or arrest. And there's no discretion. When you remove the DLS from the dataset, you see that the disparity is lessened. Civil and criminal DLS do not track equally with population demographics. So a black driver is more likely than a white driver to have a suspended license. In Burlington, this holds true and this generally seems to hold true across the state as well. This is a disparity that contributes significantly to the fact that black drivers are more likely to get a ticket at a traffic stop than white drivers. This is a function of state policy and we think there might be reasons to examine this policy. Initially, if you have a suspended license, they can come from either unlawful driving behavior or from the approval of fines. That can be compounded by economic factors and a long and complicated process for reinstating a license, which can be not just complicated but also expensive. Failing to complete DLS diversions can turn civil DLS into criminal DLS, which can result in citation or arrest. And so you see here some of that, some of that disparity over time between white and black drivers. And then here, sorry Nancy, this is the final slide. One thing we wanted to flag for the commission was that criminal DLS arrests do not follow this pattern. With criminal DLS, white drivers are more likely to be stopped with a criminal DLS than black drivers in Burlington. So that's one category we wanted to highlight for the commission. The second, next slide please Nancy. The second is stop duration. This is something that we had not looked at previously. It was something that the commission had flagged for us as part of the January discussion about metrics to consider. When we looked at the median length of traffic stops, black drivers tend to have, or black drivers are stopped for a duration of one minute longer than white drivers. We think based on, in part on what I just described with the disparities in license suspensions that this could be driven by the fact that black drivers are more likely than white drivers to get tickets rather than warnings. And that might contribute to the difference in duration. So we controlled for that. And if you look, I think the next slide, thank you Nancy. You see that that does reduce the disparity but that disparity does remain even when it's for a traffic stop for which there's no rest or search or ticket written. The difference in the length of traffic stops by race is consistent over the past several years as you can see in that slide. Next slide please Nancy. One other pattern of interest from the data that we wanted to flag for the commission is that firearms pointed. So I think some context is important here in that not all police departments treat firearms pointed at someone as a use of force incident but the Burlington police do and they have done that for more than 20 years. Every time a firearm is pointed at a person the officer has to complete a use of force report which was reviewed by supervisors. And since I believe mid 2020 also by the police commission in the past few years that the BPD has also required that merely drawing a firearm in a subject's presence is reported as a use of force as well. So while the number of use of force incidents is small relative to the total number of police incidents we're talking about 142 as Nancy said out of roughly 23,600 incidents in 2020. A notable finding in this report and prior reports has been that black people are more likely than white people to have a gun pointed at them by the police department. In 2020 a bit less than a third of all people against whom the BPD used force nearly half of the people who BPD pointed or displayed a weapon at were black. For this report we looked at 2020 incidents because we were curious if for example what we were detecting was perhaps tied to warrants and that serving of warrants might be contributing to this disparity. For 2020 at least and it may not be true for other years it doesn't appear that warrants are driving the disparity. Instead it appears that incidents in which a firearm was pointed generally occurred when there was a report of one of three things, a suspect with a weapon, a person in imminent danger of harm or when officers entered an unsecured building. Similar to serving warrants the department policy for such situations is to enter that unsecured building with your weapon drawn and held at what is described as a position of high ready. When you control for this for these different types of incidents the disparity is reduced but it does remain. So thank you. And I know this doesn't cover the full report. We wanted to highlight a couple of patterns and be respectful of the commission's time. So we're happy to take questions on these patterns or other issues on the report. Nancy. Yeah, I was just gonna say I have other charts from the report if there were if there were other questions on specific patterns. Are we calling on people or? Yeah. Go ahead. I have several questions and I'm happy to just break them up because perhaps other commissioners do as well. With regard to the black share of stops relative to the black share of the population and for that you use the accident data. Just wanted to find out was the accident data from 2020 or was that 2019 data? That was 2020. 2020, great, thanks. And just a comment. So what these numbers indicate with regard to the black share of stops is that black drivers were stopped at a rate that was 34% greater than their share of the driving population if we use accident data. That's not necessarily for you Nancy but just generally to put those numbers into context. So black drivers are overstopped by a significant extent. The Equal Employment Opportunity Office uses a similar measure for various kinds of discrimination it's called the disparity index. And their guidance is that anything over 1.2 or in this case 1.34 is indicative of a substantial issue that should be investigated. So another question about the decline in traffic stops. Did you notice that there was an increase in accidents? In other words, was the decline consistent with maintaining public safety with regards to driving in Burlington? There was a 37% drop in accidents for crashes motor vehicle crashes from 2019 to 2020. So pretty much in line with traffic stops. Great, thanks. I mean, I think I will say I think this whole year we'll have an asterisk on it. I mean, if people were driving less it was just a different type of year. So we'll see what holds for next year. I'll just ask two more questions and I'll wait my turn to come back to you again. I should have started this by saying I really appreciate this report. I think you did a great job on it and you highlighted some interesting new types of information we haven't seen before. So I really appreciate the work that you've done on this. So another question I have is with regard to the table on page 25, if you don't mind. I can only see the PowerPoint, so. Oh, okay. I will just tell you what it is. Okay, I have the charts in here. I can pull it up. Okay. It says, so this is on severity of charges by race. And this is under arrest, the arrest data. I just, I wondered if there was, I just wanted to clarify with you with regard to, for example, by race Asians, 35 arrests, 25.7% were felony arrests. And so that is that relative to all racial groups, in other words, 25% of all felony arrests or 25% of Asians arrested that were arrested for felonies. A second, a second one. And so it just as a, it might be helpful to include a column on the right that adds up to 100% so that people know that. And I did want to point out that actually in terms of felony arrests, the lowest percentage was for whites, but then blacks and the highest percentage was for Asian Americans. And it leads me to this other point I wanted to make, which is that I think that in these reports, it's useful to refer to all racial groups. And I would include Hispanic, we both know that that's not a racial group, but that is the way that the data are categorized by the police in Vermont is, as if Hispanics were a separate racial group. And so I think that we want to provide a full picture for the community. And so in all of these, it would be useful to do that. And one comment before I let my other commissioners make some points on the page where you discuss mental health incidents as the trends you indicate. I'm sorry, I don't have the page number on page eight. You indicate that mental health incidents are up 18% since 2012. And I think that's a typo because I think elsewhere in your data report and the data that we got from the chief earlier in the year indicates that there were roughly 500 incidents of mental health in 2012, up to 900 and something in 2020. So that's an 80-something percent increase. So just probably a typo from the column next to it. And I'll hold by other questions until after the other commissioners have commented. Commissioner Hart. Yeah, thank you. No, I actually don't have too many questions right now. Actually, I want to second commissioners to go in and company on the quality of the report. I think it was very well done. I hope that the commission can continue to receive reports of this quality going forward. I think it was very nicely done. So I actually have no questions about the data themselves because I thought as I said that the data represented it very clearly. And so just one question about, this next might be a question more for the chiefs on the call about the direct referrals to alternative justice. So you said that a small percentage of arrest citations were direct referrals to alternative justice. I was wondering essentially what kind of discretionary judgment officers have to make that kind of direct referral and what conditions are those done and what the patterns are for that kind of police action. I don't know whether you know or whether I should defer that question to the chiefs. I would say probably the chiefs, it looks like DC the Brack has an answer. I would just say that it's, they were 5% of total arrests. And I think often they're used for juvenile arrestees but DC the Brack, if you want to answer, go for it. Sure, thank you. Thank you, chair. So starting last year, we working with the state's attorney's office and also due to COVID, we found numerous charges for basically misdemeanor charges, retail theft, simple assaults, unlawful trespass, vandalisms that were not a felony. Pretty much anything that wasn't a felony, we referred immediately to the alternative justice program. And that was juveniles and adults. So we probably increased the number of referrals three times at least, the three times as many as we would do normally in the past. So almost, I basically dictated to the officers that any low level misdemeanor crime would go to AJ first. So that's pretty much how we handled that. Unless it was some, it would have to be a serious crime, like a felony, like aggravated assault versus a simple assault, domestics, all domestics went, still went to court, DUIs went to court, but those were the serious types of crime. Anything that really didn't rise to the level of felony went to AJ first. I hope that helps. That does, so a quick follow-up question then. So were there any cases then of arrest violations which involved those low level offenses, which did not get referred immediately to option of justice? No, almost just working with the essays and because of COVID, we just found it was easier to start, I guess the process into AJ, which obviously if they follow through, that will never go on their record because there's never actually any affidavit or paperwork filed with the court if they follow through their alternative justice program. But there, I'm trying to think of, I can't think of the only one that would be a misdemeanor that we could not and AJ cannot take is a DLS. We were like we were talking about earlier, that was associated with a crime like a DUI or an operating without owner's consent or attempting to elude or that type of motor vehicle crime. The AJ, they can't take those, those had to go to court. So then last question, last follow up on this. So I'm hearing you say essentially that officers don't really have much discretion at all and making that judgment about direct approach to alternative justice, is that correct? Correct. All right, thank you. And I just want to jump in right quick. Happy for the Chiefs to take questions. I think keep questions for Nancy and Brian first and then we'll do the questions for the Chiefs afterwards just to keep it nice and simple. Sorry, thank you. That's all my questions, thank you. Thank you and I also want to thank you for the format of this presentation. Often when I look at these types of reports, I think not only about ourselves as police commissioners but also readability and understanding for the public who wishes to review these documents and we definitely encourage the public to do so. I feel that this is something that is easily digestible by a quote unquote average person who isn't working with this type of information on a day-to-day basis. So I do appreciate that. Had a couple of questions. So as we just discussed, the issue with disparities still continues even with a drop in certain incidents overall. And I kind of, you know, last time we had a very, when we were really deep diving the