 Okay, so today is March 22nd, it's 5.20 p.m. and this is the Public Safety Committee. The first item on the agenda is a motion to adopt the agenda. I would move to adopt the agenda. Okay, thank you. Thanks, Jane. I'll second that. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. And opposed? We have an agenda. We do have this nagging issue of these two minutes and we have them both posted. Maybe the best thing to do, Jane, since you're here is move the ones for the 15th and if Soraya comes on for the 8th and we'll deal with those after, but just so that we can at least get one of them done if that's okay. Absolutely. So I would move to approve the minutes from Tuesday, March 15th. That's great. I will second that. All those in favor? Aye. And we have those minutes. Thanks so much, Jared, and thanks to Thomas as well. I have not looked to see Jared. Are there members of the public that are here? No, not at this time. Okay. So given that we can open the public forum and then just close the public forum as there were no members of the public, if there end up being members of the public, then we can go back or they can speak during the discussion, which leads us to the event of the day, which is the continuing CNA report. We had gotten to Section 6 at the last meeting. We did it very briefly so as to get that done, but I know that Soraya had wanted to potentially be able to revisit. I think there's only two items in Section 6. And then we had decided to do Section 6 and 7 and 9 tonight, mostly because that way we could just do 8 all at one time, and that will be at our last meeting on the 28th, which is next Tuesday. So I guess probably the... Oh, and there were two other things I just also wanted to mention before we get to that. The first is last night, the Board of Finance and the Council approved the spending of $1,500 out of the Council Initiatives Fund in order to have all of our meetings posted on town meeting TV to their YouTube channel. So they will be extremely accessible and that passed unanimously by the Council. And then the other thing also is that I will try very hard to get a draft of the report that will go to the Council and to have that done by the 28th, 29th, or it's right before the end of March so that we can have that to get to the Council by March 31st. So as far as Section 6, I don't see any more changes to it. If there were, if there was anyone who wanted to give some input into Section 6, we can revisit them on what these relate to our patrol operations by geographic area. And there were just two recommendations. One was to continue to adjust patrol assignments and determine resource allocation. And then the other was to develop a deeper socioeconomic bias analysis by area that includes a review of the type of incidents, response times, demographic data of officers, victims, and suspects, as well as community feedback. And don't know if anyone would like to be able to speak to that. That was what Soraya had wanted to revisit. And I know Mila was with us last week, as well as Jane and Nick, if there were others and also the Chief and Orrin was also there. There's anyone who has anything they'd like to add to those, then we can incorporate those as well. If not, I think trying to remember exactly how that, how that, what we had, I don't know that there was anything that was really discussed other than, I think what we had left the last conversation that we had left was just simply that, you know, we were obviously in agreement. The first item isn't really a recommendation, more just an observation that we would continue, obviously, that we would, that would be a priority, but not, it was really not really a recommendation per se. The other was more of a discussion because that revolved around the need for data. And that is an IT issue. And I think the way that we had left that, trying to remember how we left that at the very end, I think it was more just simply that that was a goal based on the fact that we don't have, you know, a tremendous amount of resources at this time, given the number of officers, but that this was an opportunity to use non-sworn personnel and as well the foods model that will be coming on, they'll be coming online this summer. Milo, maybe you can refresh my memory. Please go ahead. Oh, I'm sorry. Are we talking about 6.1.2? Well, that was where we had left, that was where we had left things. We sort of had discussed it, but Soraya wanted to be, wanted to revisit that. So I wasn't really sure exactly where we left that. Do you remember? Not completely. So I just wanted to clarify, I am always for more data rather than less. And I think more data will definitely help policing and allocating resources throughout the city. But there is, in terms of a resources issue, the police commission has been told in the past that there are certain limitations with regards to staff, regarding people who, the individuals who work and put together these data requests. And so that is certainly something that needs to be looked at by the city because I feel without resolving those issues it will continue to put us at a disadvantage in terms of making progress. The department needs to be willing to look at more data and the city needs to provide the resources to make sure that the data is provided. Thank you. Okay, maybe in the interest of time we can come back, we can come back to six if Soraya has other things she wanted to add and then we can continue with seven. So I have to, I have to confess on the, in section seven there are, there's I don't know, I guess about 13 maybe or so recommendations. And I don't know how others felt about this. I had a tough time going through this mostly because I'm just not well enough informed to know how many, you know, for example how many case detectives are needed, how many, you know, intelligence, you know, you know, how many sergeants and police officers are needed for crime suppression. Or I mean the only thing that I personally had an opinion on was the domestic violence prevention officer. I saw that as incredibly important and that we not eliminate the position. But I was at a bit of a loss to know what to say about the other things. And I'm wondering maybe if there are others that have, you know, more experience with this, perhaps just simply an opinion. You know, and I mean, I wasn't really sure how to go with that. I don't know if others did as well. Jeff, I see your hand. Please go ahead. Yeah, you can see that I have a common thread in section seven. You know, the business community marketplace was kind of kept out of this discussion early on, whatever reason. I think if we were involved, everyone would have a better understanding of what we have to deal with the business community, you know, our visitors, everybody that comes downtown to enjoy downtown. We've got a lot of negative behavior we're dealing with. And now retail theft is ratcheted up. It's everywhere. It's really horrible. And, you know, CVS Pharmacy called me their landlord. I've got one store at a 10,000 and they call me because they have a problem in their store, both inside and outside. So, you know, if that's, if those are the kind of calls that are coming in from retailers and all these retailers and restaurant tours here from their customers, and it's rather very, it's very discouraging to see what's going on out there. And we just need more officers in downtown patrolling on a daily basis. So, and then I think, Karen, you're right about the detectives, you