 and welcome to Vermont House Judiciary Committee. We are continuing our discussion on S-119 and actually relating to a statewide use of deadly force policy for law enforcement. And we're continuing our testimony from yesterday. I really appreciate the witnesses' flexibility. And so we're gonna start with the Chief Burke and then Chief I'll just, I don't know if you can watch the time or if it's better for me to give you the time so we can hand it over to the commissioner. What would be helpful to you in terms of staying on track? Certainly just feel free to stop me now. Okay, all right, great. And again, if you don't finish, we'll make sure we get back to you. So good morning and welcome. Thank you so much for being here and for your flexibility. Appreciate it. Good morning and thank you. My name is Sean Burke and I truly appreciate this opportunity to testify on behalf of the Vermont Chiefs Association. I've had the privilege of serving in Vermont Law Enforcement for the last 26 years and I am committed to meaningful police reform. The Chiefs Association greatly appreciates the sense of urgency and careful attention your committee has placed on this critical area of police reform. Police use of force as many citizens confounded. Our association quickly joined the Department of Public Safety and other stakeholders in creating a 10-point strategic plan for police reform in the wake of George Floyd's death at the hands of the Minneapolis police. We strongly urge Vermonters to follow the governor's executive order and take a methodical evidence-based approach to police reform. Vermont Law Enforcement desperately needs a single system where all officers report force. This will allow a fulsome data capture and an opportunity for all Vermonters to understand when, why, and how their police use force. Additionally, Vermont Law Enforcement needs a mandated model use of force policy that is developed with subject matter experts, advocacy groups and the broader community as part of a completely transparent process. A statewide model policy will embrace the terms of procedural justice, allowing Vermonters to understand when the police need to use force and why. This allows citizens the ability to judge whether those actions are fair and reasonable. I have listened to a vast majority of the testimony and feel that the urgency of this bill revolves around instances when the police create the agency to use force. This legislation does nothing to prevent that. Strong policy and training standards will only prevail. The Attorney General and the Washington County State's Attorney affirm this reality. Many agencies to include the one I lead subscribe to the Police Executive Research Forum Integrated Communication Assessment and Tactics Training Program. This program focuses on the sanctity of human life, de-escalation and a decision-making model for officers when dealing with force situations. The foundation of this program is in communication and active listening as that is de-escalation. This curriculum also leverages scenario-based training, the most effective training model for adult tactile learners. When officers can slow the tempo of an incident, isolate dangerous persons and create time and distance, other resources can be brought to bear. In Vermont, we are dealing with both a substance use disorder and mental health crisis. So many of our neighbors suffer without adequate resources driving them into acute states of crisis, involving suicidal and homicidal thoughts and actions. The Vermont Department of Mental Health's interpretation of the DSM-5 precludes substance use disorder as a major mental health condition. Countless times, we de-escalate situations and try to get our most vulnerable community members help. The resources are not there. We see these vulnerable folks several times a week in desperate places, but there's little action to build capacity to prevent these crises. Robert Appel testified that the police are responding to these calls exuding control as opposed to connection. Vermont needs to build the resource connection that averts the crisis. Many of the questions that have arisen in this committee regarding the decision process officers must use when employing force are clearly identified in the Graham standard, the defined constitutional standard that exists today. Those standards are made clear in good use of force policies. I've shared the South Burlington policy with you by way of example. I have also heard that policy is not enforceable. This is not true. Police policies, the rigor of our organizations and leaders that fail to follow policy need to be held to account. Responsible police leaders do enforce their policy. The ACLU eloquently testified that police misconduct is quickly swept under the rug by qualified immunity involving use of force cases, citing an outrageous California incident. I urge you to look at the civil suits filed in US district court in Vermont. You will see evidence of police agencies being held to account for use of force instances that don't even begin to resemble the California incident described by the ACLU. Early in this legislation, Attorney General TJ Donovan testified that words matter. The words necessary, feasible and should have known lack the statutory definition and supporting case law to be clear and effective. Let's take the time to collect the data and develop a model policy that can guide our law enforcement officers in a way that Vermonters understand and trust. Let's see how the opaque terms of necessary, feasible and should have known surviving court. Vermonters are careful and strategic. This area of police reform deserves the same. Thank you for your time and work on this area of critical police reform. Our association stands with our constituents ready to do this work. And I'm happy to answer any questions. Great, thank you very much. I appreciate your testimony. I do have a question you said that you do in fact enforce your policies in response to the concern that policies are not enforceable. Could you please tell us a little bit more about that? Certainly and let's stay on the topic of critical incidents. Anytime that you have a critical incident, whether that's a use of force, a high level use of force or a vehicular pursuit, you have to do an after action review to examine the process that the officers went through and making the decisions and the actions that they took and compare that obviously to your policies, identify if there were any missteps by the employee or if the policy was ineffective or if we're exposing our community to unnecessary risk. And that's just good responsible police management that police chiefs do around the state every week. Thank you. There's also, you know, another area where when you can have two forms of complaints, oftentimes a complaint will begin internally about conduct and oftentimes citizens will reach out to the police department and offer a criticism or a complaint. It's taking that responsibility serious and which has been made much, much more clear post act 56 in 2018, investigating those incidents, comparing the conduct that has been alleged with all the available evidence, determining whether or not that the employee either acted within policy, made a mistake or made a calculated decision to violate policy or law and then holding that employee to account. Thank you. Martin, I see your hand. Yeah, thank you, Chief Burke. So I definitely respect what you've done with the South Burlington Police Department and the way that you are managing that department and I think that we're doing a good job in Chittenden County overall, although there are people who definitely disagree about that with respect to some incidents in Burlington, but certainly in South Burlington, I do really appreciate your efforts in 21st century policing reform and I've had discussions with you and I want to make very clear that you've been extremely helpful earlier this year for instance, with respect to trying to figure out how to deal with firearms in the situation where there's been a domestic dispute. So I definitely appreciate that and I largely agree with what your testimony was, but there are a couple of pretty important points of disagreement and I do have a couple of questions that kind of come from that. First of all, I agree that absolutely policy is necessary. The policy that you spoke of, what the executive order is requiring, what I believe the AG is going to testify to some alternative language kind of modeled after the fair and impartial policing bill, a statute and policy, but that is extremely important, but I feel that we need also a statutory standard and overlay since the legislature, the state has created law enforcement agencies and has given the law enforcement agencies the duties, including the use of force in exercising adjudicative processes such as serving warrants and public safety, et cetera, and enforcing our laws. So I, and we also have put into place some guide posts but they're very ancient and they're in the justifiable homicide statute and it's very broad probably at this point unconstitutional given some of the Supreme Court cases related to Fourth Amendment and use of force. So I believe we have an obligation frankly to put forth a standard in statute, but it's not just an obligation. I wanna go to the question of the issue that you said about enforcement of policy and I also don't disagree that there's enforcement of policy within law enforcement, but people are asking for and I think it's legitimate that citizens should have an opportunity to have access to justice in the court system and either exercise through their prosecutors and state's attorneys or through civil suits. I do believe qualified immunity is important and is something that is necessary. I think it's, it'd be great to have it modified somewhat, but I'm not opposed to their qualified immunity. Any event in the training specifically the Vermont Criminal Justice Training Council manual states that generally speaking to violation of a department policy can result in sanctions or punishments from your department. And if the clause of the policy that is violated mirrors the law, it can also result in criminal charges or lawsuits, but it's that latter part that the policy mirroring the law and I don't think we have that in certainly in statute right now. And I do think that that's something we need. I guess if you could comment on that concept that having the legislature in statute, it kind of a high level, I guess we could call the floor as far as use of force and use of deadly force and in specific specifically, if you have this at all, looking at the language that we have in draft 2.4, what in particular gives you cause? What are the parts that really concern you of having something in statute in conjunction with good policy that comports with the statute? I wonder if you were able to comment specifically on any of the language that we have. Yes, sir, specifically the three terms that I highlighted necessary, I think that is going to be the standard. You know, you're obviously a far better examiner of the law than I am, but the Graham standard is old. I feel that the tide is turning and that probably we'll have a new federal standard, but I think it's critically important that our state standard match that of the federal standard because yes, we operate at a state level here in Vermont in the way we police our citizens, the way we hold our officers accountable, but we are also held accountable to the federal court when our agencies are sued. And I think that those standards need to match because as critically as important of an issue is to have this police reform on deck and ready to go, we can't then expose ourselves to undue litigation in federal court or things that are far, far less clear with two different standards. I think that's largely problematic. I also think the term feasible is not at all well defined in terms of when we have to make these critical decisions. And then lastly, should have known. I'll tell you, Martin, that in 1997, I investigated a domestic violence incident and the survivor of that incident reported to the police station physically, we built the evidence, we went to make the arrest, the survivor never told us that her boyfriend was suicidal and armed with a gun in the house. Martin, when we arrived, he was in a bedroom with his other roommates. There was no way that we could retreat. During this incident, he eventually put the gun down but he wouldn't walk away from it. The room wasn't at all oriented to where we could get between him and the gun. At this time, I had a backup officer, I holstered my gun and I grabbed that kit for all I was worth and brought him to the floor, but he was able to grab the pistol. And as he and I struggled for that gun, he wanted to kill himself. He shot himself in the head, Martin. And what should have I known and who gets to judge that after the fact? That's very, very concerning. So I agreed that the should have known from other discussions and looking at it further is particularly problematic. At a minimum, I'm gonna be recommending that we take that language out. I understand the concern about, let's talk about necessity. I want you to comment on this. Yesterday, Attorney General Donovan in his testimony stated that the use of deadly force should be a last resort. And I believe if we take out what is in this draft, defining what necessary means, then our standard that we have in here does not, it doesn't result, it doesn't necessarily mean that the deadly force is a last resort. But I guess a question I would have for you and another thing that something else that's been raised as a possibility. If we have the effective date of this law, say middle of next year, to provide the opportunity then to flesh out some of those issues in policy. Does that assist as far as the concern as far as, we're gonna say, and let me go to the other point that you made as far as we wanna follow federal law. And I assume that you're meaning federal laws developed by courts as opposed to in legislature, because we'll be waiting a long time, I think if it's the latter. But right now what the necessary has is, I think does go a little further than what is in the federal court. So I think it's fine if we have a standard that is a little more restrictive or goes beyond just what is in the federal law. But I think that having necessary at least in there that we are going to require that essentially this is the last resort, we're gonna give the experts as you say, and through the process to provide some meat on those bones where it properly is, which is in policy. But does that help? I mean, does that address your concerns at all? I have time to stay. And I noticed that the commissioner just