data, we had a very strong issue that I found, for lack of a better word, extremely problematic around the downtown area. Now with this current report, and this was use of force in the downtown area by certain officers during certain times of day, mainly at night. So in 2020, because of the pandemic, we haven't seen the amount of activity in the downtown area. I do wanna kind of have your opinion based on the trends that you are seeing. And this is also a concern that I have, especially in light of these huge parties. I mean, we have certainly seen into the semester large gatherings before, although it seems that they moved more from downtown into neighborhoods. I feel like the trend as we work ourselves back to a new normal as more people get vaccinated and by the end of the summer fall, we will be back to quote unquote regular activity downtown. And I'm just wondering if you see the potential, if there's no changes put in place or a plan put in place for those numbers to go back up in that situation, in those situations. That is a really hard thing for me to answer. I mean, most of my work is looking backwards at what has happened. I think that's probably more for the chiefs. I will say that over 2020, basically the number of incidents matched the number of use of force incidents in the downtown area that there were more, they were more equal than in past years, but I don't know what's gonna happen in 2021, Brian. Yeah, just to add to that, it does seem like there is a higher level of violent incidents associated with bar closing. And so depending on what happens around bar activity in the future, that might be a predictor, but as Nancy said, it's very hard for us to speculate about the future. Okay, and then actually that would be all I have for now if anybody else has any other questions. Thank you. Commissioner Ceguino. Yeah, a couple of additional questions. So, firearm, referring to the firearms pointed, the appendix says that there were 48 instances of a firearm being pointed. Did you review all 48 instances? And if so, why are only 34 of them described in the report? And yeah, what explains the 14 not described? I think I do know the difference there. We looked at 34 incidents where a firearm was pointed and they were limited to incidents where the only force used was a firearm pointed. I mean, we could definitely add those other 14 in and review those two. It was just sort of a narrow look into that specific type of incident where there isn't any other type of force. Understood, great. And going back to the issue of suspended licenses. So I wanna just puzzle something up with you and see if my interpretation is correct. I appreciated the information you provided. And then I'm looking on page 15 and it shows arrests for licenses. And what we see is that it's actually higher for whites. And so what I'm wondering is, does that mean that white drivers are more likely have higher rates of driving with a criminally suspended license? And whereas civilly suspended licenses if that's the correct terminology is more likely amongst black drivers. Yeah, I would love to talk to that because this was not something we'd looked at before and it was a surprising result. I would say again, like these numbers are small and it's really with like a subset of a subset of stops. So I'm not sure like how robust that difference is but I thought it was interesting because we're always struggling with this difference in the police data. There's only one violation, it's like OSC. And so we don't, but there is a big difference in how the officers have to treat a criminal versus a civilly suspended license. So this is a way to try to figure out the different rates of those because I think a civilly suspended license just like is a much less serious problem and that like if the problem is with civil suspensions that like maybe it's more approachable somehow. Great, thank you, that was really helpful. Is there any other? Oh, actually I just have one more if I could. So there are a variety of reasons for stops and you pointed out that it was primarily motor vehicle and vehicle equipment stops. There are investigatory stops. And I wonder if in future reports if you could just do a breakdown of percentages for various kinds of stops and by race. So because we've seen in the past that investigatory stops have tended to be significantly greater for black drivers than other racial groups, for example. So just another piece of information that helps us understand the data better. Yeah, I noticed that in the table you sent me. I don't think I included that in the back tables. There is a note about investigatory stops in the text of the report. And I think there were a total of like five investigatory stops maybe in the past year. So the numbers are quite small. Right, right. Yeah, the small numbers is a big issue. But yeah, that type of table could definitely be added to next year's report. Thanks. Are there any other questions I'm not seeing? Yes, I'm sorry, I have one last question. So with respect to improving the quality of data that you have access to, your office has access to going forward, what would be your kind of wish list for improving that data collection on BPD's part so that you have access to that feature? Well, for one thing, as we noted in the report, the department is going to switch over to a slightly different version of Valkor with the rest of the state, which I do think would help. Brian and I actually spoke with some people at the state a couple months ago now, and I asked them about this, how they dealt with data issues. And it seems like a lot of it just comes down to constant auditing of the data coming in, and I think there are better systems we could put in place to sort of catch things as they come up. Yeah, I guess I'm not sure. I think that's the main, from my end, that's something that could be done. And then I do think there's room for training officers, just so everyone is on the same page about what field means what, I gave a couple of examples in the report, but there are some smaller issues where it's just open to interpretation and people interpret it different ways, and so then you get data that doesn't make sense. Brian, I don't know if you had something to add there. I just want to second that. I think it's a dataset that's impacted by dozens of people over an extended period of time, and differences in interpretation about what something means can create data quality issues for us. So I think that kind of training opportunity is a real and potentially really valuable one from a reporting perspective. For the, I guess another, going back to the firearm question, there's both a data entry question that Nancy is referring to here when it comes to things like traffic stops about is every officer cataloging things in precisely the same way. There's also a reporting question, like we report on firearms displayed and firearms pointed as used as a force in the same way. If those are materially different in terms of their impact, it may be that we could use some guidance for how we report out on those incidents, because right now we kind of lump everything together, and it's not something where I really have an opinion, it's just notable to me that these things could be materially different in the impact that they cause, and perhaps we should separate how we report those things. So there's questions like that as well. Commissioner Grant. Hi, thank you. I'm curious, can you provide use of force information by officer and officers who are in specific situations? I mean, I do have that information, yes. Could we possibly get a look at that information? I think that's a question for the Chiefs. I'm not sure what we can make public or not. I would, well, I believe it should be public, but I would understand reviewing it in executive session. I mean, yeah, I would say that's a question of both. Yeah, Commissioner Grant, I think that is certainly a question for the Chiefs, not for us, you know, we'll report as directed, but we don't control the data. Okay, so it can be made available, is something you could do? Yes. Okay, great, thank you. So then I would move over to Chief Murad. Is it possible to have a future executive session to review that data? Immediately. We can consider that. I'd wanna talk with the city attorney about that, but yes, we can consider it. And I would love to be part of that conversation with the city attorney, because I think that would be extremely useful information for the police commission to have from an oversight standpoint. Thank you. Are there any other questions? I guess not. I'll jump in and say then to echo what the commissioner have said, thank you for this report. I am someone who's, I'm not a data wonk or good with that at all. And I found it to be quite digestible. So kudos to you all for that. Thanks. And if I'm not seeing any other questions or comments for either Nancy or Brian with regards to this report, I'll move the chiefs with the person's report. I'll close this agenda item. Oh, Jadu? Yep, Stephanie. Yeah, we, can we ask the chief a number of questions about the report? Absolutely. Okay, great. I have a series of questions for you, Chief Mirad, but I wonder if you would yourself like to comment on the report. I was very gratified to be able to look this over at various stages. I think Nancy did a huge amount of work on it and Director Low as well. We're really going to miss his presence in that office and the steady way with which he approaches data on a variety of fronts. I think the city owes him a huge debt, particularly around the way in which our city responded to the COVID-19 crisis. And I was very, very glad to be able to work with him on this report. If I may then, Chair Gommasha, have a... Low is yours. Okay, with regard to the issue of license suspensions, I have several questions for you and maybe what I can do is put them all on the table since they're interrelated and ask for your comments. What the data appear to be suggesting around the ticket rate disparities, which are huge between black drivers and white drivers is suggestive that the high ticket rate of black drivers is in part due to suspended licenses, but at least what I can extract from the data more likely related to civilly suspended licenses for reasons that Nancy outlined in her report and for reasons that many of us understand with regard to poverty, not being able to pay tickets, not in a variety of factors related to socioeconomic status. So one of my questions is, is it department policy that is BPD department policy that officers are required to issue a ticket in cases of civilly suspended licenses as separate from criminally suspended licenses? That's question one and question two is related to, as I understand it, state's attorney, Sarah George is convened Chittenden County police chiefs to consider alternative ways of dealing with criminally suspended licenses or maybe civilly suspended. So I basically, if we understand that this is a factor that is related to racial disparities and the way that in the impact of traffic policing that is due to socioeconomic factors, for example, is it possible for the department to reconsider its policy with regard to requiring that a ticket be issued for civilly suspended licenses? Sarah George is talking about that. I've talked about that with her, about ways in which we can flag the difference between those kinds of reasons and rationales for a suspension. There is frankly an issue of liability. When we have somebody who is not supposed to be driving that person is not supposed to be driving. And the same factors that may drive it to occur for anybody whether those factors are factors of economic access, factors of the complexity of the system, factors of not being able to access courts or just letting things go and being sort of not caring about the consequence of it, those are across a lot of lines. And so if we were to make a policy of this, it certainly wouldn't be a policy that would be directed only towards one group of drivers. But I think that the idea that we would take people who are not supposed to be driving and then allow them to drive off without any kind of documentation or consequence of that is a liability issue for police. So we really do, the issuance of a ticket in those instances is something that discretion has been radically reduced for the officer. Okay, I just will just make a comment that I think there's a difference in terms of safety regarding a civil, civilly suspended license for who knows, vehicle and so forth. Me making a comment chief, excuse me, versus criminally suspended licenses. And I think if we want to address issues of racial and ethnic disparities that we should become nimble in our thinking about how we can address that and be innovative. So I'll leave it at that and go on to my next question. And that is why when use of force incidents are decreasing over time is the percentage of incidents where the subject is black consistently increasing in your view. So Mr. Chair, if I may order, offer a point of clarification, a number of civil suspensions are from criminal conduct that gets pled down into civil suspension. That is not something that's uncommon. So the possession of being OSC is not automatically an indication that it was merely a financial issue. With regard