know, probably need more detectives with everything that the CNA report is asking for and suggesting the workload on Wellington Police Department is going to increase. Now, maybe that's not officers per se, but it looks like it would increase the workload for officers as well. So, you know, definitely, I think we've got to go back to staffing levels that we had before this all started. So, those are my thoughts. Maybe for the, maybe Jabu or Milo, I mean, you have much more, well, how wonderful. I see both of you have your hands raised. So, actually, Jabu, please go ahead. Oh, thank you. So, I, so scheduling and how the schedule is, is kind of a shape is a fully bargained, fully bargained thing. I'm sorry, I can't English today for some reason. And what's happening said, but I'm very much, I would love to see a different, different staffing model. But I think before we can get there, I think the further, as we integrate newer, new CSL and CSOs, and with the COS model, I think over time it will be much easier to change the schedule once we see kind of how these things kind of take things off the place of the sworn officers. And it might also have better buy-in once the COS model is implemented and see how that works out. But either way, though, this is going to be, this is a bargain rule action that will require a lot of buying from the officers, which, from my understanding, one of their biggest perks is the current schedule. So, yeah. Yeah, I have nothing else to say. Okay. Amilo. Thank you. So, along the lines of what Jabu just mentioned, I agree with some things because we, with regards to the current staffing level, some of these recommendations, it's whatever the department can do right now and also meet the needs of the officers. So, previously, we had had our previous chiefs say that, oh, the shifts served too long and that's why some mistakes were made. But talking to officers, they really love the current shift structure. So, that input is really important because that's part of, you know, a job perk for lack of a better thing. So, better reasons. So, for the first two, 7.11 and 7.21, I was really given the staffing issues and also the city council vote, that BPD is really the ones to weigh in on these areas. And then with regards to some of these others, there was some that I was able to agree on. And then there was some where I wanted clarification on certain positions and discussing the ramifications. Like, do we actually want to get up to the point where we do have nine detectives, again, because of the increase in drug activity. I wanted some more information on 7.51. I wanted some more information on the domestic violence prevention officer and what that officer did because I think the position might currently not be filled or even was eliminated. So, I'd like to get that clarified so that I have the proper information. And, you know, what did that position do that wasn't, I guess I'd like to know that all officers know what they need to know about domestic violence and responding to it. And some of the others needing more information, which I guess we can get to as we get to each one, but just in general to respond to Mr. Nick regarding previous discussions. This goes back to and I've mentioned this when I can to members of the business community. There is no effort to keep business, the business community out of discussions. We need the business community to be aware of when discussions are happening so that they can actively participate. And I can, I'd be happy to have another conversation with him about that, but I just want to be very careful about trying to say, oh, we, you know, conversations pushed out the business community. This goes back to the business community, really being more informed on the issues as a whole in Burlington, because that affects how the overall community feels and, you know, when they give feedback to the people that represent them, decisions can be made that can affect not only the downtown area, but other areas of the city where there also other businesses. And I know some businesses are not going to want to hear this, but I would like, I'm not sure with the increase in retail theft with which I acknowledge is a problem. It's not only a problem in Burlington, it's a problem in Vermont, it's a national problem. We see a lot of areas that are even experiencing these extremes, you know, snatch and grabs where they're literally in broad daylight, just people going in, smashing windows, grabbing stuff, really coordinated stuff. So this is a national problem and businesses as a whole have to look at their loss prevention strategies much deeper than they've ever probably had to before. And they have to say, what can we do within our businesses to reduce this? Because the fact of the matter is you can't have a police officer inside every business with retail theft. It's the prevention has to start with the business. It's officers arrive after can they get descriptions of people, can they look at camera footage, things like that. In terms of prevention, stopping something before it happens, it's really up to especially the larger sizes and the drug stores, you know, maybe they're going to have to go the route that a lot of drug stores go. When I go outside of the state of Vermont, I rarely go into a drugstore or pharmacy, CBS, Walgreens, et cetera, that isn't paying for their own security. Like it is very routine to see security guards in these stores when you get outside of Vermont. So really looking at a loss prevention strategy, that's, and that may be something that the business community needs to be supported in, you know, needs to have ideas. But to expect a placement of police officers to be in the quote, unquote, right place at the right time to actually prevent retail theft, I don't think that's quite frankly, very realistic. It's in some ways it's like bicycle theft. You can't put a police officer next to every bicycle in the city of Burlington. People have to have a personal prevention strategy in place to make it more difficult for their bicycles to be stolen. It's, so those are just some of my thoughts on that. Thank you. Okay. Jeff, I just want to be, before I get to you, I did want to acknowledge, Hannah, I saw the comment that you had, and I would like to go back to that. So if you can just give me a minute, we'll let Jeff respond. And let's just please try our best to make sure that we continue moving forward. We only really have about an hour and, you know, and trying our best to get through section seven if we can. Go ahead, Jeff. Okay, I won't belabor this. To address Milo's comment about the business community's involvement, I did reach out via Zoom to a few of those meetings. You may recall to see it when we were discussing this, and it has to be included. And for some reason, we were not brought into the discussion. So that's that. As far as loss prevention goes, yes, CVS can afford to and Walgreens already has hired their own security people. For the small mom and pop merchants that we have largely, the ones that we really value, they cannot afford. And they have retail clerks, young female clerks in the store. They are not equipped to deal with the retail stuff that they're seeing. So yes, we need officers on the street. That's the deterrent in and of itself. So we need, when we're paying a huge amount of taxes, you took away, you defunded the police 30%, our taxes never went down. And everybody's beside themselves down here, the