tuned in and I wanna be- Thank you, thank you so much. Yeah, so hold that thought and we'll switch to the commissioner and thank you. I really appreciate your flexibility chief. Okay, good morning commissioner. Good morning. I can always come back, madam chair. I'm here all the time. So if you're knee deep with chief Burke, by all means, don't let me disrupt that. That's okay, we've given him a heads up. So, and I appreciate you coming back as we didn't get to you yesterday. So, so welcome. Thank you for, thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. There is an enormous topic. Is there an area that would be most useful where the committee has concerns or questions or would you like me to just walk through a sort of a broad overview of this? I'm gonna look for hands to see if any of the committee members do have questions. I'm not seeing them. So go ahead and then I'm sure we'll have questions after. Thank you. Okay, this is gonna be an incredibly abbreviated version of this and so, and I know you've heard of a variety of this as well. Among the most important points, we are very much in public safety and organization and a profession that is constantly iterating, evolving, changing. I use the term modernizing. And there's no place where that occurs more than in policy related to the use of force. You've heard from witnesses indicating that there's a lack of guidance here. I would dispute that. I believe there is more guidance. There are more guardrails. There are more rules that have been set forth by the courts on this topic in this area of operations than any other. There are literally treatises written on this topic. The use of force on a person by law enforcement is a seizure. It's subject to the Fourth Amendment, subject to Article 11 and the Vermont Constitution. And as a result, there's an enormous amount of case law that guides that. There has been testimony that we're resistant to a statutory construct because we're resistant to being regulated. There is no more regulated arm of government than law enforcement. We're not in any way resistant to being regulated. We're regulated by statute. We're regulated heavily by case law. We're regulated by our, not only at a state level, but at a federal level and at a municipal level on a host of topics that are too innumerable to even mention, but use of force again being at the top of that list. The resistance is about creating better outcomes. We are better suited to be able to train and to improve the way we operate by memorializing innovation and new things, whether that's new community standards, new ways of doing things or new techniques. In this case, we're talking about community standards by memorializing that in policy. California actually is an interesting example because their most recent use of force statute is a new version that was necessitated by the fact that their old version was found to be unconstitutional. Now granted, it was fairly old, but it is in part illustrative of the, one of the challenges which is that a statutory framework can't evolve as rapidly as policy does. And we are sometimes making policy updates on a monthly basis as we gain experience, as the courts make rulings, et cetera. I lost my train of thought, which happens more frequently as I get older. There was something right there as the next point and it's gone. I will work on trying to come back to it. Those are, there's much more here to discuss and I have pages of notes, but it probably makes sense given the tight timeline to turn it to you, Madam Chair, and explore wherever the committee would like to go. And that last point or two that's hanging right there and not readily accessible in my notes will come to me. I'm sure it will. Thank you. Again, looking for, let's see. Okay, Barbara. Yeah. Thank you. Hello, Secretary Shirley, how are you? So I have a question in looking at, can you hear me okay? I'm using your phone. Okay. My neighbor is having three work done. It's very loud. So it looks like there were 17 deaths that were caused by law enforcement in the last decade. And in hearing the Attorney General testify yesterday about some of the cases that he, the way the statute's written now was not able to find any of the ones he was referring to as wrongful use of force. It looked like all 17 of these cases, there weren't any charges made against law enforcement. And this was an increase for Vermont over previous years that looked like. So I'm wondering, even all the statutes and case law, it doesn't seem like we're minimizing the number of deaths. And I'm wondering, hearing the ACRU testify yesterday about putting that floor in place seemed to make a lot of sense to me about, sure, we still need policies, but why not set a bar for minimal expectation? So I'm just wondering if you can speak to that. Sure. You've actually brought me to the next point that I had forgotten, which is the statutory construct will actually create more ambiguity than it will consistency in the near term, because it will take years to get case law established to interpret the words that you choose to put on paper. We have the ability now to put words on paper in policy that we can very clearly define and delineate based on the community standard that you'd like to exercise that will make that immediate change and create clarity without that ambiguity. And without some folks took offense to this piece of testimony yesterday, so I do it cautiously, it will create litigation that in part will not be particularly well-founded. It's no secret that you can make money in the legal system if there is ambiguity around what something means. So you can sue government and this will happen. There's no question in my mind that we'll see an increase in lawsuits because there will be an increased chance that people can win because we will not know what the language means. So not necessarily because we've made a mistake, but because there's ambiguity in whether there's a payday at the end of that. So again, we are on the, I can't overstress this and I know other people have testified that we are not on the same page relative to the need and our desire to have better outcomes in these events. And what we're trying to do is provide you with some alternative structures to get there faster, more deliberately and with greater clarity than this particular approach. And let me just add one more thing to that. One of the challenges historically in government in general in Vermont in particular, we love local control, 251 towns, we're all special, we know how to do things. And that's great. And I'm not saying what I'm about to say to diminish the fact that the nuance related to local control sometimes has incredible value. This is not one of those places. This is a place and there are a number of other areas of operations in law enforcement in particular where I think a singular statewide way of doing things is absolutely essential. And we have been collectively hesitant to do that in the past. Now is the time to absolutely do that. Same thing with hiring process, promotional process, how do we select our chief executives, et cetera, community oversight models, a lot of the other things we're simultaneously talking about. And then how the question then becomes if that's the policy direction, how do we create accountability for that? And the answer I believe is twofold. One, there's already language in S-124, which is now in the house that enhances the ability to decertify an officer for use of force violation. And then on the agency side, S-119 began to lay some groundwork for essentially eradicating an agency's ability to be an agency. It started with grant money, which is what's removing grant money, which is in S-219. What I would suggest is going further than that for these key topic areas, whether it's adoption of fair and impartial policing, use of force, reporting race data, that not only do you not have access to grant money, but you don't have access to training, and you don't have access to the information technology systems that the state provides that are the foundation for being a law enforcement agency. So it essentially becomes federal highway dollars. If you fail to adopt the key best practices, you don't have access to those dollars. And how would we make sure that people are following protocol? Who's reviewing that? And how do we know that it doesn't sort of get lip service, but there's a workaround? That's a great question. And one of the things we're actively working on now as a result of the governor's executive order, and we had started this work prior with the 10 point strategy that we put forth in June, is for lack of a better description, a different way of doing internal investigations, a more independent version of that where individual agencies that don't have operations in multiple parts of the state would have a collective unit that could do that, that was in part independent, and then community oversight is the next piece of that. And putting forth models, it has of course been observed that whether it's in state government and it's the general assembly, or if it's in a town or city and there's a select board or council that there is community oversight, but we're gonna be putting forth together with a variety of subject matter experts and partners some templates for more direct community oversight models that can be used. So you're describing exactly where we believe we need to go, which is a fabric of different approaches or different components of an approach to ensure that we've got, it starts at the beginning, right? Hire the right people, train them correctly, hire the right supervisors, hire the right executives, have good investigations, have good policy, and then have good oversight at the other end of that tunnel. And it all weaves together to create the outcomes that we want. Can I ask one more question? Absolutely. So I'm not sure if you got to hear councilwoman Hightower's testimony yesterday about it being done at the local level and getting more sort of contentious and try to think of the word she used, but she painted a pretty clear picture of her recommendation of removing it from that local level where it ends up being more about, or can be framed more about people than policies and outcomes. And you know Burlington pretty well. So I'm just wondering your take on that. Yeah, I think there is some validity there. And one of the constructs that we're actively looking at now is something actually that I think Curtis Reed came up with as we were brainstorming in June, an idea of regional investigations. And it is, I should call out that I'm relatively new to public safety having been here just a year. And one of the things I'm incredibly impressed with is the system that the state police has that is memorialized in statute and then carried out that the way the internal investigations are done and there's been some criticism of unions. I've been incredibly impressed with the collective bargaining agreement and the fact that there are clearly delineated penalties for different kinds of conduct. The system works very well. And replicating that kind of a system, I think is where we're hoping to go on a statewide basis. So having folks that are trained investigators from other parts of the state that have no interest in or no knowledge of the people they're investigating is the way it's done in state government. We're suggesting, and I say we collectively with the chiefs and sheriffs and others, it's not the Department of Public Safety trying to superimpose this. It's something we're all working on together, creating those models for use statewide. So I think that goes to Councilor Hightower's concern and the same kind of oversight is something we're working toward framing on community oversight as well. So in a small town, Burlington is a small town, all of our towns are small towns. You don't have folks that work together every day that are doing that level of community oversight that it's a representative model using the brilliance of representative government that we enjoy here in the United States and in Vermont for a couple of centuries plus. Martin. Thank you, Commissioner. And thank you for the work you've been doing in the Department of Public Safety with the 10 point plan and also with what it certainly looked like you were behind the executive order and I applaud that as well. I think that's lots of good work that you all are doing. And also with respect to the use of force policy but I wanna just talk a couple of underlying assumptions and then I do have some specific questions as well. First of all, kind of the basic premise that I've taken into this and I like your last statement about the brilliance of representative government because it goes right to that is that the representative government created the law enforcement agencies and also gave them the duties and also gave them the right to use force to exercise those duties. And also at one point put some guardrails around the exercise of deadly force and that's in the justifiable homicide statute which whenever various articles that I've read a lot of you articles and others talking about state laws dealing with use of force they always point to our justifiable homicide is that that's our use of force statute. It's probably unconstitutional. It's certainly very old and needs to be replaced. And so I see that this is an obligation of this brilliant representative government to actually update that standard but also recognizing that a lot of the details of this needs to be worked out in policy. The day to day how the overarching standards are implemented is certainly appropriate in policy and I'm very eager to see what is gonna come out of the efforts for that. But I would like it to comport with a standard that we set at a sufficiently detailed but also high enough level that we're not micromanaging but we're setting forth the overarching standard. And in looking at the current law which is mostly federal courts. Let's jettison the justifiable homicide component of this because it's like I say unconstitutional but I think it's not as unambiguous as you say what's even the current law. And what I've tried and I'll have some specific questions here is looking at certain of these aspects of the common law, the law developed in the courts mainly federal courts. And there's some areas that I think that some circuit courts have it right and some do not. And I think that we should adopt the ones that I think have it right. So I'll give you a couple of examples. The one is with respect to conduct of the police officer leading up to a use of force. There are some circuits that say no, we will not look at that. And there are other circuits that say that we do look at that that that is part of the consideration