to the question about use of force, the absolute number for everyone is driving down, but it's driving down for blacks as well as whites and all ethnic groups. As the numbers get smaller, we do see changes in percentage. Those percentages were really stable over the three previous years and they changed a bit in 2020, but they also that coincided with a great reduction. I'm not quite certain what that comes from. I do know that, for example, of the gunfire incidents that we addressed and serious crimes of that nature, we saw disproportionate groups in those suspect groups. So that contributes. And I think that there are some real questions we have to ask ourselves as a community about what is at the root of some of these activities, the behavior that's at the root of these, the factors that contribute to behavior and how we address those. But when an officer is on the street and looking at a behavior in front of him or her, they're addressing that. They are not thinking about the host of other factors that may have led up to that moment. Certainly that is our job. That's our job as police executives, your job as a police commission. And we do wanna examine those and understand where the police department can play a role in stopping those issues upstream. By the time they get to the street where an officer is observing conduct and behavior, we are in a different position. I'll only follow that up with a couple of comments and a question for you. So the report identifies a variety of disparities that are in many ways troubling. And they suggest that Burlington police officers, the Black people is inherently more threatening or dangerous than other racial groups. And yet, as Nancy points out in her report, white subjects are more likely to have exhibited assaultive behavior than Black subjects. And there are a variety of other data points in the report that are suggestive of that and not consistent with the view that in fact, Black persons are in fact more threatening or dangerous. And so my question to you is, what is your specific plan to combat that mindset? So we talk about that inside the department regularly. The idea of addressing behavior that's in front of us irrespective of who is committing it. We also undergo training. We recently finished an iteration of trainings with a woman named Trustee Loving about bias and the recognition of it in all of us. But the fact of the matter is that I think that what we see here is we have a small number, all of which we have shared with you over the past year now. And I ask this body, which incidents have been flagged for you that have not indicated proper uses of force or examples of instances that should have been handled differently? We do look at and review all of them. And while we see this disparity in the final result, we are not seeing it in the initiation of the act. And again, I believe these come from upstream problems that plague all of us as a community. I would be happy to defer my fellow commissioners. I have several more questions. So I'm happy to wait for others to take their turn. If not, let me ask them. So nearly half of the... I'm so sorry, I was muted. Me love, sorry. Me and those handlers raised my apologies. Thank you. So it's very difficult. I have a few issues. So first of all, Chief, if you could just elaborate more on what you were saying about if something had been pledged down. I mean, are officers supposed to be looking at the end result, which is what was pledged down? Yes. If that's what was legally the results. That doesn't change the fact that it is the criminal behavior that led to the interaction in the first place. The assertion was that an OSC suspension is automatically indicative, not of behavior, but of some kind of economic issue, some kind of difficulty in navigating the system, something that is not on the individual, but is instead on society. And I am suggesting that is not always the case. So you saying that's with regards to the latest stop, like the current stop that they're doing. I am a little bit confused by that response. I guess not confused. I'm not comfortable with certain aspects of that response. And I guess because we have seen in particular with ticketing using what was discovered going on and Ferguson, Ferguson would be a great example, right? That there was systematic policies in place from all elements of the police department and the local government that led to the over ticketing of their black citizens, which then led to situations where people did lose their licenses, still had to work, couldn't pay for them, got more tickets, got jailed for that and the cycle continued and continued over ticket. So I guess that I have a particular sensitivity to that concern and I'm not quite sure. I'm gonna have to kind of reserve coming back to this. I want to look at the data a little bit more clearly. I wanna get my head wrap around it. I do want to say though, what do you think of these continued disparities? You know, we've discussed it before in terms of some really significant data points. What is, I know I might be jumping around the agenda a little bit, but it just seems like the next item kind of matches what we're talking about here. Have you looking at these continued disparities really thought about how they could be reduced? How they could be addressed? Looking into more details as to the situations when some of these things actually occur, you know, and being particularly concerned about certain percentages continuing to hold with regard to the disparities, concerned about the disparity in the use of guns. So I would like you to speak on that. Thank you. So I wanna respond to that, but I also know that Deputy Chief LeBrecht was attempting to weigh in. I would like to push back on the idea that Burlington is Ferguson. Ferguson had an incredible problem that was exhumed by the DOJ with regard to a large, I'm sorry, ma'am. No, no, just a moment, just a moment. I do not say that. That's not what I said. And I just wanna make that clear. That is not what I said. You make a change, but I wanna make that clear. I let you speak, Commissioner. I understand that. Not being able to see you makes it very difficult when you're stopping or not. Sir, I apologize for interrupting you, but I very strongly, strongly resent the implication that you just said that I said Burlington was Ferguson. That's not what I said, right? I expressed a concern based on, and I use Ferguson as an example. This is a national issue. And we're seeing these disparities. Ferguson involved a huge issue of getting revenue from these kinds of stops. We're talking here about 24 tickets. There's certainly no revenue angle on that. And so as we address these and look at these, I think that is important to note. With regard to, I think Deputy Chief LeBrecht did wanna weigh in, Mr. Chair. I'm sorry. DC LeBrecht, I think you had a clarifying statement you were about to make. Sure. So when it comes down to the two types of suspensions, there's criminal suspension, and there is what we call civil suspension. So the OSC, Operating Civility Suspended, which is a ticket. Title 23 says you will issue the ticket for that. There's no leeway with it. There is a program in place with DMV that people that do accumulate those types of tickets, like one and then two and then three, they can work with DMV to pay off if they are civilly suspended, say, for not paying a fine or something like that. They can work something off and they actually get their license back before they have paid off all the fines and stuff like that are associated. So they basically can work something out. The criminally suspended ones also had, the state's attorneys, I'm sure you remember, had did like an amnesty day where people could come in and they basically received the same thing. They came out, they worked out some sort of deal or something like that with paying off the ticket, but they got their licenses back. And those are both really good programs and I think they should continue. I think they certainly helped. There's a reason why that the DMV actually changed. It used to be every OSC, the civil ticket, when you got stopped, you would get a fine and you would also get five points on your license. So if you were already suspended for say having too many points on your license, like say you had 10, now you had 15. And if you got stopped again, and now you had 20. So the DMV actually got rid of the points for second OSCs and any other ones that occur after that. So there's no points anymore because they recognized that this wasn't doing, it was a downward spiral for people that would get those types of tickets. But the officers don't have any discretion. I mean, they have to issue the ticket. And what the chief was saying is in some types of DUI cases or those kind of like serious driving ones like operating without an owner's consent or careless and negligent operation of a motor vehicle, the there's a criminal charge and then there's a charge for like a DUI is an easy one. You have a criminal charge for driving while intoxicated and then you have a civil suspension that is another court date that you respond to in criminal court, which is different than getting a, you know, say like you or somebody gets a speeding ticket and they go to traffic court. Those tickets can be pled down to a civil suspension rather than a criminal suspension, but they're still suspended and they still, if they're attached to a DUI and they do that, then that, well, actually, if they're attached to a DUI and they're suspended, that's a criminal suspension. And that's when the officer, once again, has to at least, you know, give them a citation to appear in court. DC Sullivan, you wanna add in? Yeah, I was just gonna add that that's a, that's a very good example of the simultaneous tracks, right? DUI is the, is a very easy example to understand because you have a civil track and a criminal track. And what can happen in the court is the court may dismiss the criminal charge as long as they plead to the civil suspension. So they may actually have an underlying DUI that results in a civil suspension. So that's the easiest thing to understand as far as a criminal violation resulting in a civil suspension. Now I would also add, just reiterate that we are talking about extremely low numbers here, Chief Murad made the point that we're talking about 24 traffic tickets issued to black drivers over the course of a year. So there is no doubt there is disparity there, but the sheer number is very, very small. And then as far as the use of force goes, I know there was a comment about gun pointing. I thought Director Low did a very nice job describing this. I mean, these are non-discretionary on the part of officers. They are trained this way at the Vermont Police Academy. They are trained and it is an officer safety issue. They, when they enter buildings, essentially unsecured buildings, whether it's on a search warrant where they find an open door, whether or not they have to make exigent entry, most commonly in the case of domestics, they point their firearms into open space and whoever they encounter, a firearm is pointed at them until they ensure that they're safe, usually meaning that they're looking at the suspect's hands and making sure they don't have a weapon immediately available to them. But the firearm is pointed at them. That is procedure and that happens regardless. So even though there are disparities, certainly in the data here, it is not discretionary on the part of the officer at all. I have looked at the facts regarding at least the first half of every single use of force incident in 2020. And I have found nothing that indicates any sort of bias on the part of the officers in regard to firearm pointing. It is all dictated by policy and procedure. Thank you. Milo, sorry. Milo followed by Stephanie. So I would like the chief to just review some details about Ferguson to simply, it's not just simply a matter of collecting income. There were some pretty systematically racist policies and procedures that were put in place that were allowed to expand until it was a normal, it was a normal way of life for them, for these individuals that were carrying this out. I would, I have, I'm concerned about some of the training at the academy. Training at the academy has been previously discussed in terms of needing to consider changes, changes as to where the training occurs, changes in terms of the training curriculum, the fact that people have been hurt during training. So although I hear what you're saying with regards to that, that doesn't make me feel at ease because I know that there's areas there that need to be improved upon. I also don't always feel at ease when in general things are said that refer to the way things have always been done or that's the way we're used to doing it or not wanting to change something because I think we need to be willing, when you talk about addressing systematic issues, not being willing to change something or referring to, that's the way we've always done it, that's the language that promotes certain behaviors and bias that becomes systematic. With regards to the numbers, we've talked about this before, I know it's a repeated fallback, the numbers are small, the numbers are small, the numbers are small, but the continued disparities