small mom and pops, these boutiques are really struggling with retail theft. And it's very concerning when you have somebody coming in just ripping off stuff off the shelf and putting in a bag and leaving. And when they do try to stop them, oh my God, the threats they get, it's really unnerving. So more officers on the street is certainly part of the strategy that we need to employ here. Thank you. Thanks so much. So, Hannah, I saw the comment that you had on section seven. And I don't want to ask the question for you, but I thought it was a very good question. And we have the acting chief, we have Detective Byrne who's here. And I don't know the answer. So I'd be interested as well. Yeah. And I do just, and I just sent it out to the email thread, but I just want to say 7.7.1 is supposed to be disagree. Autocrat takes over. And then the 7.7.8, 7.8.1, geez, is also supposed to say disagree next to the comment, I guess tentatively to that. And I just want to make that clarification. Anyways, yeah, so that question, and I think that you're referring to the one on the unit for special investigations. Are you referring to that particular question I put with that? Well, you had two questions. And the first one was about, was on 7.1.1, which I think is sitting on an issue, sort of related to some degree, I think, to just simply officer wellness. And, you know, you don't have good, you don't have good officers if officers are burned out. Yeah. So the reason why I asked that question is like, yes, that, but also it's like, you know, anybody that works with the public, especially in situations that they hit burnout, not only like putting the risks to the people that they're trying to support, it's putting the risk to themselves. So I'm just curious, like I know, you know, staffing is a concern at mitigating burnout. But I'm curious about what current steps, what are the desired steps for that? And then I can always get to my other question on the 7.8.1 when we get there. But yeah, that is the reason behind that question. Okay, so if that either the chief, maybe this is more a question for the chief. Do you see that question? Or perhaps you can just simply respond to what Hannah had just asked, if you're able. So, I mean, issues around staff, you know, the way to minimize staffing stresses is by having adequate staffing. And how that's created is what we've been debating for the past two years. What we haven't done is come close to creating. So at the moment, we have, at the moment, we have, you know, fewer than, fewer than 60 effective police officers. And from those come all the ranks and all the things that we do. And that ends up meaning that we have about 22 on patrol, that's more than 50% down than it has been in the past. And that is an untenable situation with regard to officer exhaustion and overtime and burnout. And although we have started filling in some other ranks around it, none of those positions does all the things that a police officer does. So as we look at these, or at least as that a police officer did. And so as we look out at the role, we're in a spot where we're just trying to figure out how to make as to do as much as we can with what we currently have. We've been doing that over the past two years now, almost two years. It's going to get tighter this summer. And then simultaneously, we need to try to rebuild, but the rebuilding process is going to take much longer than the creative destruction that basically happened with regard to trying to find new ways of doing things. I guess, too. And thank you so much for that response and providing that information. I also am thinking about because we are taking the steps the cap was raised in October. So hopefully, those steps will be taken based on the response that you provided. That is the desire that is like what the police department says that they need for adequate support of their staff. I'm curious, though, because even with staffing levels going up, considering, quite frankly, the type of society that we are living in, the cultural aspects of it all, the fact that higher poverty rates tend to lead to higher rates of like mental health issues and substance abuse issues and really anything that can cause further duress in a community, which is what public safety is set to address, that type of impact on the people in public safety can be really heavy. And so I'm thinking, too, and that's why an answer may not be able to be provided today. But what is the 10,000 foot view and desire for addressing burnout as we are looking at ways to better public safety for all in the city? And to me, that includes those who work in public safety because even before staffing levels dropped, there was still burnout. There's still burnout that exists. And so that's why I'm asking the question as well, it's because I do want to think about that bigger picture in the future because to me that is a huge part of adequate and successful public safety. And I understand that there's like no response to that right now. So anyways. Well, there were a couple of things that were mentioned. One has to do with the notion that raising the cap as happened in October means that instantaneously or even rapidly the number goes back and it doesn't. It takes years and years to hire police officers and to actually grow any police department absent some sort of extraordinary expenditure on recruitment and advertising efforts. And I just want to interrupt you. I think it's, I'm sorry, really, really quick. I want to interrupt you because I just want to correct that that assumption that that's where I'm coming from is not correct. I know I just want to make that clear. I know that that's not how it works. And I just want to make it clear that I know that's not how it works with any sort of report recruitment for any type of staffing. I'm more so talking about when you do get to that point. What other steps are we going to be looking at to adequately support those in public safety and preventing burnout? That's a great question. That's a terrific question. And it's one that is difficult. It was officer wellness, officer safety and wellness was pillar six of President Obama's 21st century task force on policing. It is a pillar that is one that there are a lot of different answers to and a lot of those answers are frankly kind of superficial. There are discussions about morale boosting efforts or efforts around, I mean, officer safety is something that can be accomplished with regard to technology, better equipment, better training, more time for training. Officer wellness is a little bit more complicated. Do you have good peer support? Do you have warning systems for officers who are showing signs of stress? And you're right that even before the headcount began to rapidly diminish, there were people who experienced burnout. There is a big difference between experiencing burnout because you're passionate about the work or there's a really tough week that happens versus what has essentially been for most of these officers 19 months now of constant stress along those lines. And amounts of overtime that are far, far greater than they've ever been requested and required to do. So that is a great question. How do we address that? When we finally get to a point where we are staffed in a way that's a little bit more robust than we are now and can start thinking about saying, okay, we can take a breather and we can actually back off and it's not all going to fall apart. What are we going to