for whether the use of force was objectively reasonable. There's also disagreements about how important policy of local agencies are with respect to whether the policies should be looked at. The way I think we resolve that is that we combine having a standard and statute with having a well-defined policy that helps us implement that. So I do wanna make very clear that one of the suggestions I'm gonna have for this legislation, this bill and I'm hoping to get some input from you on some others that we can still modify is that we have an effective date well into 2021 to give the opportunity to have that policy developed that comports with the standards that we would be setting forth in statute. So having said that, I mean, if you're able to, I mean, if maybe you're unwilling to do this or are you still even there that we lose? No, you're still there. You just are off. I am, I'm sorry. Yeah, I apologize. If you're able to explain what particular parts of this bill are egregious to you, maybe you're unwilling to, in other words, I'm asking you, I understand that you disagree with the concept and would rather kill the bill, but I'd like to, if you're willing to tell me how to make what you think is a bad bill something that is workable if you have any input in that respect. Yeah, I would need quite a bit more time and to bring in some additional subject matter experts. I think you're gonna hear from Drew Bloom. I think Chief Burke may speak to some of those components. The fundamental concern is that when new words are added words, the courts have not used in prior guidance that we will have to try to figure out in the near term how to operationalize them. And we will be wrong. There's no way to know exactly how the courts are going to, there's just no way to be accurate in our efforts to craft training and policy around them. It's just not the way the system works. When you create laws, the courts interpret them and they interpret them based on a variety of different factors and you can never be, there can never be pinpoint accuracy there. So the concerns will be around specific kinds of language that we will not know how to interpret. I would offer though that in the spirit of trying to go to a place where we're operating under our, the current community standard, that one way to approach this would be to take that language or take the key constructs that you've culled from circuit court decisions and things of that nature and create a, turn the bill into a directive to adopt policy that addresses those specific things and give us a crack at that. And if we fail, the legislature comes back every year. As early as 12 months from now, you could take another run at a more directive statutory construct. What we're suggesting is we wanna go, we wanna go where you wanna go. We're just trying to find the way to get there that will create clarity and an ability to operate in a fast paced, constantly evolving operating environment. I haven't talked much about that, but it's important to flag that clarity and consistency has to exist because the nature of the events that are being responded to on a day-to-day basis, even in a relatively peaceful place like Vermont, are just, it's an overwhelming amount of chaos that can occur, even in our tiny state. Actually, hold on, I just, I wanna make sure. Commissioner, I know you need to get to another meeting. Do you have, I see other hands, do you have more time? Yes, when I disappear, I'm texting the press conference to tell them my status, I can stay a few more minutes. Okay, so Martin, I do see that Coach's hand is up, so if I could, I'd like to give Coach some time to get his question, and then Tom as well, so thank you. So Coach, go ahead. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you, Chief Burke. Chief Casten sends his best to both of you. I was multitasking like the commissioner with him because he's watching as we're having our discussion, but he said to say hi to both of you. Thinking in terms of structure as far as creating a vehicle that the legislature, and this gets back to Representative Lalon's structural concern about the framework and then the commissioner's thoughts around standing up a directive and having the accountability. So I'm thinking, and it's kind of a question, discussion type of question, you can't fix what you can't measure. So we'd have to have a way of measuring the results. And within that new modernized electronic system that you're working on, I guess my question would be, you had talked about before in one of your visits to our committee about that being a statewide system. So that then goes to those 251 entities and it gives us collectively a way of measuring specifics. Can you speak a little bit to that? Absolutely, Sarah, that's an excellent point. Yes, we are still on the as fast a track as we can do in state government to a unified computer aided dispatch and records management system that would be available to all agencies and be able to both take in use of force reports and then report them back out both in a dashboard form that's easy to digest for folks that are not technically savvy but also raw data that could be looked at by researchers and unpacked in a variety of different ways and probed in ways that we might not even think to ask. We have some prototypes of that that exists now within the state police. I think I shared a static shot with this committee in maybe February of the use of force dashboard that's interactive and what the static version wasn't but it would be interactive. And that's exactly where we're headed. Also of note, we're in active conversations also around this 10 point plan around making available to other agencies in Vermont the early warning system for officer performance that we use in the Department of Public Safety. So the most impactful work we can do is actually downstream of the use of lethal force or any force for that matter. To refresh you on the statistics, in 2018 the state police handled about 118,000 calls for service. 223 of those resulted in some kind of force used beyond compliant handcuffing. In 2019 that number was 115,000 events and 183 of them resulted in some use of force that was beyond compliant handcuffing. We also track other officer performance and everything from small errors to policy violations and using that system as a way to improve performance and correct action at its earliest possible level sort of like a medical model where if you intervene in an illness or an injury faster you have a better outcome. Same principle, that's the way modern law enforcement works. Not all agencies are large enough to be able to have those kinds of systems. So one of the things we're talking about with the 10 point plan and with this modernization strategy now is to be able to define ways to allow others to use those kinds of early warning systems as well. So not only as Senator White would observe has the General Assembly done a lot around certification decertification and standards over the last few years. At the same time, we've been actively working on more granular versions of that accountability early warning, tracking data, et cetera all to improve outcomes and to prevent violent encounters to prevent crime, to prevent emerging health issues to track opiates, et cetera. It all at one point or another at all weaves together. Thank you. Thank you, Tom. And then Martin, if the commissioner still has time. Thank you. Hello, commissioner. Glad to see you at the table here. And if I had my preference, you would have been at the table a long time ago while this bill was being, I guess you could say built. There was legislators and advocates and in my opinion, political organizations that were at the table. And they were all discussing basically you and what you do. And I just think that if you or your office was at the table at the time, maybe we would be a little further along as far as the debate or less debate goes in this bill. As far as your testimony goes, I don't wanna hear an abbreviated testimony. I wanna hear your testimony. And I know you're on a time constraint, we're on a time constraint. And unfortunately with this bill, I've heard several times you have to give an abbreviated testimony, no time. I've heard people talking about this bill saying we have deadlines and there's timelines. And now you brought up that you have some other witnesses that would be, sounds like would be very pertinent to this bill that I wanna hear, which is going to give us more time constraints. And whether, no matter what's in this bill, whether it's in statute or policy, it can't be rushed. And I really feel right now that it's being rushed. But I guess I'm really not asking you any questions, I guess the only question I guess I'd have is who are these other witnesses that you mentioned earlier? And I would love to get them on the agenda at some point. So while it's not a question representative, I will make an observation. The witnesses, I guess if I had my druthers, I would actually bring you all to a class on this topic. Essentially teach you what it is we teach basic recruits on the use of force on search and seizure in this particular realm. And have you hear it all directly because it is the most complicated area of operations and of law. And frankly, I told the Senate committee this yesterday, I've both listened to some testimony that's been taken on this topic I've read others and I'm a little scared because I think that there has been information presented to committees that is not accurate. And I don't believe that's malicious. It's just, this is the most complicated area of criminal law that there is. There's no two ways about it. There's a gentleman named Wayne Lafayde who has written a three volume treatise on search and seizure. This is search and seizure. You just can't overemphasize the complexity of the topic. So if we were to put more folks to give you the whole picture, it would actually be sort of a community academy and an abbreviated format. It would take several hours to walk you through the nuances of this. So you had a full understanding of how it works, how we train, et cetera. And I'll take 10 seconds and give you one example. One of the not constitutional constructs, but training constructs that is involved from this is the concept of something called ability, opportunity and jeopardy. You use deadly force or you're permitted to use deadly force when those three things exist. Someone has the ability to cause serious bodily injury or death. They have the opportunity and there is jeopardy. So let me give you an example. Someone has a firearm. I'm in Burlington, they're in Brandon and they say they're gonna kill me. They have the ability. They have the jeopardy. They've said they're gonna kill me. They don't have the opportunity, they're in Brandon. I'm in an armored vehicle and the same thing occurs. They don't have the opportunity. They are, this is happening now in various places around the country, including Vermont. They have an AK-47. They're standing three feet from you. You have two of those prongs. They have the opportunity because they're right there. They have the ability because they have the instrument in their hand but they're just standing there. They have not created jeopardy. So deadly force is not authorized. So that's just one tiny fragment of the enormous scope and depth of this topic that I believe would be helpful in further exploring this. That's not to, I wanna be really clear, that's not to diminish the work that's been done on this. I know Representative Lawn has spent countless hours doing research and reading and is being incredibly thoughtful on this topic. So I don't say that to diminish that. I just, I say that to say there's a whole other array of information that's potentially possible. Great, Selena. Thanks. And of course, as luck would have it in F-35 is lying over my house right as I begin to speak, always happens. Trying to figure out how to ask my question because it's a sort of a bigger picture question, I think. And I really appreciate you joining us today, Commissioner and your thoughtfulness and expertise as always and do appreciate the complicated and detailed nature of the issue that we're trying to tackle here. But I think like a through line that I'm hearing in your testimony and some of the other testimony we've received about what I'm understanding to be advocacy for, let's create a model policy but not provide statutory guidance on the use of force. At this point, and I hope that's not a mischaracterization of your position, but I think that's what I'm hearing. And I think embedded then in that approach is a little bit of a trust us to get this right. And I think we're here looking at the statutory provisions honestly because of an erosion of trust between community and police. And so I worry about not giving both police and residents and citizens the certainty on all sides that like statutory guidance would provide, particularly at this moment in time when we do have this erosion of trust. And I just wonder if you're willing to comment on that because I'm really nervous about not having that kind not providing statutory guidance on this and the implications of that. Sure, that's an excellent observation. What I'm suggesting is tell us, telegraph to us what additional components are necessary at this point in time based on our collective community standard on the use of force or use of deadly force to be incorporated into the operational standards and policy. And the reason for that is because, this was one of the other points I skipped over earlier that I shouldn't have, the vast, one of my concerns is there's a characterization of law enforcement is bad right now. You see signs saying all cops are X or Y and that's just not my experience. The overwhelming majority of them are excellent people that you could trust with your children, with your finances, with your car, well, maybe not your car. And they want to do the right thing. That is the core ethos. When we've hired correctly and we've trained them correctly, we screw that up and we have problems but they wanna do it hyper accurately. They're their own worst critics. And what I'm suggesting is that translation of the advocacy into pragmatic policy, I'm suggesting one particular way to do that where there's direction to create the policy that's based on the standard that you're channeling that would set them up for success. They don't wanna fail. They don't wanna do it wrong. The two worst things that you can call police officers are a liar or a racist, believe it or not. That is not to say that there are not some that lie and some that are racist out of the 1.2 million or so police officers in the United States but 99% of them are not. And they don't wanna be