are there. And at the end of these numbers, no matter how small these numbers are, are real people that are being affected, that are going through these situations. So yes, the numbers are small, the numbers are small, but they're real people, they represent real people. So therefore, I guess I'm not willing to look at these numbers as, you know, I don't interpret them as being smaller, being insignificant, once again, because we still have these disparities continuing. And I do believe that having the information, looking the information across certain officers, you know, let's take a look at what people are saying, what are people actually doing, right? What are they doing, who's in certain situations, who it may be representing those disparities or is it really across the whole department? I think that's important information. And I think sometimes, you know, we already have had an incident where we've been denied the option to view, you know, all the available footage. So again, and that makes me distrust, that makes me not have a lot of faith when you say, oh, well, we reviewed all this, well, we're not allowed to review everything we need to see. And that's a huge problem. And then you want me to believe, you want me to represent to people that I'm trying to stand up for, that, you know, I can trust what you say on these issues. And I have a lot of trouble doing that when I can't even get access to information, I think is really important. So I'll leave it there for other people to speak. Thank you very much. Sorry, Stephanie, the floor is yours. Yeah, I wanna just refer to the small numbers issue as well. I find that deeply problematic. Every single person who feels unfairly treated is a person who loses trust in the police department. And the issue isn't so much the small numbers, but the issue is around whether one group is being treated differently than another group for the same behavior. That's the issue at hand. And so there's a small numbers issue in terms of accuracy of estimates. And that's a legitimate one, but certainly not that we should be less concerned because there are small numbers because in many of these cases on which we have data, there's sort of a microcosm of the broader context that we don't necessarily measure. So a couple of more comments. And let me just say this as a maybe question comment, not that necessarily you could answer, but let me go to the issue of the warrants and use of force. The last meeting we had chief Murad in February, I believe it was, what you and your staff indicated was that the differences in use of force or in the pointing of a gun had to do largely with more warrants were served on black people than white people. But as Nancy Stetson found in her analysis, in fact, that can't explain these racial disparities in use of force. And so I think it would be important for you to correct the record. And I think it's important for us to have evidence-based conversations about these things and that we should not then refer to warrants as an explanation for why there is disparities in use of force. I also wanna point out something else that's troubling in the report in terms of our ongoing effort that I fully believe we're all on the same page on is that we want to reduce unjustified racial disparities. And one of the things that stands out in this report is that black people are much less likely to be perceived as having a mental health episode or being intoxicated or under the influence of drugs. And so in fact, white people in terms of the use of force data are more frequently altered than are black people in this use of force report. And yet they are a much smaller share of those on whom force is used. So that disparity worries me. We've talked about this in a private conversation with the chief and DC Sullivan. And that is that there's evidence of racial bias on the part of good people, but nevertheless, preceding black people as being more threatening and less likely to attribute their behavior to something like a mental health episode. So there are kernels of evidence here that there is more going on than simply criminal behavior to explain these different rates of use of force. And it's the traffic stop data is consistent with that. And this is what I look for in the data. Is there a pattern across many different indicators? So we have that black drivers are overstop relative to white drivers. They are over arrested relative to whites of the population. The data this year show that although the search rate numbers are small that there's disparity in search rates. And that as somebody who uses data I wouldn't stake a lot on one year of data from a small sample, but if we look the pattern has been in Burlington police department that black drivers have been over searched. So we see all of that with traffic stops and we're seeing these disparities with use of force. And it's not consistent with the evidence to suggest it's all due to differential criminal behavior. And so I wanna make two more comments if I might. One is that one of the arguments that you've made not arguments, but comments that you've made is that A, that it is policy to give a ticket in the case of a civilly suspended license and DC LeBrecht has commented on that and mentioned title 23, I'm not familiar with that and wonder if it's a state policy and wonder if there's any leeway for the Burlington police department to change its policy. Second of all, what I have understood is that your policy in BPD is that when you are serving warrants for all warrants even misdemeanors that your policy that is that a gun is drawn is that and I wanna clarify, is that a BPD policy? Is that a state policy? And let me ask that and then go on from there. You there, sorry, thank you so much. Yeah, may I just speak to the gun pointing issue? Again, it is an officer safety issue. And so quite frankly, I would not be willing and I agree with what commissioner Grant said that we should always be willing to examine these issues and just because we have done something one way in the past does not mean we should continue to do it the same way in the future and we should always be taking a look and reviewing these policies. But I personally would not be willing to alter a policy or tell an officer that they cannot draw their gun entering an unknown premise. I mean, the solution to that is we just don't make entry but that creates other issues. But I would not be the one willing to say that they can't do that because it is ultimately an officer safety issue. And I don't believe it. I think you also brought up a great point commissioner Saguino that the issue is is that if officers are treating people differently in similar situations, that may indicate bias. I have yet to see that when looking at the context of the data in great detail. Certainly that would absolutely be a problem if we were able to find that. I have yet to find that in the data itself even though there is no doubt disparity exists in the data. So can this, Sullivan, is it a BPD policy that guns are drawn when serving even misdemeanor warrants? We generally, I mean, you use the term misdemeanor warrants. So we generally would not even do a search warrant. All search warrants in particular would be more for serious cases. We would not be. So there might be misdemeanor arrest warrants issued but there again, we wouldn't be addressing that with a gun pointed. That's more if we encounter in a person just in the course of regular police activity, find out that they have an arrest warrant and then we take them into custody based on that arrest warrant preexisting. But we generally don't, and I can tell you this over the years, we have drastically cut back on the way we execute warrants. We have altered our procedure to make it more safe for all of the parties involved. We're not using what we used to call flood procedure as far as knocking, announcing, waiting if there's no response, taking a door, entering a premise and then flooding rapidly through a residence. We just don't do that anymore because there are safety issues associated with that both for the people in the residence and the officers involved. So we slowed everything down. We call people out. Then generally speaking, I'm not really aware of us executing a search warrant for any sort of misdemeanor but that would be interesting to take a little closer look at. But off the top of my head I can't really think of any. They're usually associated with drug investigations are usually when we're executing warrants and quite frankly in the year 2020 it is somewhat of anomaly. I mean, we haven't really been doing any sort of drug work for the most part when you compare previous years. I have a couple more questions on that but we'll save it for another time just so I can understand a little bit better the data. So let me ask you this. So warrants don't explain the racial differences in use of force and nearly half of all firearms pointed or firearm pointed incidents if you will involved a black subject even though blacks are only roughly 6% of Burlington's population. So my question is why are police officers in Burlington so much more likely to point a gun at black people than white people? So I can speak to that again and from what I've looked at looking at least the first half of 2020 again, all of these were non-discretionary. So for example, there are high-risk incidents and I believe Nancy Stetson touched on this is that they were associated with information officers responding to an incident where there was information that the subject was armed with a weapon. So the officers going into that if they're armed with a deadly weapon for example, a knife or a gun there's information that is relayed to the police department and that's conveyed to the officers they're gonna respond with a gun out already and whoever they encounter is gonna have a gun pointed at them for a high-risk motor vehicle stop if there's information that a subject may be armed with a weapon in the car guns are pointed at that car and people are ordered out of the vehicle and whoever steps out of that vehicle a firearm is pointed at them until they're secured and taken into custody and we can be made sure that there are no firearms involved. So there are other things other than search warrants but all of these are policy driven non-discretionary that I have looked at so far for the first half of 2020. It's not like an officer just encounters something on the street and perceives it a certain way and reacts to something and then draws a firearm. I haven't seen that yet in the 2020 data set. Now that's not to say that wouldn't happen. I can think of one incident I don't know that it was 2020 where it was a black subject who showed up at the police department threatening to stab a supervisor and the officer realized they had a knife in their hand as they were telling the officer that and the officer reacted to that and pulled their gun and pointed at the subject. But that's one of the few incidents that I can think of where an officer actually reacted to what they were presented with visually and then pulled a firearm. So to say that they're encountering black people in general and then are more apt to point a firearm I don't know that that's really accurate. Again, most of these they're pointing firearms at vehicles or into space as they enter a building and whoever is, you know, they're ordering people out. Again, they're generally ordering people out of rooms and then whoever exits that room gets a firearm pointed at them whether they're black or white or whatever race they may be. So, you know, I think there are a few issues that emerge with this. And that is that I think you make a good case that a lot of this is due to policy. And you know, an interesting question is are the policies themselves driving this and are there ways that policies could be modified to address these problems in a way that keeps everybody safe. But understanding that its policy is driving some of these disparities. You know, for example, a question is whether there are different tactics available in these or other situations that would allow officers to draw their weapons less overall. And I know that you can't answer that now but I think what I'm reflecting to you is the concern that community members feel about these racial disparities and the importance of really digging in and addressing them and finding ways to address them. What you're describing to me, I appreciate the detail but we actually don't have those data, detailed enough data. And I think it's important for us to be able to see the data on which you rest your claims. And I'm not saying I just trust you at all, I don't. But that I think that we need to see the data that would support that just as you know, with regard to the claim about warrants being the cause of use of forced disparities and apparently it is not. So I'm just reflecting back to you what I hear and the concerns of the community around this and that we need to do more and that it may not be individual officer bias but rather policy driven and what can we do to address that? So let me ask just one last question of the chief and actually it's a two part question. Can you tell me what percentage of Burlington police officers are African-American or Black? We have one African-American