do for those officers who are in that place? Because right now what we have is officers who have been running full speed for months and months and they're not getting weekends off. They are frequently coming in long before their shift and staying long after their shift. And this isn't uniform. This is in New York City after 9-11, there were no weekends. Everyone did 12-hour seven-day week shifts for the next about seven months after 9-11. It tapered off. But the first three months now that is different than we are. I'm not claiming that we're there. Officers do have weekends. Officers take their time off, but they also are coming in far, far more often than they ever did and they're doing it in ways that are more stressful because they are required. It's one thing for an officer to say, I'm going to voluntarily sign up for noise patrol in the Hills section that's co-funded by UVM in order to deal with party noise. And I'm going to pick to do that on a weekend that works for me and I'm going to choose this Friday because I don't have anything else going on and I'm going to make some extra money for whatever I want to spend that money on. It is different that than it is to say, you must come in this weekend and it's not about a noise patrol. It's about regular staff work on a shift because we don't have enough people. And if you're not there, we don't have enough people. And those are two very different stresses. So how are we going to confront that and address it and then hopefully find healthy ways to deal with it once we have that pause? I don't know. And that pause is unfortunately a year or more off because although we are going to make efforts at recruitment and growing again, we are going to lose more officers than we bring aboard in the next continuing for the next year. And there's no recruitment plan that can overcome what we've hired essentially two officers since October. And in that time, I believe we've lost seven. So I'm sorry, three officers in that time and we've lost seven. So we're going to continue to see that for the near term the next several months. And then your question is a wonderful one and a really meaningful one. Thank you so much. I just wanted to, I'm a huge fan of asking questions. Y'all might have noticed it with my responses on the spreadsheet. It's because I want to gather a better understanding because I don't like to make essentially give my opinion without understanding the background. So thank you so much for providing that full background. And yeah, I also like to plant seeds in my question. So I really hope that when that time comes, that seed is planted and that will be taken up with that. Thank you. So I don't want to add your hand up and then you took it down. I don't know, maybe you got you got busy and needed to go elsewhere or if you wanted to add something to that. No, I was going to kind of just veer back on to just the assessment in general and, you know, how I think it's flawed. But I've seen Commissioner Grant had her hand up. So I just wanted to give her the opportunity to respond to the chief before I was going to take a soft track. Well, I mean, you know, we're happy to hear what you have to say. I mean, we can all, we'll just all have to take turns. If you wanted to add something, we're happy to hear it. And yeah, I don't mind if I'm just again, though, Commissioner Grant wants to talk about officer welfare. I'm happy to listen to that mind. My kind of the point is it's going to be long winded, I'm afraid. So I don't mind yielding to Commissioner Grant until so she gets her point out. Okay, all right. Milo, go ahead. I'll just be rapid fire. Definitely support officer wellness. The police commission actually a few months ago had a wonderful speaker talking in detail about that. So do encourage people to review previous police commission meetings for that speaker, as well as many other speakers that talk about the things that are going on, how they affect officers and also how this affects the community as a whole. So really looking at things in a holistic way. Be happy to talk to Mr. Nick about engagement regarding businesses was personally attended almost all the Talitha groups to stakeholders of one of which was business. And I'll just say I said it then I'll say it again. Business owners have to be really aware of what's going on in Burlington, especially if they don't live in Burlington. So that means I have to be willing to watch our city council meetings, other commission meetings and have a understanding of what's being said in the community, this idea that they have to wait to to be invited that that's not true of anyone. Everyone has to make a decision that they want to be part of the process that you know the door is is is not closed. And then I had something else that I am forgetting so I'm just going to yield to Lauren to make his comments. Thank you. Okay, thanks a lot. Lauren, did you want to add anything? Yes, please. Yeah, just in regards to the the number that CNA kind of went with. Yeah, I just have some you know on the union we just have like some serious reservations about how they how they came up with how they landed on that number. I understand the formula they use like to rule 60. It makes sense. Saturation index makes sense. No, we disagree with the discretionary they a lot of discretionary time that the calculators and it really comes down to you know the data that they use was inappropriate and it came up with a flawed results. When you look at what the data they used was they they they used CalRMS data. So for people who don't you don't know that is like a CalRMS is a computer a the dispatch record management system. It's a computer program that aids dispatch and assigning officers work and then the records management system basically just it's a place for officers to compile their reports and you know evidence for their investigation but by no means does it capture an officer's work product or investigation. Just to give like one I'm really sorry it's a long drawn out example but it kind of really speaks as a point. I went to a I had a crime last year and it was reported on the 20th of a month. The crime was basically somebody smashed into a car and they robbed the content they stole the contents of the car. I was dispatched to it so the CalRMS basically started the timer as soon as I was dispatched it recorded the time that I was on scene and then within that time I started that investigation. There's another similar crime reported that you know it kind of led me to believe that you know the same individuals did it. Another car was smashed into and the contents that was stolen that was captured in CCTV around security footage outside of Walgreens. We got a pretty good description subject and direction of travel. They went into the marketplace garage which has like a bunch of cameras there so our dispatchers were able to see the car that the two suspects got in. The car left. I then got another as I was going to the second crime scene a call came out down at Shaw's no I'm sorry Market 32 where somebody was trying to use a credit card that wasn't theirs and when they reported the name on the credit card it was one of the victims so you know myself and a few other officers went down to Shaw's we I started Market 32 couldn't find the suspects of Market 32 so we went to Shaw's where the car was located and the two suspects were in close proximity. So I recognized one of the suspects that somebody I dealt with before they had