perceived that way and they want the outcomes to be accurate. They don't wanna go home at the end of the day having used a taser or hit someone with a baton or God forbid, fired a firearm at somebody. That's, it's not as destructive to their life as it is to the person whose force has been used on but it is destructive to them, to the psychology, to their family life, to all of it. So we're, I can't overemphasize enough that we're with you. This is not adversarial. It's all we're trying to do is translate that complex operating environment and all of the nuances to all the things that we've gotta do and try to find a way to get to where you wanna go. That's the most pragmatic and immediately able to be operationalized where the statute, well it will have, it may take effect relatively immediately. We're not gonna know exactly what it means for some time. It's that'll take, it could take a decade before we actually know the answers to all those questions. So I'm not sure how comforting that is but that's the reality of the approach. Can I just follow up question or maybe it's an observation more than question but I'm just thinking about what's going through my mind and wanna give you an opportunity to respond to it. I just was really struck by your statement that, you know, 99% of cops aren't racist and I think, I just think about what many of us are hopefully learning just about the larger culture and institutions that we're part of and the ways that systemic racism are embedded in those institutions and that not just explicit but implicit bias is really something we all have to, you know, and maybe this is semantic but I'm just, I'm worried about that assertion and that thinking and I think- That's a great point. Yeah, I think you know where I'm going. So I'm gonna just stop there and let you respond. Yeah, what I'm saying is they're not overtly racist looking to go out and target people who are of a different race. 100% of humans are biased. We all carry biases. It might be related to race, it might be related to age, it might be related to gender, it might be related to size, country of origin, pick a thing. A great example I heard of that was a trainer I worked with in fair and partial policing, a retired lieutenant from a big city police department and her explanation of that or one of the examples she gave was her bias took over, she went to a call where an elderly man was berating someone at, I believe it was a hotel lobby but it was a lobby of some sort and he was just being completely inappropriate so they got called for a disorderly person. Her bias took over, she started dealing with him like he was her grandfather and he went berserk and it took four police officers to take this little old man quote unquote into custody. The optics of that were awful and the origin of that going poorly was she didn't handle it the way she'd been trained. Her bias took over and she treated him as a quote unquote little old man. And so it manifests and creates problems in all kinds of different scenarios and that's why we're so focused on fair and impartial policing. My point was that the majority of people just like the majority of all of us are not overtly taking out aggression on folks of other races. That's all. Thank you. And if you still have time, and then Martin. Chief, if you have to go, it's no issue but I just wanted to have you clarify a little more on having policies so tethered to statute and the issues that it's gonna bring up with adjusting policy and that type of thing because it certainly does take a lot more time to change statute than policy just as a side note with Seattle implementing their policies back in, I think it was 2008, they're still adjusting today and to have even to give, I certainly understand if we did go to statute and giving you some extra time to implement things that, well, six months, say more time doesn't compare to the 12 years of experience and of things still changing. Yeah, it will take years to get the interpretations we need to actually craft the training. The way it works now is we're constantly changing the policy and that's as a result of court decisions in Vermont, court decisions at the United States Supreme Court level, court decisions that are happening at our circuit which is the second circuit on a federal level but also looking, we spend an enormous amount of time scanning the landscape of things that are happening nationally both in the courts but also just the way community standards are evolving and tweaking policy not only in use of force but in lots of other areas at the same time. I think Julio Thompson testified yesterday about the interconnection between literally dozens of policies and how we script to the greatest extent possible for consistency and outcome and legality how all those things bolt together and the more galvanized they are in statute, the harder it is to make adjustments to all of those different things to ensure that we're being consistent as the court cases are constantly churning as standards are constantly changing and as they relate to lots of other different policies that we have to bolt together. It's, well, I didn't go into medical school. It is a lot like surgery. It's complicated. Thank you. So, Martin. I mean, I guess I wanna get a little away from the generalities in talking about these years to figure this out, particularly when a lot of this comes out of civil, out of courts that have considered exactly these issues. So I'm really confused, frankly, of where all these ambiguities are and where precisely, but before I do that, just when we're talking, I'm gonna focus on the use of deadly force. And you talked about the concept of ability, opportunity and jeopardy, which essentially is in our definition of imminent threat, except we use the term apparent intent instead of jeopardy, but that's essentially what jeopardy means. So as far as when use of deadly force can be used, it comports with that concept that is right out of the state police's policy. But let me ask you a specific question and maybe later we can ask some more specifics, but I'm looking at our definition of, certainly our definition of when use of deadly force can be used. And from what I understand, the basic definition of defending against imminent threat or death or serious bodily injury, if it's objectively reasonable and necessary, is fairly standard. The part that seems to be getting questions is, well, what does necessary mean? So I would specifically wanna understand what the issue is and where the ambiguity is with respect to the additional language that we offer, which is the use of deadly force is necessary when given the totality of the circumstances an objectively reasonable law enforcement officer in the same situation would conclude that there was no reasonable alternative to the use of deadly force that would prevent death or serious bodily injury to the officer or to another person, which I think is essentially last resort language. And that's something that the attorney general, Donovan suggested is what we're after in this use of deadly force. I wanna understand where the ambiguity is in that and how that standard could be so changeable. Well, it's a complicated topic. Representative, you actually brought up one of the primary concerns as you were describing the courts interpreting things differently, what can come in, et cetera. That's exactly what happens with individual words. The courts may interpret the word necessary differently. The courts may choose to interpret the word necessary specific to an individual event or case. They may choose to give a more broad definition of necessary that can be applied more broadly not to be redundant. We won't know the answer until the courts begin to address each word. And then downstream of that, there was a variety of language and some of that language is new to the construct and it's different from what some of the guiding case law presents now. Or it may be the same language but it's bolted to other things. And the court's job is to interpret that. And as you observe, courts interpret it differently. And they also may choose to narrowly interpret or broadly interpret to get and so they may give us no guidance and only interpret a particular case or they may interpret broadly and give us guidance that we can apply to other things. And we won't know the answers to those things until they make their way through the system. Well, or the legislature as it does in the section I just read you can provide the court with the definition that it wants the court to use when addressing the use of deadly force. That's where the court should be looking first is to what the plain language of the statute provides. I don't mean to argue, I'm just trying to understand where those can be gutied here. I would, if that's the way it actually worked in practice that would be great but I think if you had the judiciary here they would tell you the same thing. We won't know how it gets interpreted until we see a fact pattern that's connected to it. And then they won't give you a, they can't give you a proactive weather report on how something's going to be interpreted. The answer is it depends on a host of factors. So I do appreciate the fact that what you've drafted tries to create as much specificity for the court as possible but that's just not the way the system works. It depends. It does depend. I will agree with you there. That depends on applying this interpretation that we're offering to a set of facts and each set of facts could be different. But I would still say that underlying that this is fairly straightforward as far as what necessary presumably means. And it is what some courts certainly look to. Any event. Well, I appreciate that. I could go through a lot more of this but I know you have more time and actually this is subject already to some change given the testimony that you and Chief Burke and that we heard yesterday. And I'm hoping to have something that narrows this and hopefully gets closer to something that you find palatable as well as Chief Burke but will provide some statutory standards from which policy can be developed. At least that's just me. That's only one of 11 but that's certainly something I'm working or hopefully working towards. I appreciate the tremendous effort that's gone into this and the focus on an incredibly important topic. And I can't stress enough we're really not trying to put a handbrake on progress and evolution here. I do wanna stress we do wanna do it right. And I just get afraid that we're not gonna be able to do that. And it's gonna create a to representative Colburn's point. If we can't get it right it's gonna continue to cascade distrust and that is gonna continue to be destructive and it's a really complicated balancing act to try to figure this all out. So thanks for having me in. Thank you very much. Absolutely, great. I enjoyed working with this along the way with you as you know, we did have discussions back in what was it July or right? Where many of these issues were discussed. So thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you Commissioner. Oh, Madam Speaker, Madam Chair, sorry. I would just like to respond to a comment that Tom made before, which I think was unfair as far as any like making it sound like there's some sort of behind the scenes things going on with the political organizations and such. What I did to come up with and try to work on a draft that was presented when we first got back to this is I worked by looking at law reviews, I looked at policies, I looked at cases. I talked to a law professor and then I got some input from state's attorneys and the AG, and by the way, the AG so far hasn't agreed with me on things. And that was it. And then I've incorporated input that we've gotten from witnesses who have testified in front of the committee. So I just want to make that very clear. Yeah, and my goal wasn't to or even intent wasn't to make it look like there was any behind the scenes activity going on. If I thought there was behind the scenes activity going on, I would have used those words. All right, thanks, Todd. Yeah. Okay, great. So again, thank you, Chief. I think when we had left you, you were responding to the three terms and maybe if Martin wants to, I think it was Martin's question or, or Chief, do you remember where we were? We're looking at, let me get my notes, but the, what was it? I think I was asking about a delay of the effective date and the terms in. Okay, yeah, necessary should have and feasible, but anyway, okay, great, go ahead. Right, and I don't want to shrug my responsibilities in that regard, but I do feel that the commissioner spoke to it. And I feel that Drew Bloom will also offer the expert level of analysis that goes into these force determinations in his testimony. But beyond that, I think there's been a lot of discussion about the terms and how long it'll take to evolve those. So I did have one follow-up question. I just noticed that Chief Burke did send along the policies from South Burlington. And I just wanted to note that that was one of the, one of the many sources I was looking very carefully at and trying to come up with something to put into standards. And I appreciated that as a very good, very good policy. I guess there's no question there. I just wanted to put that out. Thank you for recognizing that sort of. If anything else you would like to add or if there are any more questions? No, I really appreciate all the time I have been afforded. And I think it's critically important that you get to discuss this with Drew Bloom. Okay, great. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Appreciate your testimony. Okay, so Drew Bloom, please join us and welcome. Hi, good afternoon. Is it afternoon? I think I just hit the minute. Good afternoon, everyone. And thank you for, thank you for having me here today to talk about this very, very important issue. So my name is Drew Bloom and I'm presently the director of administration here at the criminal justice training council at the police academy. And I've been involved in Vermont law enforcement as a law enforcement officer in the state for 30 and a half years and will be retiring at the end of December. That's after a very long, long run of public service in the state. And the one thing that I've had the great privilege to do over a very long and successful career serving in various assignments and details and for a few different agencies in Vermont, I've been able to serve in a lot of capacities. But one of the things that I've always been most passionate about has been in the realm of instructing law enforcement officers, proper, moral, ethical and legal uses of force. And I've been doing that in the state since 1992. And it has been an incredible journey and evolution for me to evolve as an instructor and to watch our training at the academy level and beyond at advanced levels through in service training evolve over the course of many years. And as a use of force instructor, I'm involved with many different organizations. And I've taught police officers use of force not only in the state, but I've been invited to teach throughout the United States and abroad in foreign countries as well. And I would like to just express how proud I am of the strides that our little state here in New England has made when it comes to the level of professionalism and the ethics and morality that goes into our teaching of use of force. And I can tell you that we are very, very fortunate here in this state in that we have something that so many different states and academies from around the country and internationally are very jealous of. And that is that we have the ability to be standardized and have one program through one academy. When you go to other places where you have multiple academies, some agencies with their own academies throughout a state, the training can vary so widely from academy to academy that there's just no standardization throughout. I was invited two times to go teach in Middlesex County, New Jersey because just that one county alone was attempting to standardize their use of force training so that they could get all the agencies in just one county on the same page. So that's something that I'm very, very proud of. Another thing that brings me a tremendous amount of pride is in 2017, our former executive director at the academy here, Richard Gothier, provided me with an article that he, an article which was entitled The National Consensus Policy and Discussion Paper on Use of Force which he was provided by his colleagues from myadalysts, which is a national police academy organization. And that policy, consensus policy and use of force discussion paper I did provide to you folks for your own perusal and review. And that discussion paper was authored by, I think 12 or 13 of the most prominent law enforcement entities in the United States to include Calia, which is the premier entity that accredits law enforcement agencies around the United States. And when I first read through that document for the first time, and I've read it several times since and I've provided it to a lot of different folks. When I read it for the first time, I was so proud to be able to read it and say, well, we do that, we do that, well, we do that. And by the time I got to the end of it, I realized that we already adhered to every recommended best practice that was suggested in that document. And it really was a very prideful moment for me. Our use of force training, I'll speak first at the most rudimentary levels during basic training here at the Academy is a very complex machine that runs over the course of many, many weeks, many, many long days. And then that discipline of just teaching use of force has a holistic aspect of it that blends with all of our other disciplines here. So eventually our recruits, as they move through the phases of training here at the Academy, get screened and get tested, not only in use of force, but blended with other disciplines as well, such as patrol procedures and criminal law. And it's through very realistic scenario-based assessments that are dynamic, which prepares them for the actual world because there are several different phases of learning, particularly when you're talking about physical skills coupled with academic ones, which is heavily involved in use of force. And those phases of skills training, we refer to those as the phases of cycle motor learning skills, which are physical skills, which start off as an introductory static phase, a practice fluid phase, and then a perfection dynamic phase. And so we have to move our trainees through those phases so that we can get them to be assessed and to be efficient in the most serious phase of training, which is dynamic, which the recruits don't know what's going to happen. And then we're able to screen them not only for their proper application of force, their reasonable application of force, but their application of the law and of patrol procedures and their application of the de-escalation techniques that they've learned. So we put them through their paces with a lot of different scenarios. I mean, just not just in use of force, but ranging across the board from the most compliant arrest to deadly force scenarios, to mandatory de-escalation scenarios, to mental health scenarios. I mean, there's a lot that goes into this machine here, but to segue back to where I'm involved is use of force. So not only do we spend countless hours in the gym all day long, linking skills together, working the physical skills and additional training sessions at night, but there's a tremendous amount of academic classroom instruction that goes into it. Just the PowerPoint presentation alone for teaching use of force has 259 slides in it, which I think has more slides than any other discipline that we teach, which is even more than crash investigation, more than criminal law. I mean, that's a lot of material. And those academic blocks of instruction cover a wide range of topics all directly linked to use of force. Everything from stress and what happens to the human body under stress and all the things that can occur during stress when you're trying to process a lot of information during critical incidents to the legalities and reasonable application of force, to the medical implications of force, to dealing with treating mental health and acute psychotic disorders as medical calls rather than calls of investigating a crime and calls for treating something as a criminal act that you're gonna potentially have to use force on, but treating those things as medical calls. We address a block of instruction just related to positional asphyxia for making sure that we're keeping people as safe as possible when we do have to resort to using force. There's even blocks of instruction on how to deal with people's aggressive dogs when you show up on scene at their house. You support report writing. I mean, it goes on and attached to the academic blocks of instruction that they go through in the classroom. There are multiple training manuals that they're provided. They have to have a physical skills test at the end of the program where they must perform at 100%. So their score must be 100 in order to graduate and pass the physical skills portion. They also have two academic exams that they have to take just specific to use of force. One is a 100 question exam and the other one is a 25 question quiz that happens about halfway through. And then of course there's all the scenario based training that they have to pass in order to successfully complete the program. And that's just speaking from a use of force perspective. I personally have helped a lot of agencies over the years offering some guidance relative to their own policy development. I've also served as an expert witness for various law enforcement agencies for the Attorney General's office and for the Vermont League of Cities and Towns in federal lawsuits and litigation that's surrounding use of force issues. And I've been calling balls and strikes for a lot of years. And when an officer does wrong probably no one gets more angry than I do because I and my colleagues around the United States and with the instructors that I've been very privileged to teach with from other countries take this topic so seriously and we get so angry when we see something like a George Floyd happen. And for all of these years that I've been involved in this and all the different jobs that I've had in law enforcement, the one caveat that I have always had to taking a promotion to taking a transfer was please as long as I agree to do this job don't stop me from teaching use of force because I had some very personal profound things happen early in my career that wanted to make me get involved in doing this and I don't need to go into the details of that but I can assure you that I take this topic deeply personally and when I see officers do wrong it really bothers me and I have a lot of personal reasons for that. So in reviewing this legislation I've been following it from the start and have read the different iterations of the bill and I would like to echo a lot of what commissioner Shirling spoke about and thank you for your work and your effort in trying to do this because I would agree also as was stated earlier that there has been an erosion of trust in this country between law enforcement and between the public and watching that erode over the last several months very rapidly and unravel has been deeply troubling to me you know as a trainer and just as a citizen of Vermont as someone who has friends and neighbors here just like all of you do and also being part of the law enforcement community at a whole and the staff here at the police academy have been very very devastated by some of the events that have gone on nationally and I hear about it every single day from officers that are out in the field that come through our doors for training there are two aspects of this piece of legislation S119 that I'd like to speak of the first one I'm not sure if you've heard about this in other testimony but it is, I will get into some of the detail of what Chief Burke and what the commissioner spoke of, excuse me I'm sad to have a sip of water there but the part of the legislation that I find the most troubling which I think needs to be addressed right now is the section that defines what a prohibited restraint is and I'm not sure if when this was legislated the unintended consequences of it were really thought of as thoroughly as they possibly could have been so I'd like to offer up what my concerns are with the definition as it currently stands because right now this is a problem for us and it's a big one because it's a problem because it is in 13VSA 1032 and it's also in Act 56 and it's there right now so if an officer does a prohibited restraint by the way that it is currently defined that's a problem for them because they can be decertified through Act 56 if they don't report it they can be decertified through Act 56 and they could also potentially be charged with a crime and there's two aspects of this that I don't really think were identified when it was placed in statute and into Act 56 is there's really two areas where prohibited restraint the way it's currently described could happen. The first one is when you talk about a George Floyd situation, a deadly force situation, the use of a prohibited restraint, a chokehold, a neck restraint, whatever you wanna call it at that deadly force level. It can't happen the way that the statute is currently written that there's no place where that could occur when deadly force is justified when it's reasonable without an officer potentially getting into trouble with this and I would submit to you that the use of a neck restraint if trained properly or even a chokehold that's not trained and has no training may still have less physical effect than the use of an edged weapon or a firearm or running someone over with a vehicle and there may be times when it is perfectly reasonable to do so and the fear of the law enforcement community now is that when they have to make these split second decisions that may save their life or the life of someone else, they can no longer do this and I can give you all sorts of examples. I personally have had someone attempt to grab my firearm over the years. I know two officers that were in fights for their lives when people grabbed their firearms and tried to pull them out of their holsters and just one basic example is if someone puts a hand on an officer's gun and the officer takes their one free hand and they're holding that hand on the holster and they happen to grab that person by the throat with their other hand, well, that's now a prohibited restraint and that's a big problem. That's a problem for officers. Excuse me. We have never caught. I'm sorry, I do see a hand up. So Martin, is it pertaining to that section? Sorry, I'm having some mute problems there. Thank you very much. Is it Captain Corporal? What's the, I didn't catch that. You can just call me Drew, sir. That's fine. All right, so Drew, I just want to say, I understand what, yeah, and you're going to get to your suggestion, but I do want you to comment on this draft number 2.4. Is that one that you have or that you've looked at? Yes, sir. I have it here. I just want to point out where we try to get at the issue that you're talking about and if you could address whether you think we get there or not. And that is on page seven, on subsection eight, where we're trying to make clear there as well as our changes to the justifiable homicide statute that is prohibited restraint or choke hold. If it is used in self-defense by law enforcement officer, that is a defense to the crime that we have in 13 VSA 1032 for the use of a prohibited restraint. Can if you can comment on whether that goes far enough or not. Well, I don't think that that addresses the act 56 issue and I'll get to the word of May, which is in the definition in a second of actually what a prohibited restraint is because that's where I have a problem. But I think that where an officer can use this, I don't think an officer should have to rely on common law for self-defense or the justifiable homicide section because a homicide or someone's death is not terribly likely to occur if a prohibited restraint is used properly. I would also think that a bullet or an edged weapon or a vehicle would be far more deadly than the use of a prohibited restraint, which would have to be placed on someone in some fashion and held for an extended period of time. So I did submit a potential change, a suggested change to all of you this morning and I sent that in and I think that it just needs to be clear and transparent. So the public and so law enforcement knows exactly when a prohibited restraint can be used period so that there's no ambiguity there. And I did send that suggestion into you and I think that that verbiage may be acceptable but you folks would know a lot better than I but I did send in that suggestion. The other problem that I have with this is the word May because we teach, well, first let me back up. In basic training, we do not at all teach any sort of neck restraint or choke hold ever. We do not allow any techniques that involve any pressure on someone's head, on someone's neck, on someone's spine ever, period. And when we have to handcuff someone when they're faced down in a prone position, we use techniques that immobilizing control the shoulder, their elbow, their wrist and officers are