officer. So that would be as an indication of small numbers that would be somewhere on the order of almost one and a half percent right now or 2%. Very similar to the number of Black teachers in the Burlington school district. Yes, you know, I'm not sure if you are aware, Chief Murad of the research that shows that Black officers use force at a lower rate than white police officers, that they use force at a lower rate than white police officers in white neighborhoods and that they use force at one, how do I put this? White officers use force on Blacks and Black neighborhoods at five times the rate of white police officers. And I wonder if you're aware of that and the role that the lack of diversity in the Burlington police department might be playing in the problem of serious racial disparities in use of force. I'm not aware of those studies. When I'm allowed to hire again, diversity is going to be a key goal. In that regard, we learned a while ago that in fact a young Burlingtonian who graduated from Burlington High School, new American from Black, had applied to the Burlington police department a couple of years ago, didn't get a response as I understand it and was recently hired by the Vermont State Police. And so it seems to me once again that the Burlington police department has to do better. And in so far as if there is a possibility of hiring again in the future, I would ask what are you doing now to develop the networking strategy to ensure that you have a rich, diverse pool of applicants? Well, certainly we hope to be able to get people to be CSOs. We're hopeful that the CSO program is a way towards that. The Beach and Park program has been a way towards that in the past and we've brought aboard people of various communities on the Beach and Park program. And so those are things I don't know the case that you're talking about and could look into it for you as to why and be able to speak with you privately. I'm not going to speak publicly about why somebody was or was not taken in as a prospective employee or as a recruit, but we can definitely look into that. The change, getting a more, our body is more diverse if I look at the hire since 2017. It's significantly more diverse. It's also more diverse with regard to gender and we are trying to build on that once we get the opportunity to do so. Thank you. No more questions, thanks. Are there any further questions for the Chiefs with their cries to the report? Not hearing anything or seeing any hands raised. So with that, I will close this agenda item. Thank you again, Nancy, Brian for the report. And yeah, and for those questions and comments and responses. Moving on then to agenda item 5.05 which is a strategic plan from BVD to rest downtown bar closings. I guess with that I'll give it back to the Chiefs. We looked into this topic, Deputy Chief LeBreck and others put a lot of effort into talking about the ways in which we've done things before and the plans that we've had in place in the past to address issues with bar closing. One of the things that is missing from this year's annual report that was present in the 2019 use of force report was a graphic, not unlike the one that is currently on page, I'm sorry, on page 30 of the existing annual report that shows time of day and use of force and time of day use of force correlates entirely with time of day assaultive behavior. So the use of force that we see in the downtown area that that big spike that you see in the wee hours is entirely mirrored by a spike in assaultive crimes during that time of day and in that area as well. Those two paired graphics in the 20, I believe it was the 2019 report that was released in 2020 were really striking, may have been the 2018 released in 2019. Sometimes the sort of difference between them gets a little bit confusing, but the graphic was there, it demonstrated a really, really clear correlation. And so obviously the downtown area and bar closing time period is one of concern for us. So we've looked at something at some ideas for that. There are approximately 17 bars in Burlington's D area and each serves alcohol until 2 a.m. Patrons are required to finish their alcoholic beverages by 02 30 a.m. And most bars require patrons to leave at that time as well. So on a typical weekend night, approximately 2,000 patrons experiencing varying degrees of intoxication are discharged from these locations and into a four square block area in a relatively short period of time. Several establishments remain open past these hours to serve food as do several food carts that are located on Church Street, usually between college and Main Street. And this causes a large percentage of these patrons to remain in close contact in that area. So immediate action that we would explore if staffing were to permit and if we were to return to addressing bar closing at all as a posture, which is potentially not going to be the case owing to staffing issues. Officers would patrol downtown in the bar district on foot and in pairs and then for disorderly or assaultive behavior such as intoxication or aggressive posturing or outright fights, we would train BPD to officers to work in pairs and confronting people at bar closing using contact and cover and de-escalation techniques which are already a part of our training regime, particularly around barricades and ICAT. The officer who's made the contact officer would use the de-escalation techniques while the cover officer would protect that first officer and the subject as well. One thing that often happens with any engagement at the bar closing hour is that an engagement with one brings a crowd. We experienced that to a certain degree in 2019. We're anticipating that that is going to be more pronounced in 2021 owing to overall attitudes about policing and overall willingness to resist or question police efforts, even when those efforts are being directed at a clear public safety goal. We're going to, we could explore deploying a clinician to the bar patrol, to the patrol bar closing as well. This would be akin to either expanding the hours for street outreach and or dealing in my initial public safety continuity plan, there was a provision for having CSLs on those shifts with officers and co-deploying. The CSL obviously has been changed significantly and so how that would work is a little bit unclear. Creating a cabaret task force, which is something that we had before under a different name, but that would include members of the Burlington Police Department, the Vermont Department of Liquor Control, the Burlington Fire Department and code enforcement and representatives of downtown bars and restaurants. And two downtown area officers would meet regularly with bars and staff to speak about issues as they occur and work towards solutions to those. Increasing the tempo of bar checks. So again, conducted with some of the same members of that cabaret task force and going into locations and making certain that they are adhering to the various rules that are applicable to each of those cabaret participants, whether those are code enforcement rules, fire code rules, DLC roles. A big one to be holding bars more accountable for the condition of their patrons, for example, over service and intoxication or for the conduct of their patrons, which includes fighting. And that could be done through leverage through the Department of Liquor Control and the City Liquor Permit Board. Excuse me. This would require bars to make intoxicated individuals leave the premises and require bars to provide transport for those individuals to a safe location that could be determined by either by the patron and him or herself, depending on his or her condition or the friends and probably would be done via Uber or Lyft or taxi. And this could be a part of the rules that are stipulated to bars and restaurants when they renew their cabaret licenses with the city. It's not dissimilar to rules that exist currently that require them to report fights and call the police when fights occur on their premises in order to keep their liquor license. And finally, a review of bar incidents on a monthly basis in order to look for repeat violations. And that could be a component of that cabaret task force as well. There's some long-term ideas that exist. These are a little bit more fanciful. They are outside the box and they would require a good deal of cooperation outside the city, including at the state level. And I think perhaps the police commission would be a great venue to try to make those things happen and to use the unique authority and power of the police commission to lean on state agencies to make these kinds of changes. But to amend the law to allow bars to remain open until five a.m., let the bars stay open later, which will prevent the exodus of approximately 2,000 patrons under the street all at once. They will dribble out in smaller groups and leave at times that don't create a crush. Require, this would be very unpopular, but require all food services to stop at 2 a.m. So a bar that, for example, serves a lot of pizza might not like this, Mr. Chair, but it would have a two-fold effect and it would encourage patrons to leave that bar earlier because if they wanna get food, they're gonna have to go to some other location or get the food before too and it will diminish the rationale for remaining in downtown after the bars close. And it would certainly be not just the restaurants or bars, but it would be the food carts. I wouldn't be able to serve after that time period as well. And then create a system that the bars use in order to share information among themselves about individuals that they have ejected because now that, obviously, if they're asked for bars to actually eject people and see them home were put in effect, this would be mooted. But if that one were not put into effect, then ask the bars, mandate that the bars create some kind of knowledge sharing that says, guy in the blue polo has been quite a customer tonight and we have ejected him and if he comes your way, don't let him in because inevitably we get calls to locations as police where we deal with an individual who is being a handful. We address that situation and if it is not addressed through enforcement and or custody, we will get a call a half hour or an hour later and lo and behold, it's a new location and it's the same individual. So the ability to actually prevent that person from moving from location to location would be a key. If I could chief, there was one more probably got lost in the list there was also with a BPD working with the bars, the bar staff on de-escalation as well we may be cutting off the whole thing before it even gets to a point where police need to get involved. So we could work with them in some of our techniques that we're trained in for de-escalation. I apologize, DC LeBreck, I did, I missed that one. It's the number three. We would train bar staff in de-escalation techniques such as ICAT in order to resolve issues without calling the police. And this could be also required as a component of their cab array license. Again, every single one of these requires staffing that we don't have. The notion of the priority plan, the priority response plan that we announced on Monday and shared with all of you on Sunday is that we don't have the capacity to do these things. Thank you for that. Sorry, I see Stephanie's hand raised, floor is yours. You are muted, I'm sorry. Yeah, thanks for that. Those are some really interesting options. And it seems to me it would be useful for you to put that in writing as a strategic plan to be posted on board docs. I mean, I think that some of these ideas we don't want to get lost. And so I'd welcome you doing that and making that publicly available. Milo. Thank you. I would also second the request to have this put in writing and also available to the public. And so my main concern is we know that disparities are occurring in the downtown sector and pre COVID and quite the alarming way. And I didn't hear anything that told me that you reviewed that aspect of what is happening. You know, when I take a look at the lawsuits that are pending and two of them involve people of color in the downtown district, I, you know, that kind of, I just think that's an element that, you know, we needed to hear, we needed to hear because that was the really big thing that just stood out that certain officers put in certain positions at certain times a day in that downtown corridor are doing certain things to certain people. So I really, I'm still not hearing that. And I feel like it's, these things are hard to discuss. And sometimes it is really hard to admit if someone has a bias issue. And, you know, the issue of quote unquote unconscious bias has certainly come up before it came up on the committee to review policing policies. And, you know, well, if someone is unbiased policy, they have unconscious bias, you know, can they be held responsible for that? Well, yes, they can. They have to recognize their unconscious bias and work to correct that. So I still think that there's a, well, that's a real big missing part of the conversation. So there are some ideas in there that are definitely well worth pursuing. But, you know, the major thing we keep coming back to is I feel not being looked at, at least not in a, I feel like you don't wanna