a warrant for their arrest that they were taken into custody brought back to the police department the other suspects turned out to have a suspended license. The rules of criminal procedure allowed me to take that person into custody and bring him back to the police department. I wasn't able to hold that suspect the person with the criminally suspended license. I wasn't able to lodge him in jail through the criminal procedure didn't allow me and I didn't have enough evidence gathered to kind of like you know prove all the families that that I suspected them of committing so he was released on the citation to appear of course I knew I could change the charges of their dates so that's why I like to do the other suspect he had a warrant so he had so they had to go up to Northwest Correctional Facility that alone is a two hour trip I sorry a two hour round trip you know approximately that much I got back to the city and then over the next eight days I basically just investigate the rest of the the elements of that crime I researched other similar crimes in the area I found approximately five I believe it was five crimes have been committed that day but report to other officers I contacted all those victims arranged interviews I watched hours and hours of security footage turned out the car was stolen so that they were operating so I contacted the victim of the stolen car those victims came in their retreat stolen footage I got more interviews to like further support any elements of crime and then I compiled all that evidence I figured out that there was probably that there was approximately 28 crimes committed and then I wrote 10 pages of affidavit and eight days later I submitted those charges however if you look at the cna analysis of the cad rms system that that investigation that took me you know eight days and then in those eight days I was taking other calls I speeded other calls of services and by my discretionary time I was investigating you know this these other 28 crimes the cad rms system that cna says that used to calculate the number of officers says that from start to finish that investigation took me four hours and 45 minutes and I completed that all in the one day so that's it's kind of just an example of how flawed using that days it was and you know by no means am I alone and in this type of investigations like officers routinely go to a call as soon as the work that's needed to be done on scene is finished we go back in service and again the cna are saying now we have discretionary time but it does not take into any sort of consideration how much time we spend documenting our reports investigate our sorry documenting our efforts investigating our crimes you know nothing it literally just captures time unseen time on scene you know there's there's an awful lot that was missing that data which came which kind of like resulted in this you know number that it is you know in our opinion you know really under under staff in the department so that's my long-winded explanation there if I could happen after that and I appreciate the detail I have noticed something that concerned me because I'm not really sure as much as it's a cna issue as much as it is how we track or don't track certain activities an example I'll quickly give is on a ride-along officer kept himself in service while also following up on a case right so we lose that information and the reason for doing that was kind of a reflection of of the shortage in terms of not wanting to put himself out of service while he did this follow-up visit regarding a particular case um just in case something came in that required more immediate attention so I think that it needs to be looked at and then follow there was a kind of additional conversation about a number of different types of incidents where officers are doing a significant follow-up but it's it's not captured um so that that's definitely an issue and that is definitely something that needs to be looked at in terms of how are we um what can be done to to improve capturing all of that information um is the current system underused is the current system you know is it is it adequate or if it's not adequate uh what are the the you know what are the options of improving it or is it just a a symptom of the current staffing levels and officers feeling the pressure to keep themselves in service as much as as possible so that these these follow-ups that they're actually out there actively working on aren't being being tracked in the way that we need them to be tracked thank you we have Jeff then Zariah then Oren go ahead Jeff um I was thinking about this and then Oren gave um his recap of eight days and what he was up to and you know what the cna report is asking of the police department just hearing what Oren goes through you know I I got to believe it and we're not experts here most of us so you know we've got to really rely on the police department and in the administration and chief you're ad to tell us if we want all this done what is it going to take what is the staffing level we we we really can't understand what the staffing level is I think it's got to go back to where it was before all this started or more because we're dealing with so much out there in terms of drugs and theft and everything in the homeless population and you know but I think we've got to rely on the the department to tell us what and then of course it's going to come down to what city council going to approve for a budget so for us to sit here as I we need one more of this and three more of that is I don't know if that's a worthy effort I think we got to really help this department maybe prioritize where we should go but to pick and choose the numbers I don't think we're we're you know we're capable of that okay Soraya how are you haven't seen you haven't seen you in a few hours I I think maybe about 12 um go ahead um sorry yeah I think on the I guess the first because I guess I'm confused as to why we think that doesn't why we think that the cna method didn't capture it with the 60% method because I guess my understanding was and this is just from a consultant background it's like okay for the call hours where you're active you've got so much time and then you've essentially got like a little less than half of your time that's overhead or the I forget the word that they use to scrub not to scrub and see discretionary um time so um are we just saying that that 60 assumption we just don't think holds or that that I I guess it wasn't to me that they were saying only the time on call counts um and then I just had a general I don't I missed the first two minutes so I don't know if there was a start to this or people if there was a question that prodded this or we just started talking about stuff but I did also just want to talk through because there were some recommendations in the cna report that weren't numbered as recommendations and I wanted to make sure that we didn't miss those um and they were kind of in section or at least I put my comment between 10 and 11 um I don't between are you talking line item or are you talking like the record between 7.10 and 7.11 because it was on pocket you're not allowed in the table okay on on page 87 and I just want to make sure we go over it and I'm just going to briefly summarize them but there was a recommendation to change to make some changes around false alarms so either doing something around the ordinance and or having more proactive false alarm programs and or exploring