required to not put pressure on their back. They're required to not put any weight on that person. It's very, very minimal. And they're also required, we teach what we refer to as a talk track where they actually have to speak to people and they get tested on this. And one of the questions they have to ask them while they're in the process of handcuffing them is can you breathe? And that's nothing new. And it's funny because when I get asked that people say, oh, are you asking that in training because of what's happened nationally? And my answer is no, we've been asking that question for a very long time because the medical implications of what happens to people when we do use force are important to us because we wanna make sure that we're, if we have to use force that we're using the least injurious options and that we're not hurting people and that that's not something that we wanna do. One of the components of handcuffing there are six components that we teach in regard to handcuffing people. One of them is called monitor. And that means that that officer that's making that contact with that person they are responsible for their health, for their safety and their wellbeing while that individual is under their care and control. Getting back to the word that I have a real problem with in the statute right now is may. So it's any technique that may, well, there are a host of techniques that we teach here that are at far lower levels on the use of force model, use of force continuum on the use of force scale, whatever you wanna call it, they're all fairly synonymous. That involve controlling people that are actively resisting that are being assaultive aggression. So they're trying to hurt the officer. They're trying to hurt someone else. And some of these techniques involve controlling their head, controlling their neck, controlling their arm, controlling their body and just letting them tire themselves out so that we can put them in handcuffs. And we can do that with some of these techniques that then we don't have to strike the person. We don't have to pepper spray the person. We don't have to use a taser on the person. We don't have to use a baton on the person because we can just let them tire themselves out. The only place at the police academy in any of our curriculum where we teach what we refer to as a neck restraint, which you could say is a chokehold. However, there's a big difference between a lateral vascular neck restraint and a carotid, and not a carotid, but an esophageal chokehold that actually puts pressure on the esophagus and the trachea. There's a big difference between the two, but the end result is the same. The person's not able to breathe it, it inhibits oxygen flow to and from the brain. But one is far less dangerous than the other. But any of that, regardless, the only place that we teach them in our curriculum is in a few techniques during the ground defense instructor program, which is an advanced fighting combat of school that teaches officers that are already use of force instructors. They have to pass all of that curriculum, be certified instructors first. Then they can come back and become ground defense instructors, which is advanced, so they can go back to their agencies and teach their officers that have higher levels of skill with their basic defensive tactics and use of force skills. They can teach them some skills on what to do if you get into a combative, uncontrolled situation on the ground. And one of those things in a deadly force situation only is the use of a neck restraint. And we've been teaching those here since 1996. They have only been taught at the deadly force level. And there's a lot of documentation in our program that supports that. And the officers are told very, very clearly that if you cannot reasonably articulate that the use of your firearm or a vehicle is justifiable, you cannot use any sort of neck restraint, period. The problem that we have with this word may, I'm sorry, go ahead. Sorry, excuse me. Martin, did you want to? Well, no, I still, after you're done with explaining the may and the directly and I'm understanding what you're saying, it's making sense to me. If you could go, and I understand with respect to this crime, what you're asking for, if you can comment again on the S119 that page seven, if the way we're dealing with it in the context of the use of force standards, use of deadly force standards, if that's sufficient there, understanding now that you want this and with directly with respect to the crime, but you finish up what you were talking about with me, but I do want you to address the other part too, if you could. Well, yes, sir, I'd be happy to. And I think in that suggestion that I sent this morning, I just think I would like it to be very clear. And it would also then codify what we already have in training, which would be perfect for us and would be wonderful for us if this is to become law and being statute. But I think in my suggested verbature for it to say, you know, notwithstanding under this section, and then it goes on to say, you are law enforcement officers permitted to use a prohibited restraint if use of deadly force is justified, period. And if it's not, then you can't, period. And I think we'd be fine with that, but having the word may in the definition then really muddies the water because there are a lot of control holds where you have to control someone's head, where you have to control their neck, but there's no pressure. You're not putting pressure on them. You're not putting any pressure on someone so that you're gonna stop breathing. But to have the word may in there, well, the answer would be, well, sure, if you're gonna put pressure on, then there's a lot of different things that could stop someone from breathing, but we don't train those. So having that word in there effectively removes a myriad of tools from our toolbox of techniques that we can use and replaces them with nothing. So now officers are to say, well, I guess I could try to do this, but I can't do that anymore because it may, you could make the argument that if I were to put additional pressure or force, well, sure, that may cause a problem with breathing or blood flow. So I guess I can't do that. So I guess I'll have to use strikes or I guess I'll have to use my taser or I guess I'll have to use my baton instead. And that's exactly what we don't want because of course we always want officers to use the least amount of force or the minimum amount of force or only force that's necessary. And we spend a tremendous amount of time on avoiding conflict. The first thing that I tell these officers and instructors when they come for instructor school to get certified as use of force instructors is, this isn't about your ego. One of the tenants of our program is to sacrifice ego to avoid conflict. We teach what we refer to as the four A's of good defensive tactics. And the first one is situational awareness. That's the first A and the very second one is avoidance, which is avoiding conflict through the use of de-escalation. And we have a whole separate block of instruction that's not even part of the use of force de-escalation, which teaches de-escalation. And we're looking and hopeful to get more all of the time. And another aspect of de-escalation that I spend a lot of time teaching that people don't really understand and talk about unless you live in my world, is that we have to train officers not only to use de-escalation so there's no fight, but we have to train them to recognize when de-escalation must occur, but the fight is still happening. And no one really ever thinks about that because when they hear de-escalation, they think about using all sorts of techniques to avoid any type of confrontation, which is of course ideal. And if that was the case and we could always do that, then I wouldn't be a use of force instructor. But more importantly is when I say the fight is still on, there may be a moment where there's a physical conflict between a subject and an officer. And in that one particular moment, based on that subject's actions, looking at it in its totality, looking at all of those facts and circumstances that are occurring in that second in time, an officer may have the ability, let's say I can use a baton as an impact weapon when that person is being assaulted and they are displaying assault of aggression. So that person is actively trying to physically cause harm to the officer or someone else. And there are a lot of other factors that go into this. You have to, we're just making a hypothetical here, assuming that everything's equal because there are a host of perceptual factors, which also the statute does attempt to touch on, but there's a several better absent. But aside from that, the officer may be justified in that moment to use their baton as an impact weapon rather than as a control device, which is what we teach its primary use on, which doesn't get a lot of public airtime either. But the primary use of a baton that we teach is using it as a leverage tool to control people mechanically and anatomically so that we can handcuff someone that's bigger, stronger and faster than that officer and has a size, weight and strength advantage over them. But I may be able to use that as an impact weapon. But now in that split second, the subject goes from being assaulted to just actively resisting. So now they're not trying to hurt the officer anymore, but they're still fighting as hard as they can to avoid having that officer control them and place them in handcuffs. And in that fraction of a second, the officer has to be able to say, oh boy, I can't use that baton now to strike the person, but now I have to transition to a lower option and that use of force continuum and I can no longer do that. And having officers be able to do that in that split second, when you are completely overwhelmed with that moment in a situation where you're either fighting for your safety or the safety of someone else that they're trying to stop an assault on, that's very, very difficult. And that exists now. And that's a part of de-escalation that we work very, very hard to train. So getting back to my point about this word, May, I would like to change the definition so that it's very clear so that it says if it directly prevents or hinders breathing, reduces intake of air or impedes the flow of oxygen to the brain, then that is what a prohibited restraint is. And I think that's the goal of what the legislature was trying to do because we want to avoid having people, experience what George Floyd had to experience and what shocked and appalled and mortified all of us when we saw that. And I think that's the goal and I think changing that verbiage will do that because then it will allow us to continue to use that host of lower level techniques that we already have in the toolbox that don't inhibit or prohibit breathing or blood flow at all, but they do involve some control of someone's head and neck and their body and their hand. It's difficult to explain these things if you can't actually see or experience these techniques. But I could demonstrate and would be happy to demonstrate these things for any of you at any time, even do them on you or someone else and say, are you having a problem breathing with this? And your answer would be no, I'm not, but I would be able to control you. You know, I'm a 50 year old, 175 pound man and I can control someone that is much stronger, much larger than me using some of these control holds without striking them, without using a taser, without using a baton and just hold them there and let them get tired so that I can handcuff them a lot easier. And for that reason I'd like to see and have your help to make some changes to this definition because where it is right now, it exists in law, it's part of Act 56. So we've been stripped of some of the techniques that we can do and this is an immediate problem that I think needs to get fixed right now. So I guess before I go into the rest of the bill, if there's any questions about this portion of it, which is what I find most concerning, I'd be happy to take those questions now. Sure, thank you. I do see Tom, go ahead. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony, Drew. It's pretty eye-opening because everybody watches the cop shows and it appears a lot of times, the first thing that police do is go for the head in that type of thing. But and I just thought it was, I guess a standard practice and from what I hear you saying, it's not a standard practice, but I do have a little grappling experience and I'm an MMA fan and it is incredible. I mean, there's a saying that I'm gonna guess you've probably heard is control the head, control the body and you can control somebody's body just with a very firm grasp on the back of their head and make somebody do what you want them to do. And that's a very simple and easy technique to, I guess you could say to master and there's no harm in it and to have something like that be prohibited to me, it just wouldn't make any sense at all. But I wanted to thank you. We had on our agenda to quit at 12.30 and I have to leave at 12.30, which is one minute away, but I just wanted to thank you for your testimony and I'll look forward to going back to our video and listening to the rest of you. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions before Drew continues? And committee members, I hope those of you who can stay, please do appreciate it. Thank you. Okay, Bryn, I mean, Drew, go ahead. Thank you. Thank you. So I would appreciate some help from this committee to help make that fix right now, as soon as possible to just change that definition and to place in there exactly when a prohibited restraint, which is I think what we're all trying to avoid that it can only be used in a deadly force situation. And I think the law enforcement community would be relieved to see that. I think that they would be relieved to know that their lives are valued also in these deadly force situations and also potentially for protecting citizens. And just one other example I would give before I move on is if someone is on the ground and someone is on top of that person that is murdering them, an officer may have to use a prohibited restraint to pull that person off, which in my view would be a lot better than using a firearm and potentially risk hurting that person that's on the ground being murdered with one of their own bullets, either passing through the body of the perpetrator or missing and striking that person. So it's just another example as to why I think we don't wanna have officers having a second guess in these split second moments. So thank you for listening to me go through this. As far as the remainder of the bill goes, there was one section that does kind of flesh out some of the perceptual factors that go into force decision making. And it mentions it's section, it's right on page two, section DE, which says factors such as age, size, relative strength of the officer and subject, and whether the officer and the subject is injured or exhausted. Well, those are some of the perceptual and physical and environmental factors that go into force decision making, but there are a lot more that we teach in trains. So I wasn't sure what the intent was in placing that specifically in the statute. And did you mean for that to be just some of the examples or would you like a more all-inclusive list? Because we have a fairly extensive list that we use here at the Academy and that list also becomes part of the calculus for reasonableness when we're trying to look at whether or not an officer's use of force was lawful. So could someone answer that question for me? Sure, this is a Maxine Grant. I'll start it and it looks like Martin has his hand up. So it's interesting because some folks have some of our notices said, just take all those out as opposed to add to it. So I appreciate you asking us which way to go and should you give us more to add to it? I'll defer to Martin and then possibly come back. Go ahead. Yeah, I mean, that is one of the questions. And I guess I'd rather ask you what you think, Drew. The one option is just to say all the facts known to the law enforcement officer as well as conduct issues that we have in the start of that definition and just exclude A through F because those would be part of them and there's probably more. But I will also say that the idea here is under our Vermont law, when we say these facts may include, that means may include but is not limited to. So these are just examples and any other factors or facts that are relevant could be part of those totality of the circumstances under this language. But I guess, so that I think answers your direct question, but the other question I would have for you is, do you think it's better to leave it more open-ended or should we have this list and even add to this list? Well, I think that if this does come to fruition and its intention is to guide a policy, then I think it should be a more extensive list that Parrot's training, but that's not gonna ultimately be for me to decide, but I think if you're gonna list some, then I think it should Parrot training and I think that should also Parrot policy. But there certainly are some more critical factors that I would include if I was going to put places on a list and so in seeing that, I was just wondering where that came from and where some of these things came from and why others were omitted. And I do understand that it's not meant to be all-inclusive and that this is just some, but it's not limited that this is all. So thank you for that explanation. So as this evolves, if you would like, I can certainly provide you with a list that would Parrot what we use here in training, which offer a lot of critical factors, one of which is being on the ground in an uncontrolled situation, uncontrolled combative situation, which is where the officer is still struggling with someone now they've gone from their feet to the ground because their own equipment that they're wearing on their belt, on their external carriers, not to mention the environment of traffic, rocks, curbs, ice, snow, those things can cause a lot of injury to the officer and to that individual. So that's just one of the many items on my list here. So I would be happy to provide that to you. If I could just follow up. So if you could comment on, if we just don't have that list at all and just keep it open, I mean, is that a workable solution as well? Because then, so let me just back up. I mean, as you probably have listened in on this testimony, the concept here is to have kind of an overarching statutory standard and actually rely on policy, hopefully model uniform statewide policy to flesh out some of these issues, such as the totality of circumstances. Frankly, after this testimony of the last couple of days, at least I am leaning towards just having the general language and leaving the lists and such to policy. I mean, if you could comment on that. I think that would be acceptable. And I don't see a major problem with that. I think when you get into lists, then you get into some confusion. And I think it's best to leave it to say, you just keep it very, very, very brief. So I'd like to get into the standard that we teach now because out of all the academic blocks of instruction that I teach and train, the reasonable application of force is by far the most critical one. And not only do I teach it at the basic training level, but we feel that it's so important that for the last two years, I've been teaching it as an update to field training officers who have to come back into the Academy for recertification as FTOs. And they've had to go through this block of instruction again. I've also brought this block of instruction on the road many times and have taught it to all sorts of different groups and stakeholders so that they can understand the current constitutional legalities of what officers in Vermont and elsewhere in the country are held to. And I'd like to refer to it as gram plus because not only do we adhere to the gram standard here, but we also look for direction from not only our own second circuit, but from other circuits around the country. And we've incorporated those into our training here in Vermont. When the governor first formed the commission on mental health, which that working group assesses high level uses of force where it was involved with individuals that were suffering from sub-mental health issues. When that group first was convened, I was invited to speak to that group and go through the block of instruction that we teach here at the police Academy, which is known as reasonable application of force. And as commissioner, Sherling eloquently stated, much a lot more eloquently than I can as a speaker, is he said that in order to teach this, you really need several hours. And that really is exactly what you need to walk someone down the path so that they can understand the complexities of the legalities of use of force and just how difficult it is for officers right now to have to make these split second decisions. So this is a very fair that that commission on mental health is a fairly eclectic group of professionals that have tremendous passion about being on that commission. And I went through the entire block of instruction on reasonable application of force as it should be conveyed. And as I did that at the end of it, there was not one critique or criticism in the negative. It was all in the affirmative that they were very, very pleased with how extensive a time that we take here in Vermont to teach our officers to do things right. So that Graham standard, which has been around since 1989, has also been echoed by our own Vermont Supreme Court in the case of Colby Johnson, the city of Rutland, where they also, our own Supreme Court adopted the Graham standard here. But officers in Vermont are liable right now, not only at the state level, so that if they make an unreasonable seizure, violating somebody's constitutional rights, make an unreasonable seizure, violating their civil rights, they're not only liable civilly and criminally at the state level. I mean, at the state level, they can be charged with simple assault, with aggravated assault, with manslaughter, with attempted murder, with homicide. But they're also liable at the federal level under section 42 USC 242 of the Civil Rights Act, which is the criminal side, where they would be investigated by the FBI and indicted criminally. And then they can also be sued on the civil side in a 1983 lawsuit. And I've been involved in several civil lawsuits involving law enforcement officers over the years. So there are penalties both at the federal level and at the state level that exist. And in every piece of litigation that I've been involved with, always three things are immediately asked for when there's any threat of litigation occurring. And those three things that always get requested are the agency's use of force policy, the officer's use of force report, and the officer's training records. And those three things are requested in every single case, every single time. And policy, when you talk about use of force policy, one of the very first things that gets assessed is whether or not the officer violated their agency policy. And then of course we wanna read through their report to make sure that they followed the guidelines that they were trained when they document everything that they did documenting their force. And we wanna look at their training records. Prior to 2018 in Vermont, which some of you may find this incredibly shocking, but prior to 2018, which is not that long ago, there was no requirement in Vermont for any law enforcement officer as part of their continued training through rule 13 to have any use of force training once they left the police academy at the basic training level. The only training that they would have to undergo prior to 2018 was to qualify with their department firearm in the basic state qualification course once a year annually. That's it. No use of force training at all after the academy. Now fortunately, we've got about 125 certified instructors out there that work for various agencies. And most of our agencies understood that this was a deficiency, which is why they have their own in-house instructors and they would do their own training annually, quarterly, whatever that may be so that they took it upon themselves to adhere to the recommended best practices, which was to have as much as possible. But prior to 2018, there was no requirement. And when I left working for DMV enforcement, I was a captain there when I left there to take this job at the academy to finish out my career. But I'd been teaching here as adjunct staff since the mid 1990s. One of the very first things I did was add to our administrative rules through the help of the council that at least we have now an annual requirement so that officers have to have. And it's not a lot, but at least four hours of use of force training a year that has to be under the direct supervision of an academy council certified instructor and has to be from our program. So that's not great, but to start, one of the startling statistics that was discovered by the Four Signs Institute, which is an entity that assesses the human body and stress and what happens to the human body, particularly in law enforcement under stressful, high-threat encounters was one of the things that they determined that in North America, law enforcement officers, most law enforcement officers get less use of force training throughout their career than a junior high school wrestler gets throughout their wrestling career going through junior high school. So that kid going through junior high school is gonna get more training in junior high school wrestling than a police officer will get outside the academy once they graduate throughout their entire career. And that's a pretty shocking thing when you really stop to think about it. So if we really wanna prevent injury and if we really wanna reduce officers misusing force, if we really wanna do that, the thing to do would be to increase the quality of training standards. One of the things that the training advisory committee here at the academy determined after a lot of work, and I'm not part of the attack committee, but one of the things that they determined was that they wanted to add additional time to basic training, which would have included two more full days of use of force, but we were denied that and we were denied the funding for it. And if we had the time, I would love to provide more training and I would love to provide more training out there. But getting back to the standard that we train right now through Graham, the US Supreme Court gave us a wonderful tool when they came out with the Graham decision and that they gave use of force experts a calculator so that we could look at each officer's involvement in a particular situation and they gave us a calculator to determine whether or not the officer's actions were reasonable. So the things that we have to look at is referred to as, first, the four-pronged test to Graham. We look at the severity of the crime or the severity of the situation that the officer was responding to, which is how big a deal was it? The second thing that we have to look at was whether or not the person on scene that the officer had to be involved with, the person or person, did they pose an immediate threat to that officer or to another person? And that word immediate means literally right now. Is this happening in this split second moment of time? Then the court said, we wanna know is that person actively resisting and attempting to evade the facilitation of control? So when you look at that term, active resistance, that means that that person is now taking an affirmative physical action to resist that officer's efforts to control them. And the final prong was whether or not the circumstances were tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving. And in the Graham case, they said, we're gonna look at these four prongs, see if they exist in the assessment of reasonableness has to be based on another reasonable and prudent officer's perception based on the facts and circumstances known only to that officer at that moment in time without the benefit of 2020 hindsight. And they said, now we realize that each officer's perception, each officer's experience is gonna be slightly different. So we're gonna look at all of the different perceptual factors and environmental factors that go into this decision making process when we're trying to calculate reasonableness. And this is where those factors such as age, size, strength, skill level, being injured or exhausted during the confrontation, being within close proximity to weapons or having weapons, being on the ground in an uncontrolled situation, being outnumbered, more suspects versus one officer or more officers with one subject where you're generally gonna have to use less force. We have to look at all of these factors to see what was present at that time because you can never make an absolute decision in use of force. People try to pin me down all the time when we're discussing use of force, cops or civilians alike. And they'll say, well, Drew, if somebody's got a knife and they're coming towards you, you can use deadly force, right? And I'll say, well, maybe. And they'll say, well, what do you mean maybe? It's a knife, it can kill you, it can cause serious bodily injury or death. And I'll say, what