believe that that's an issue, which is why you can't bring yourself to address it. You know, because it's come up multiple times. Can we have this addressed? And still with the vast improvement upon reviewing other ideas, we still don't have what is at the root of driving it, you know? I mean, when we look, when I look at these parties, which are not okay. And I look at what we're saying, 400 almost all white kids, and the same things that happened to young people, you know, BIPOC people, you have 400 white kids and that's not happening to them. I mean, you know, these are things that I think about and I know other people think about. So I'm just putting it out there, gentlemen, for you to also think about. Thank you. I heard a lot of interesting things in that report with, sorry, in that little presentation with regards to like bar training, ICAT, things like that. And someone that has been bartending downtown since 2011, I mean, I've worked in restaurants downtown since 2007. I could say there definitely is a gap in training when it comes to bartenders, I guess when it comes to de-escalation. With that being said, I would say the good ones always know how to talk down people and keep people online, but that's not always the case with bars downtown. And with regards to like sharing information, I will say that a lot of bars do share information, but I would say that's within the bars that kind of not speaking for us, but I guess I'm speaking for us. The ones that I guess we have a good rapport with and you know, kind of see eye to eye with how we kind of like to bartend, you know, because I would say not every bar is at the same standard of trying to keep their patrons safe as every other bar. So kind of having, I guess, all bars on the same page would be definitely helpful because there are definitely problem bars and there are not problem bars. And I think keeping information on this would be great moving forward. Maybe like a monthly kind of, I don't know which bars are the problem bars, just from things like that, I don't know. I heard some good things about that but Riff on Milo, I think some more could be done but I'm definitely interested in furthest distance discussion to kind of, yeah, get everything safe for downtown. And I guess, Chief, would it be possible to kind of get what you had here summarized up in like writing and either send it to us or maybe post on board docs? I think that'd be great. I think there are some good things here that we can build on. I can try to do that. I don't know that, I can try to make that happen. There's a lot of things that are happening in the department right now but I will try to fulfill that request. This isn't a request that comes out of the nature of the relationship that as it's outlined, it's outside of that. We followed it because frankly, I think it's a good idea and I think there's a need for thinking about the bar closing time but I also am concerned about promulgating a strategy that we can't complete and putting up something that we have no means of actually doing. Landon. Yeah, I just had an idea. So it seems like the issue is obviously that the bars are closing at the same time and there's a mass amount of people crowding together around that same time in a similar area. What if you had a rolling schedule where one bar would close 30 minutes earlier one week and then the other week, it would shift around. Do you understand what I mean? So then you don't have a lot of people going to the same spot at the same time. Obviously the bars probably won't be happy about that because they're missing out on 30 minutes to an hour of money. But I mean, that could also be mandated by the city potentially, right? So something could be done along those lines without having to use additional resources from the police department. Thank you. I would definitely first see some, I'll push back bars and bars, but that's, I think honestly, all options are on the table these days. D.C. LaBrette. Yeah, I just wanted to put a little context behind that stuff I worked on. So yeah, I'm much older than I think most people here, but I actually, when I was in college, I worked in the bars. I worked at The Last Chance, I worked at The Original Finnegans, I worked at The Original Akes Place. I also worked at the Radisson Hotel and became a bar manager there. And then right before I became a police officer, I was in the bar and restaurant business for quite a while. When I moved away and when I came back, I actually was the bar manager at Sweetwaters back in 1998, 1999. So I do have some background in the bar and restaurant business. I think sometimes I have a little bit better understanding, especially from the bar and the bar staff and the bouncers and the doorman, sorry, doorman now, or people now, then maybe some other officers. So I understand a lot of, I think better the dynamics and the monetary stuff that goes into all this. So I just wanted to put a little context behind some of it and hopefully that helps a little. Thank you. Any further questions or comments for the Chiefs regarding this agenda item? Not seeing or hearing any hands raised. Close to that agenda item and moving on to agenda item 6.01, use force incident report. What's that? I'll give it back to UDC LeBrecht. Thank you. Everybody, I think we were able to get a copy out, right to most of the commissioners. So I'll go through it. There was only, there was seven incidents in April. There was a total of 1,641 incidents, calls for service in the month of April. Out of those seven, there were seven incidences of use of force and there was a total eight, total uses of force was eight. The percentage of use of force incidents versus total incidents was 0.42%. The race gender or RISD subject in the use of force incidents was one black male, three white males, two Asian males and one white female. The first incident was a trespass issue. There was a complaint and who called and officers were dispatched. The caller was a property manager of an apartment building and he had been notified by a tenant in that same building that there were subjects inside a vacant apartment on the second and third floor of the building. Officers arrived and then they had to search the second and third floors per training officers drew. The officer that we're speaking of drew his firearm. During the search, one officer encountered two subjects in a room and ordered the male to show his hands, the subject complied. The second officer that arrived after hearing the other officer yelling and secured the subject and the officer who was pointing his firearm holstered his firearm. They ended up getting a trespass notice from the property owner. The subject was a white male age 43, six feet tall, 200 pounds. There was one officer used force and that was a firearm actively pointed. Neither the subject nor the officer were injured. The next one was, I'm sorry, I missed the incident number on that, I apologize. Was an arrest for a felony burglary and a petty larceny from a building, Complaintin, Complaintin was, there was a caller that was the Complaintin and officers were dispatched to the scene. The caller stated the arrestee had entered the employee only area of a store that was open 24 hours and stole money from a cash register registered located in that back area. The subject then fled through the store outside and left the scene in a motor vehicle. The caller gave a description of the motor vehicle and that was relayed to the responding officers. An officer that was driving around looking for the vehicle spotted a short time later, the officer observed the vehicle speed up and makes some evasive maneuvers before he was able to stop it. The information that the officers had received that time was limited and based on the operator's actions driving the vehicle, the officer did draw his firearm and pointed it at the vehicle. The officer called the subject out of the vehicle and had them walk backwards towards his location. The officer pointed the firearm at the arrestee at this time. A second officer arrived on scene, searched the mail, located no weapons and they took the subject into custody. The officer holstered his firearm. It was a white male age 37, six feet tall, 260 pounds. One officer firearm pointed in the verbal direction that he used to call the subject out of the arrestee out of the car. Neither the officer nor the arrestee were injured. The next one was a domestic assault complaint or sorry, domestic assault incident, a complaint and called an officer's dispatch. The complaint stated she had been assaulted by her boyfriend and he was currently destroying property at the residence. She also stated he had a knife earlier and was unsure if the subject still had the weapon on him. Officers were able to locate the male subject and were able to talk him into coming to the front of the residence. At this point, the officers were using a shield and a stack of officers. Officer number one was the lethal cover for the team and had his firearm out and pointed at the male subject until he was handcuffed in search for weapons. The officer then holstered his firearm. During the following investigation, it was uncovered that the female had lied about the assault and the knife at the time. That was a white male aged 33, five foot seven, 210 pounds. One officer, he had his firearm pointed and gave verbal direction and officer one was uninjured and the subject was uninjured. Just when I used your reporting system, this was one of the de-escalations and the slowing down that officers used because they got a lot of resources in place and made contact with them and called him back out to them in a safe manner. So it was a very nicely done incident. The next one was an arrest for a vandalism, negligent operation of a motor vehicle, driving the license suspended and impeding a public officer, public officers. There was a complaint new called and officers were dispatched. The complainant stated a female driver was intoxicated and it had struck her husband's vehicle and now the two vehicles were stuck together. Upon arrival of the officers, the arrestee locked herself into the back of the vehicle and refused to come out. Officers negotiated with the arrestee to get her to come out of the vehicle. The arrestee refused and crawled into the back seat and lay across it. Officers continued to negotiate but arrestee didn't respond. The officers did warn her that they would have to break the front window. The arrestee did not respond or move. So the officers broke the front window and unlocked the doors to the vehicle and opened the back doors. The officers again asked the arrestee to exit the vehicle but she did not move. So the two officers each grabbed a wrist and slowly extricated her from the back seat of the vehicle and placed her on the ground where they handcuffed her and took her into custody. It was a white female age 52, five foot six, 145 pounds. The two officers used empty hand techniques. Really it was just pulling her out by her arms and then lowering her to the ground. Neither the officers or the subject were injured. The next was an arrest for an aggravated assault. There were two calls, two complainants on this call and officers were dispatched. The first complaint called, stated she, this was quoted in the narrative from the dispatcher, needed a mail removed from the house and hung up. A second caller stated and advised that his father was beating his pregnant girlfriend in the kitchen before he left the house. The caller was now at a friend's house nearby and also advised of a machete on the floor in the bedroom where there was a one year old located. Upon arrival, officers entered the residence to make protective sweep and attempt to locate the mail. Officers continuously announced their presence and asked the subject to come out or announce their presence meeting for the subject to say I'm in here. Due to the possibility of a weapon, the officers had their firearms out per training. An officer located the subject hiding in the basement under a blanket. The officer pointed his firearm at the subject and asked them to come out and show their hands. The subject complied. When the officer observed the subject did not have a weapon in their hands, the officer reholstered his firearm and conducted a pat down for hidden weapons and then spoke to the subject. The female refused to cooperate with the investigations and at the end, the officers were unable to make an arrest or unable to arrest the subject for domestic assault at that time. It was a black male age 38, five, nine, 175 pounds. There was one officer who used force and pointed his firearm and he had used verbal commands. Neither officer nor the subject were injured. The next was a complaint. There was an arrest on a felony aggravated assault. There was a complaint that called and officers were dispatched. The complaint called dispatch and notified that he was being assaulted by a male with a knife. The first officer on scene observed a chaotic scene with a subject holding a knife at another male and gave verbal commands to drop the knife. The second arriving officer observed the first officer giving verbal commands, drew his firearm and pointed at the subject with a knife. The officer gave verbal commands for the subject to drop the knife and the