double verification and then the second one was around vehicle accidents and changing our response to those because there seemed to be a thought that we spent a lot of time on false alarms and vehicle accidents that didn't have sufficient property damage or injury to warrant police response and again I think that was not so those were not for some reason those were not put on unless they're part of something else yeah no they didn't list them as numbered recommendations they just said we recommend as in a paragraph okay huh all right I get I did not see those either um well the where we are now just so you know Zariah was so we we started a little bit earlier um I don't know if you got that email but and you may have other things you needed to attend to um we started by you know I had said you know section um section seven most of the items that are in section seven are bargainable we started at five yeah so that's okay that's all right so um you know what we the way that's what was sort of the way that I started it and said you know hey listen these are these are mostly bargainable issues for myself I struggled with completing this section mostly because of the fact that you know I just don't know enough to know whether we're you know how many sergeants we need or you know whether we need eight detectives or nine detectives you know that that to me is sort of a bit of you know a bit of something that's well I mean that's just items that are well beyond my purview the only thing that I had a specific opinion about was the elimination of the domestic violence officer position which I don't agree with um but other than that and so I'm sort of was sort of the way this sort of started out was and why we haven't really specifically talked about one item is because they're all in the same bucket of their bargainable issues maybe the the best way would be to go around and just talk about the things that we think are more important than less important um but I so I'm I'm sort of open to suggestions if you have an opinion about how to proceed best proceed yeah and it's I didn't I just copied in my recommendations with what the chiefs were and I guess to me it's not that none of this is important or worth talking about but I do wonder how relevant it is before we get the BPD staffing back up so I would personally be okay with the exception of some of those recommendations which I think are not that like they're about they're related to the problems with staffing or like staff load but they're not and maybe they put them in section eight I don't know um but with the exception of the ones that I just called out I'm I think there's I if I guess we could pull out some of the ones that were like oh this is important right now but I almost would say for a lot of the other ones I would be okay saying let's I don't know sorry I'm talking thinking out loud instead of having my thoughts prepared um I do like there's some things where it's like is this worth asking for flexibility on in the contract but I also don't know enough about like you know if in three years a lot has changed if it's worth just going back and negotiating some of this separately so I think a lot of these are relevant until we get the staffing levels to what is currently allowed I would tend to agree with that um Orrin did you have your hand up again uh yeah I just wanted to um answer uh Councillor Hightower's comments about the through the 60 and the discretionary time um just going back to like my my example of all those crimes that were permitted you know as a police officer I'm obligated to you know it's my job I I would say that I'm you know it's my job to investigate those crimes so if if I have to investigate those crimes you know the time I spend investigating those crimes is no longer discretionary therefore like the like you know by definition I I have to do it so I don't have discretion whether or not I do it or not you know I'm doing it because it's my job so with that in mind like the the data that CNA pulled from you know the CAD EMS it didn't capture you know my my full investigation it only captured when I was you know I got to the first call and I finished transporting the suspect up to up to correction of facility sites in Dobbins and came back that's it all that other all that other uh investigation you know wasn't wasn't recorded by the CAD EMS and that's that's not the function of of the the CAD EMS um so just kind of try that try that out there uh the data that that they used just you know wasn't wasn't appropriate for what they're trying to measure and from speaking to officers at the PD I don't know of any officer who was observed by CNA to understand how we work and and you know how we use our CAD EMS it just it didn't happen from what I can see yeah and I don't I I I don't know sorry can I can is it okay to keep going Karen sure of course yeah I guess I don't I guess my understanding of discretionary wasn't that you get to do with well like you're not doing your job at that time it's you know you're following up on you're like making decisions about rather than having an immediate thing in front of you that you need to respond to a call the 40% is discretionary in terms of your deciding like oh I'm now going to take this time since I have no calls right now these 30 minutes to you know follow up on this thing or like write this report is that not that's at least is that not what discretionary means to you no not not to me discretionary time would be I have completed you know any paperwork that really needs to be completed you know my discretionary time is I'm going to do foot patrol I'm going to try to do like proactive work like traffic enforcement you know if if I have an investigation to do you know I should I should be doing my investigation unless I'm directed you know like bar close and say traditionally we would have a lot of officers downtown at bar close and because we like to you know at the proactive presence you know deterred certain well at least the presence we're seeing is to turn certain amounts of anti-social behavior so you know in that sense I would uh you know that that would be in discretionary time where my my investigation would have maybe taken a back step to you know having to be down at bar closing for the sergeant directed me Bob now an investigation we have to do investigation so therefore you know it's not it's not really discretionary that you know we conduct an investigation we don't conduct investigation the investigation has to be done we have to do and then but there's a difference between the investigative unit and the patrol unit or at least a cna lays it out right in I can you just rephrase the question that the statement that I understand yeah it the the the the person from cna who did the staffing assessment is a former new york city police department person and there are clear delineations between investigatory roles and patrol roles there in fact if you are a patrol officer there are lots and lots and lots of functions that you will never get to do unless you leave patrol and move to a specialized unit because there are 36 000 police officers and all of them end up in some sort of specialty rule unless they're on patrol and patrol is is everything that's not a specialty rule one of the most astounding and impressive things that I found coming here was the degree to which the men and women in the department do multiple multiple roles and all wear multiple hats it is true that we have a detective services bureau and the case that oren just described is a borderline detective case with regard to the complexity of it and the fact that it is going to pull them away from a patrol for a certain amount of time but it's not a detective case a detective case is one that we refer and those include burglaries those include uh you know salt and robberies certain crimes of violence um there are also mid-level crimes especially around patterns at a different time oren's crime might have been if we if we'd attached it to a pattern or a series of automobile thefts and automobile uh or thefts from automobiles it would have gone to our street crime unit which uh the staffing analysis recommends we we uh recreate or or assign officers to again I would love to we are years away from having sufficient resources to do so so um the the the majority of officers have cases like the kind oren just described where they end up with something that is relatively large and requires a lot of follow-up work and additional kinds of of of investigation but not the kind of investigation that would cross the it's not a bright line but the line that separates our detective unit from the requirements of the road that's not the case in much bigger agencies where officers really are not allowed to do that kind of work in in the New York City for example the anti-crime team has a very specific delineation that they can only do investigations of up to three hours so if they get to a crime scene they are called to a crime scene because of a robbery they can canvass the neighborhood and do an investigation for that suspect for up to three hours after which point they have to remove themselves from it and turn it over to a detective unit that's not the case here some of what commissioner grant said with regard to her right along and observing the ways in which the CAD is or is not used is accurate but it's more than just the CAD system which has limitations it's also a cultural understanding inside the department that people when they are not directly engaged in something go 10-8 10-8 is the call sign for saying that i'm no longer directly engaged i'm available to take more calls and you never want to be not 10-8 unless you're literally working on something that is of that moment all the things that bern that officer bern described are things once he's done with that transport he comes back and then he says i got paperwork to do but i'm not 10-7 which means i'm here doing paperwork i'm still 10-8 because i can get up from this computer in my cruiser or at the desk and immediately engage in a call for service if necessary and i don't want to be the guy who leaves my co-workers hanging by not being around for calls that is a cultural phenomenon in the department it's an admirable cultural phenomenon and it was absolutely discounted by cna um then i have one more question which i'm probably going to leave just because i need to figure out how to phrase it but i do i guess karen want to hand it back to you and also ask the question on given that we like how do we want to proceed with what we do want to prioritize and whatnot and then the only thing that i want to flag again is those kind of recommendations that aren't yeah we definitely need to go to those i mean i might you know i mean i do tend to agree with you saraya that you know until we are in a position where we can even discuss these kinds of things about you know these different staffing recommendations that we um and we can and we can try to prioritize them they're all bargainable um not sure that you know between now and the next contract that those are going to be the priorities necessarily i think there's a lot of other priorities um i mean i'm happy to try to give that a shot if people want to go and you know if there are certain things that are a particular priority to people we can acknowledge them the other thing we also need to remember is that um made a made an agreement that we stop at 6 30 because there is a police commission meeting at 6 30 and two of us are going to have to get on that milo if you can if you have a brief comment i assume you have your hand up if you have a brief comment why don't we do that now uh thank you so um i disagree with the word discounted i think that cna worked with the data that they were given and um there was an opportunity to give them more data or to discuss the limitations of the system capturing this extra activity that officers were doing to be proactive to work other cases while keeping themselves available for calls i think instead of constantly trying to criticize the report we just have to take what we have and move forward and one of the things that the department's going to need to think about and my strongest recommendation is how to track this information because it's it's too much missing and i accept that that's an issue but i don't accept that that's the fault of cna um the and i will leave i will leave it at that i i i think there could be a whole discussion on what we do to capture this type of missing data thank you thank thanks so much so um sarah why don't we why don't under the committee conclusion for the for really what is all of section seven is that um recognizing the current level of staffing um that um you know we feel there the the the single most important issue um at this point is to um is dedication to the rebuilding plan that the chief will be bringing forward shortly um as per the press conference that he had with the mayor a couple of months ago um and that committee supports um more data um and supports um uh uh you know a collaborative effort with the recommendations of the cna report as well as the um you know the uh as well as finding ways better ways to track um you know to track officer activity and um you know when call when when officers are on duty and responding to calls um and i think maybe at that point we can sort of leave it at that um is there anyone who has any challenges with that basic 35 000 foot um conclusion um i made one small edit which says we feel the single most important issue is dedication to rebuilding department to the current cap of seven nine sworn officers okay all right and in addition and in addition you know incorporating over the next whatever the next two years um the non-sworn officer model um and and crisis response meaning cahoot and then we can you know i don't remember maybe what we'll do is maybe we maybe the thing to do is just i'll go back and look at what those things were you said they were on do you remember now what page that was that you said yeah it's page 87 to 88 okay all right um i think probably in the interest of time we probably just because they're you know the the last section of the report um is probably the easiest one to read because it's i think it's rather impossible not to agree with all the recommendations um basically what we're talking about is community policing strategies um you know and embedding community policing in bpd culture um working with community members to set up recurring opportunities for engagement um i don't know if anyone had any general comments about this section there are five recommendations if there were anything that people didn't feel was a priority or if there was anything that anybody wanted to speak to on those either one at a time um i know we only have a couple of minutes but just in the interest of trying our best to get through that section were there any were there any comments that anyone