subject complied. The subject was taken into custody without further incident. This was an Asian male age 25, five foot nine, 160 pounds. One officer used force, firearm pointed and verbal commands. Neither the officer nor the subject were injured. The next one was an arrest on a misdemeanor domestic assault. There was a complaint and officers were dispatched. This was a 911, excuse me, a 911 hang up call. No information could be gathered before the caller hung up. Upon arrival, officers entered the residence where the call originated from and observed a blood trail leading to the rear of the residence. The officers heard a woman scream. He drew his firearm and ran towards the rear of the residence. The officer opened a door to a room where the blood trail had stopped and the screams were coming from. And the officer immediately deserved a female with a large amount of blood on the front of her shirt and a male standing in front of her. The officer pointed his firearm at the male and ordered him out of the room where he was handcuffed and detained. Upon arrival, officers learned through an interpreter that there had been a domestic assault. The use of force was the male age 24, five foot six, 140 pounds. One officer used force, firearm was pointed and verbal commands were given, neither the subject or the officer were injured. And those were the complaints for the month. Thank you for that. I see Christer, I see Randall's hand raised followed by Shareen. Thank you. Thank you for the report. I actually got to express my appreciation for the narratives accompanying this. I'd like to thank you for giving us this kind of written in advance so I can actually read them carefully. And I'd like to thank you for the narrative. I think that it will help the commission as it thinks about, as it speculates about whether there might be ways of modifying department policy regarding the drawing of firearms to perhaps reduce any discrepancies about racial uses of the way of firearms to have that information so you can say whether or not there are any of the individual cases in which people think that the decisions ought to have been done differently. My main question is actually just a quick clarifying question about, this is incident number, I believe it was 4767, yes, that's the one with the arrest journalism, that's an operation of motor vehicle, DLS and imputing public officers. So this is the one in which officers broke the window of the vehicle in order to get the RST. So I'm assuming that the officers did not break the windows with their hands. So I'm wondering whether the tool that was used to break the windows would be ordinarily mentioned in the use of force or whether that would not be? I honestly have never heard it used in the use of force support unless they like use like their PR 24. Most officers carry now like a little, it's just like a little spring loaded thing and you put it on the window and let it go and it shatters the window and you just push the glass in. But if they did like smash it with their PR 24 or something like that, that should be in there and I can look farther into that incident and see what they used. Good, thank you. So then this is kind of, I'm asking this and I don't expect you to have concrete information, detailed information right now, but can you think of very many instances in which a vehicle window would be broken or kind of a house would be forcibly accessed that it would not resolve in any other use of force report? If we, I guess I could see it for like maybe if a vehicle had like somebody passed out in it, we thought they were overdosing or something and the officers couldn't get in the car, they would probably smash a window out to get in there and there wouldn't be a use of force for breaking that window or a house where sometimes we use force when we go on welfare checks and a lot of times, unfortunately, we get there and you can sometimes smell what has happened or if the person, especially if they've had some sort of medical issue, medical problem, been suicidal in the past or something like that, suicidal one would be a little different, I'm sorry, but like a medical issue, any type of thing where we wouldn't expect the person to be armed, we have like might break out a pane of glass to reach in and undo the door or use a halogen tool like the fire department would to open the door. A lot of times we actually call the fire department and have them like force entry into those so we don't normally do a use of force unless right after that, if it was somebody who had a knife and it harmed themselves, like cut themselves badly, we might force entry and have an officer may have their weapon out for protection and that would be a use of force support for that. Anytime the officer has their weapon out. Thank you, that's helpful. Sure, enforcers. Thank you, so D.C. Labreck, thanks for this. I am impressed how quickly you responded to our request to put this in writing and upload it beforehand. Can you remind me how you are gathering the data, like what data you're drawing upon and do you ever go to the body camera footage when you're putting these together? I take all this pretty much straight from the use of force report that goes into Valkor. If I do sometimes go, if I have trouble reading in the incident, like putting together in my mind what happened, but I will say that D.C. Sullivan and the use of force group that reviews these makes sure that the officers articulate exactly what they saw happened. And if they don't write a good report or they're missing details, they'll make sure that the report's written correctly before it gets to the point where I see it. So most of these are very well written. I also go up into the incident. It's all included in the entire incident. So if there's been an arrest or something like that, I'll go up and look into the actual incident and the arrest, like the affidavit, sometimes to gather the whole story because the use of force report will sometimes just contain those moments in time where the officer was using force, you know, what led up to it, but not what happened after. I can give you a good example and the last one here with the Asian male, it turned out that he was actually the one who was assaulted by the female and she was the one that was arrested upon investigation. I should have put that little part in, but when the officer went into the room the first thing he saw was she actually, she had assaulted him and he had pushed her, or I can't remember, he had pushed his hand out and struck her cell phone and it hit her in the nose and caused a bloody nose and that's where the blood had come on her shirt. But initially the officer heard her screaming. So when he opened the door to that room, when he sees him standing in front of her and her covered in blood, he assumed that she had been assaulted by him. So we took him into custody at that time just for everybody's safety and then upon investigation afterwards, it was the female actually who had assaulted the male. So I apologize for that one. No, thank you. Stephanie, you are muted. For the millionth time. Thank you for that and thanks for the filling out that table. It was really helpful to have all of that together. With regard to this last incident, your report didn't, did I miss it or did it indicate the race of the woman? Sorry, she's Asian female. Okay, so I would just wonder if it would be possible to just edit your report to include that information and also the additional information that you just provided with regard to the original arrest of the black person and the resulting arrest of the woman. Is that possible? Sure, I'm not sure what you were talking about the initial arrest of the black person. So you said that you took the black gentleman into custody? No, no, it was an Asian male and Asian female. My apologies, okay. Yeah, so yeah, she actually didn't have any force used against her. It was just the male who ended up being the victim. But because of what the officer originally saw, he thought it was the other way around. Great, yeah, so it'd be great to have that additional information in there, thanks. Well, but we don't report on the victim's race data. Do you want? She wasn't the subject of a use of force. Chief, are you asking whether I'm suggesting that we... I am, I'm saying that that's not a data that we collect. I see, okay. I mean, it is in the incident itself. That's why I know what occurred. It sounds like if it's an issue for deeper discussion, we could have that later, but I understood. Randall. Yeah, I just wanted to kind of make sure I understood what the request was. I mean, so I wasn't sure if the request was that every person on scene when there is a use of force, that the race data for every person on scene gets recorded if it's just the race data for people who have force used against them. Because I'd worry that it's gonna be very difficult to operationalize like who counts as on scene, who gets recorded, who doesn't. So that could be very difficult. I just want to make sure I understood what the request was. Yeah, this one sounds a little bit confusing, but my understanding is that who initially was perceived to be the victim was actually the person who assaulted. Am I correct? Correct. That's my only reason for bringing that up. Yeah, and I should have put that in and aligned at the bottom that it was the female that was actually the person who was arrested, not the male, not the male who the force was used against. But then I'm sorry, can I just follow up quickly? So is the request just that that kind of information be provided as part of the narrative that be compiled in the numbers? Details of data are always a little bit aggravating, but I would suggest that we're trying to report on use of force and the race of the people with regard to use force and, okay, so now I understand why the question. So we're just talking about use of force. And so yeah, got it. Okay, thanks. Are there any further questions or comments with regard to use of force for either the chiefs? Not seeing, not seeing any hands or hearing anything. So that closes that agenda item. Thank you, DC LeBrecht for that, and thanks for posting it beforehand. Thank you, my pleasure. So that moves us on to agenda item seven, which is accommodations that have been received. Shannon. Perfect, thank you. The first one that was received was a handwritten letter expressing thanks to one of our corporals about a dispute that some neighbors had. He stated that he was impressed with the corporal's politeness, professionalism, and efficiency in dealing with both him and his neighbor, and that he looked forward to that corporal helping the two neighbors and the friction between them. Another letter that was received in the mail was from a police officer that actually resides in Jackson, New Hampshire, who was here visiting his daughter. While they had lunch on the waterfront, his wife left her purse on the park bench. They didn't notice until they got all the way back to the daughter's house, which is in Huntington, and realized that the purse was left behind. They used the find my phone app to determine its general location, and then called the Burlington Police Department and this accommodation is for one of the dispatchers that was extremely helpful in putting him in touch with one of the officers, explained the situation, and the officer went down to the waterfront, to the location of the phone, and retrieved not only the purse, but the phone and all of the possessions that were still inside. Another accommodation that was received is for Lacey, was for Lacey Smith, and stating that Lacey has been working really hard to advocate for this person. His condition is complicated and she, this is his words, does an excellent job helping me more than any other provider that I'm working with currently, and that person may be known to y'all from viewing of another incident. And then this one is a call that someone put in to say that she thanks the officers, two officers that responded to her. She stated that they were very kind, compassionate and professional, and that she appreciated their response. And those are them from today, this month. Do you mind identifying the individuals like the corporal at the beginning? Absolutely, the corporal at the beginning was Corporal Wilson. The dispatcher was dispatcher Sterling and Officer Ross, and then Lacey Smith, and this other one, the last one looks like Corporal Irwin and Officer Webster. Thanks, Shannon. Thank you. I never know what I'm allowed to say or not say, so I apologize. No, thank you. Awesome, thank you for that, much appreciate it. So close to that agenda item onto agenda number eight, commissioner updates and comments. Randall. Thank you, chair. I just feel as though, given that it is the one year, since it was one year on from George Floyd being killed and given also that familiar with the area very well, I grew up four or five blocks from where George Floyd was murdered. It's been my first 18 years there, I'm familiar with the NAPLIS PD and familiar with the NAPLIS City. I just want to say a few things. I actually think that in some ways, the accountability side of the equation kind of worked as well in Minneapolis as one could expect it to go. There were policies in place that allowed not just Officer Chauvin, but all of the officers on scene to be terminated from the PD without taking very long. So that was good that they had those policies in place. Legally, as we saw from the justice system, at least criminally, Officer Chauvin was convicted. That is also good and appropriate. So in that way, I think the accountability side worked out as we would want it to. Now there are still some things to worry about. I mean, particularly we might worry about the initial report that came out of MPD which initially presented the death of Mr. Floyd just as a kind of death owing to a health incident of a person in the custody. So we're not worried about it. Whether or not there would be safeguards in place to make sure that would be caught without needing to resort to just to a cell phone video taken by a bystander. But, so I'm optimistic at least that many of the things that allowed for that accountability to happen in the case of Officer Chauvin in MPD also exists for the most part with Burlington PD. I think that we have some of the same policies in place at all that kind of a conflict happened. I think that Burlington PD also has at least some additional safeguards if somebody dies in Officer Custody, the police commission will be able to see some of that. And so I think there'd be less of a worry that the department could present that information in a completely different way than would be appropriate. Although we might still want to worry about whether or not the police commission has access to all the information they would need to ensure that certain incidents which might be problematic don't escape our attention. So we always might want to keep a look at that. But of course, accountability is only one piece of the puzzle. And so, and one, I think that in this case there's a kind of perfect storm of, that allowed for that accountability to happen. Even in the case of Officer Chauvin, you still have use of force officers testifying and during the trial that this was kind of in accordance with typical officer use of force that the reason why officers might behave in this way. And I think it is the existence of department policy which says some of these behaviors are not permitted and the recognition that a reasonable officer would have to accord with department policy which allowed for some of those moves by the defense to not work. But in some ways it was a kind of perfect storm. And I think that there are a lot of cases that we might worry about with officer misgivings, officer misconduct, potential officer misconduct around the country where those conditions don't hold. And so, or some people say, oh, like this is a case with often, now that Officer Chauvin has been convicted that indicates that something different is going to happen another case going forward. And there's no particular reason, I think nationwide to think that we still have to worry about whether or not those conditions hold. So, I think that there's still things to worry about with respect to accountability. Almost things can be done by Vermont State Legislature. I mean, qualified meaning can be addressed by the Vermont State Legislature, but wants to. But there are other things that I think can be done by the city as well. But I just think that Congress is one piece of the puzzle. And I think that we also need to worry about some other things. So, the first thing we need to worry about is just what it is that we're asking officers to do. And anytime the state or the city is asking somebody to have the power to take someone into custody or the power to resolve disputes using something other than just words, that's an instance of policing, right? The person has a gut or not, that's an instance of policing. If someone wants to write a civil ticket, that's an instance of policing. So, but I think that we should wonder whether or not all of these cases that officers are responding to is that we want officers to respond to. Just like what exactly the mission of policing is, what the scope of the mission of policing is, something that I think that we should be worrying about. The second is kind of what tools officers are given to carry out that mission. So, right now, obviously officers carry firearms, this is one tool, but officers have, in general, a number of tools that they can use in order to carry out that mission. And we might wonder whether or not the tools that they're given are appropriate tools to be given. The third thing is just how officers are trained to use those tools. And obviously some of that training happens at the Vermont Police Academy. Commissioner Grant has already expressed some concerns about some aspects officers might be trained in the Vermont Police Academy. I shared just general concerns about some aspects of how officers are trained at the Vermont Police Academy. But of course, Orange and Police Department has some capacity also to retrain and modify training officers receive. So, I think that that's something that should be something which is of debt as well. So, because I think that there is always a worry that officers might use their discretionary judgment poorly and using the tools that they're given in order to carry out the mission that they're tasked with carrying out. And the question becomes like, how do we account for cases where officers are using their discretionary judgment poorly or they're using tools that they ought to be given, but they're using those tools in inappropriate ways. I think sometimes it's expressed that, oh, so long as it's a legal use of these tools that officers are given, then it's a permissible use of these tools. But of course, I think that that's not correct, right? We want to find ways to reward officers to incentivize officers or to appreciate officers that are using those tools with the right amount of discretionary judgment while also finding ways to correct or help officers that are not using their discretionary judgment correctly. So, and I think all that happens prior to accountability, right? In fact, accountability, of course, we want to not only be able to hold officers responsible professionally, whether that's suspensions, whether that's being fired, that's being decertified, but also hold officers liable civilly and permanently when it's appropriate. But then all those things need to be done. I think that kind of focusing on one aspect of it is not the right thing to do. People sometimes say, let's just worry about accountability. Let's just worry about training or just worry about one other thing. All those things need to be looked at. But I think it's also, it's bigger than just a bunch of police commission, right? So I certainly hope that the police commission can continue to work with both kind of partners at the state level, partners in the city and in the state's attorney's office, et cetera, to kind of figure out ways to address some of these broad issues that I think need to be addressed but not lose track of the fact that it's a very big thing. So like I said, so I just want to talk about that when I was thinking about George Floyd today as I thought about him many times in the last year and there's a lot of stuff to do but I think that things can be done and I'm optimistic about the progress that the city seems committed to make in trying to address some of the problems. That's it. Thank you, Mr. Chair. No, thank you. I believe this is your last meeting with us. Yeah, so, I mean, I try to find the right words here to say but I mean, thank you so much for everything that you've done for me personally. I think it's a commission and I know the commission will certainly miss you but I think more so, I think Barrelton's gonna miss you. So honestly, from all my heart, thank you for everything you've helped me out with. Always being there, answering my phone calls or responding to my emails at 2.30 plus in the morning. I don't know how you were able to do that. Thank you for all that. But yeah, just thank you for your work, Kevin and your leadership throughout all this. So, second the board opens up, you'll be getting a phone call from me for sure. So, thank you very much and good luck and good speech. You've all got my phone number. Always happy to take any calls. Stephanie. I, Randall, I want to thank you too. I'm sorry I had such a short amount of time to work with you on the commission but you've, I so appreciate your thoughtfulness and your analytical skills and it's really added tremendously. So, I really want to thank you. Awesome. Any other commissioner updates or comments? Well, I had one, but now I'm, I thought we had one more month with you, Randall. I will say that your green is what I admire you and I am so grateful for what you have brought to this commission. There is no question in my mind that you have made it a better commission and I'm so grateful for that. So, on to my business, I just wanted to let you all know what I'm doing with complaints that come into Jabu and me. Jabu is passing them on to you. I, DC Sullivan and I have communicated and Stephanie as well on how do we make sure that the commission is on the same page with the department and making sure that all complaints that come in are seen through to completion and track. So, for now until we're able to get on the same system, I am just, I'm maintaining my own spreadsheet. And then I thought when we're in executive session, we can make sure that we're on the same page with the status of each of the cases. I don't know how folks feel about that if you'd like to see something else, but this is just an interim measure to make sure we don't lose track of anything that comes in. I have no problem with how it's being done on the interim until we get a better system moving forward. Okay, and DC Sullivan, I presume we'll continue to work on that so that access to your system at some point, your tracking system. Yes, I mean, we are currently also using the spreadsheet. I know we have published somewhat of an optimized version, but I think we would come up with something a little different as far as sharing it with the commission. Okay, okay, that was all I wanted to just make sure that folks were aware and had input if they disagreed with how I was approaching it for now. Mila, see your hand raised. Thank you. And I also wanted to thank Mr. Harper for his words and his service, and I've found his insights and information to be very helpful, not only in the commission, but also on the committee to review policing policies. So I really appreciate that. And then the second thing I wanted to talk about is there any update on the information that was requested regarding information on training? Chair and commissioner grant, if I may, I do sincerely apologize. The records department that handles and training that handles keeping track of all of that initially was able to pull that spreadsheet very quickly on the very broad view of the dates and what the topic was on the training. And their time has been consumed in pulling the data that CNA has requested. And so unfortunately, the deeper dive into the last four, I know it was the last four years that you had requested commissioner grant, they are working on it. And I don't wanna say that CNA has taken priority, but it has taken priority. And I do want to make sure that we get that for you for next meeting. I know I said that last month, but they have been pulled and strapped in getting CNA that information. And so I apologize. Okay, understood. Thank you very much for the update. And I definitely understand. Thank you. Thank you. All right, I believe we'll send you a further question. Any comments from commissioners? Hopefully that closes out that agenda item. Next agenda item is next meeting agenda items. I also can't think of any off the top of my head right now. So please email me, text me, whatever, within the next couple of weeks. And so put that agenda together for next month's meeting. And I believe the fourth Tuesday of the month falls on the 22nd of June. So that's tentatively for our next meeting at the police commission, not our NAICAL training, which I'll see you all at this Thursday at 5.30 PM. So that closes that agenda item. And I would like to make a motion to go into executive session. Oh, sorry, before that, we have things to discuss in the executive session. So I'd like to make a motion to go into executive session, to discuss citizen complaints and officer discipline. Do I have a second? Seconded by commissioner Seguino. All in favor of running into executive session. Discuss disciplinary matters and citizen complaints. Raise your hand or say aye. Aye. That passes unanimously. I wanna say that at the conclusion of executive session, we will adjourn the meeting and there'll be no actual items taken. So, I'm forgetting here. So with that, I say it is 9.13. As always, I have to use the bathroom at this point of the meeting. So I say we recess and we reconvene in seven minutes, which would be 9.20 for executive session. Jared, I did send you an email. So you have that link. Okay. Thank you so much. And so with that, thank you everybody in the public. That's still tuned in for us. Hope to see you at 5.30 p.m. on Thursday for the make call training. Thank you again, Randall, for everything, all your service and yeah, we'll see y'all in a couple of days. Everyone have a good night. Thank you.