had on section nine that we should we should talk about and try to incorporate into the community the working groups conclusions i don't know if it's fair to give any section even if it isn't easy one five minutes well it's it's only easy because of the fact that you know i i don't know that anybody would disagree with it but if we if we take if we take each one at a time the first one was um the community policing strategies including some of the engagement activities um allow for positive relationship building i mean i don't know that that's really a recommendation it's really an observation um uh the others were about you know about the um uh you know consider redefining community oriented policing what that means on i know the the chief had put down that you felt that that with these things were done i wasn't sure how you know sometimes it's hard to say that they're done it sounds like to me they're more ongoing um would that be your assessment chief that these are really ongoing community engagement initiatives uh i mean for anything like this where you do have to continue to do it yes i would i would concur that those are things we are we want to continue to work on um we're you know i think that there are uh for example i think that that we did have community policing i think that our ability to do it now has been drastically reduced um i think that we do have ways to engage the public and involve them um i it was very it was wonderful that this meeting began with the very proud uh acknowledgement that there had been a vote from the council to televise these meetings going forward police commission meetings have been televised as long as i have been here in burlington um and uh so you know there's those steps and that's not to say that those steps can't be improved upon um again uh i think that that my notes on these uh were we're relatively clear on the idea that these are things that we do want to continue to do and work on um and it even says we want to we're placed to do this and continue and broaden the effort with regard to 9.3.1 for example so and the only one that isn't a done or fully agree is just because there's this mess this idea of a new strategic plan that doesn't come up anywhere else in the document just gets dropped in there and i'm i'm not keen on on promising a strategic plan based on 9.2.1 otherwise it is something that we're working on yeah i i noticed that as well i mean i know there was the visioning plan that we talked about in section one but i i didn't remember a strategic plan being mentioned per se um jeff go ahead please just real quickly my only thought here is to maybe call out that the business community be involved as well i mean it says community but i think by pointing that out that the business community is a valued partner here i think that should be included thank you great duly noted thanks milo and then i know you've got to both got to run go ahead yeah i'm going back to the previous discussion page 64 so on the screen we're only showing the actual recommendations but there are aspects in the report that review the methodology in detail and in addition to information that isn't what's isn't tracked currently um there is noted that unfortunately the bpd was not able to retrieve actual staffing information for the period we study um so instead of using actual staffing data we relied on the number of officers scheduled to be assigned to patrol during those time periods so there's there's estimates that they had to make because they didn't get data they needed from the department with regards to community engagement this is something that for anyone who's listened to me talking about issues with our department and our community since i started really becoming more involved uh with this going back to the committee to review policing policies what the department has thought in the past was engagement is i'm not sure was really sufficient because in certain parts of our community engagement what was lacking or really needed to be looked at differently in order to be more effective so i do believe there needs to be a strategic plan for engagement i i don't believe that we have to wait for the department to be fully staffed because i think there are things that can be done now um to improve engagement and um you know we're running out of time right now but i i mean i would like to know what the department feels they lost before and then also just just different things that we can literally be doing right now to increase the awareness throughout the whole city because once again we need to be looking holistically all of us no matter what area we come from in terms of being stakeholders representing uh different groups we all have to be thinking holistically not thinking in a holistic fashion not taking into consideration what was happening and all the communities in this city has brought us to where we are now thank you uh thanks so all right so here's where why don't we why don't we do this um i'm gonna try to make a note of exactly what it was that we left off on we will continue section nine when we when we talk next week on uh if it is okay i'm i'm actually sort of looking for a show of hands would people prefer to start at five p.m and go to seven thirty or would people prefer to start at five thirty and go to eight and i think if we do that then we have a pretty good chance of finishing the report so all those in favor of five of five to seven thirty raise your hand all right and those who are in favor of the five thirty to seven five thirty to eight are though are there those that would prefer the five thirty to eight i'm raising my hand for both because i have no preference on either one are you raising your hand twice okay um all right so i think corn is more in favor of the five thirty to eight i am i'm the same as uh commissioner gemas should either way okay um chief do you have an opinion do you have a pre a preference actually if i can do it if we could do five just because i have a work obligation at six i might have to hop off um that would be preferable to me my sincere apologies i need to log off to start yes start out with the first meeting so no worries now great i've seen you all i gotta run you and i'll see you next week okay thanks so much so um so we'll start at five um and we'll plan on five to seven thirty um and um i think we'll be i think we'll be good with that hannah is that okay with you yeah i gotta jump off at like six fifty five because i'm i um i have to set up my volunteer meeting at seven so but like five would work better so i'm here longer or okay longer wonderful okay um okay so uh so we'll um there weren't any members of the public that joined us were there no i don't think so we didn't honey the only other thing since saraya is here now yes yes i remember i remember saraya we need to approve the minutes of march eight um would you be um you and i were the only two that were there so we approve the ones for march fifteenth because jane was here before so are you okay with a motion to approve the minutes of march eight move to approve wonderful so i'll second and um all those in favor i all right so you've got your minutes approved for the eighth and fifteenth um no worries um we'll adjourn the meeting at six thirty four and um saraya are you gonna have a few minutes after if i call you sure okay all right wonderful thanks so much thank you warren have a great evening thanks everyone good night that's the rest everyone thanks