if it's a four-year-old? You know, or what if it's a 98-year-old that's got dimension and has walked away from their senior living center? Well, that's not gonna be a deadly force situation. You're probably gonna walk up to them and take the knife away and bring them home. So you have to look at, you can never say in absolutes what force can be. We can speak generally, and we can say, sure, generally if this happens, the officer can do this. And we use a term here called the control superiority principle, which I believe you did address in this bill when you refer to it as proportionate force. And of course, that's what we train to because it must be proportionate to the level of resistance that's encountered. And that's something that we work very hard to train. So getting back to the gram standard, I mentioned earlier in my testimony that we use what we like to refer to as kind of gram plus because not only do we take the gram decision, but we look at other federal cases and we have coupled those to our training. We refer to that as the risk benefit standard or quantum of force. So not only do officers have to choose the reasonable force, they have to use a reasonable option based on all of those circumstances in that moment. But if they have any time whatsoever, they have to not only pick a reasonable option, but they have to assess and pick the most reasonable option that is likely to hurt the person the least. So they have to take into account when they're judging whether or not an officer's actions rather were reasonable, we have to consider the risk of bodily harm that that officer's actions, what they did to the suspect, based on the threat to the public that the officer was trying to eliminate, was their force selection reasonable and could they have used a least, a less injurious force option? Could they have chosen a less injurious option? We also teach at the academy that the officers are required to consider other alternatives of capturing and subduing people whenever they have time. They're taught to create space, to create distance, to create time. And we also want our officers to consider what they know about someone's physical health, what they know about someone's mental condition, what they may know about someone's other relevant frailties. And those are all based on court decisions, some from the Ninth Circuit that I can think of off the top of my head that we teach right now when we teach reasonable application of force. So I would also now I'm gonna kind of pile on to what Chief Burke and what the commissioner said in the use of the word necessary. And that gives me concern. And I would agree with what the chief and the commissioner said, and I don't need to reiterate what they said because you heard that loud and clear. But you can never ever know what the least amount of force was. You can never know what the minimum amount of force was. And an officer can never really know what the necessary force was. They just can't, which is why the reasonableness test has lasted for as long as it has lasted because there's a good calculator to make that determination. And here's an example. If I've got somebody that points a firearm at me and it looks real, I don't know what's a toy. I think it's real, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. The person has the ability, they have the opportunity and now there's jeopardy slash aka intent. So we know that this could happen. So an officer's reasonable response to that is going to be that my life or in the case of that firearm being pointed at someone else, someone else's life is in immediate jeopardy. So a deadly force response, possibly with their firearm would be warranted and that would be justified. And I don't think anyone would argue that that's not reasonable. But say the officer says put down the gun and the person does it immediately. Well, the least amount of force, the minimum amount of force, the force that was necessary was nothing more than a verbal command. But how was the officer to know that? Now ideally, would we like him to give the verbal command? Of course we would and we train that and we expect it and we would hope that they would, but there may be times where that's just not possible. The person doesn't hear it, it's not tactically feasible. I mean, you could go on with the hypotheticals but you just can't know when that moment is. Okay, great, thank you. I do see two hands, Martin and then coach and I realize that we are over time. This is really very helpful. So that's, so I appreciate folks staying. Martin and coach. Yeah, no, I really appreciate your testimony. This has been real, real interesting. But I guess I'm confused a little bit because it sounds like you're already training to what the bill is trying to get at with respect to having a little more meat on the concept of necessary. I mean, you've talked about training that if you have any time, you have to pick a reasonable option that would cause the least harm or something to that effect. And what we have in this bill, this proposed amendment says the use of deadly forces necessary when given the totality of the circumstances an objectively reasonable law enforcement officer in the same situation would conclude that there was no reasonable alternative to the use of deadly force that would prevent the death or serious violence. I don't see how that is really different from what you're currently training to. It's just putting it in and saying, now we have a standard and we are, when you say gram plus, that seems to be the plus. And I'm a little confused on why it is not. And what you just explained as far as those two scenarios, those would come out through the determination of looking at the totality of the circumstances. I don't think that it changes what necessary necessarily means. But I just, I'm just kind of confused about that. Well, I think, sir, the issue I would agree with with the commissioner on this is that it's not tested. And then I also think the term necessary can be subjective. And I think that you can never really under know what someone's intentions would be if the officer didn't go into the room or didn't step into the hallway and to say whether or not that was necessary invites 2020 hindsight, which Graham specifically said, you cannot use when you're assessing reasonable. So here's an example. In patrol procedures, we teach officers not to stand directly in doorways, don't stand directly in a hallway because it's just not tactical and it's not safe. So let's say there's a circumstance where an officer is trying to not stand in the middle of a hallway because there may be a subject in the hallway and he doesn't know if that subject's armed or not. It's a contentious, dangerous situation, whatever it is. We'll just imagine for a second. So that officer now, let's say that he's trying not to stand in the, he or she is not trying not to stand in the hallway in the threshold, but there's a big flower pot in the way. So your training says, well, you're not supposed to stand in doorways, but because there's a big flower pot in the way, the officer kind of steps into the doorway. And now they see that the person has a weapon, the person sees the officer, they point the weapon, the officer uses their firearm and they kill that person very sadly and tragically. So awful situation for the person, awful situation for the officer. So now you could make the argument that, well in your patrol procedures curriculum, it says you should not stand in doorways. And the officer's gonna say, well, there was a very large planter in the way and so I stood in the doorway so I could avoid the planter. So now you can make the argument to say, well, it wasn't necessary for you to stand in that doorway. You should have tried to move the planter because you did something contrary to training. So you helped create that jeopardy to bring it, to create the three sides of that AOJ triangle to create that ability, opportunity and jeopardy. And that's my fear because it's not tested because we don't know how the courts are going to determine what that word means. And I think it opens us up for subjectivity and that's my fear. It's just so ambiguous. So I think that's my concern. Yeah, thank you. All right, so let me follow up. Martin, can I follow up with that? Yeah, hold on please though, because we are over time and I see that committee members are meeting. So I would like to take no more than 15 minutes and let's do a hard stop at about 10 after. I do see that coach has had his hand up for quite a while. So... Can I just follow up on that real quick though? Yeah, if you can get quickly and then I'd like to get to coach. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, so Drew, I'm trying to get into the standard, the plus component of what you're talking about the gram plus. And I think the gram part we already have in there for our subsection one, I'm looking at just the deadly forest component and we're trying to get at the plus component with that subsection two, C2. And it goes right to what you were just talking about in training. And if you can ponder whether there's different language for subsection two, that gets at closer to what you're talking about as far as in training that you're already training related to necessity, related to your quantum of force, risk benefit standard, et cetera. And I'll just ask you to ponder that and perhaps if you can send an email about that or I can talk to you later about that. So I won't use your time on that right now so that we can get to coach's question. Yeah. Okay, thank you, sir. Go ahead, coach, thank you. And then I'll try to wrap this up. Okay, and maybe I can help with that a little bit. I went back to when we first met Mr. Bloom, which was on January 28th. And you gave us a very good detailed description of your work at the Academy, breaking down the timeframes. And so what it gets back to and the reason you were with us back then was looking at the data reporting side of it. And that goes back to the incident reporting and to the Graham component. And you had mentioned that up until 2018, we were not continuing training. And you were hoping that we would amend that for future continuing ed training. So that being said, to get to Martin's question, I mean, Representative Lalone's question, just looking back at that testimony, it seems that we're not far away from a solution here. I'm just looking back at some of the comments that you made back then. And it would be interesting to see or hear your thought as to if you were king, what would you do to change the paradigm? Oh boy, you don't want me to be everything. Oh boy, you don't want me to be everything. Oh boy. I really appreciated your ability and capability. I remember your first visit to the joint committees. Well, I guess because of some of the ambiguity of what I'm reading in this statute here, I think I expressed my concerns and there's no need to harp on those. But I do think that for one, I would love to see a statewide model policy that involves everyone and all of our stakeholders and all of the critical components of our society that have a say in it. I would love to see that. And that's also one of the things that I've jumped up and down on for years, saying, why can't we do this in Vermont? You know, we have statewide model policies for some other things. What's more important than use of force? And I really think that would be one thing that I think would be a good thing for Vermont, just like additional training time. And of course, you know, of course the use of force instructor is gonna say he wants more training. But I think that that would be my biggest wish is to really see a mandated policy that everyone is forced to abide by. And I'd also like to see some mandatory use of force reporting and what the commissioner talked about in regard to a statewide, you know, clearing house where all use of force incidents that go beyond compliant handcuffing are reported. Because for one, I think the public has a right to know, you know, what amount of force their officers are using. You know, they have, and I feel very strongly about this, when people dial 911, they have an expectation of what's gonna show up at their house. And it's incumbent on our enforcement officers to be the most confident and competent people that Vermonters have a right to have, that they pay for with their tax money, me being one of them. So I think that having a use of force reporting clearing house would be wonderful because then me as a trainer, I could look at, well, what are we using force on the most? What are we using force on the least? Which techniques are we using the most? Which ones are we never using? So perhaps could we jettison those from training and put our time and effort into other things? And I think that as a training tool, that would be incredibly helpful. So I think, you know, with a couple of points in my king crown would be a statewide mandated policy and also a clearing house for all use of force reporting. Great. Well, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. That's helpful. And we'll certainly share that if you haven't already with House government operations. Okay, your testimony has been enormously helpful and interesting and certainly if you have more thoughts, please reach out to us either through email or glad to have you back or meet with you separately. But certainly you've given us a lot of very helpful guidance. So committee members, thank you so much for staying. Sorry that we won't get to Julio, Attorney General's office, but we do, we have been speaking with the Attorney General's office. So Julio, we can either meet with you separately or we'll be back in touch, but I just, I think given we have to be on the floor now, I think we do need to adjourn. So it would be helpful to me. There's no, there's no plan for me to testify before the committee in the future, or you don't know yet. There are other committees, there are other bills next week and I just need, I need to be able to, you know, size it up. Yeah, no, we will be continuing with this. And so, and I think our first committee, I think we meet on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. So why don't you plan on joining us again? Okay, thank you. All right, thanks. Thanks Julio. Yeah, thank you. Okay, so thank you everybody. And Kelly, hopefully you're good for this afternoon. Assuming we go ahead with it, it's a little unclear, but I hope we should be good. Just to redo what we did yesterday, but more detail. Yeah, well, I think if we actually report the bill, yeah, you could do it in some more detail, but I still think that even not quite as high a level, but not actually reading the entire section by section. So somewhere in between. So I'll try to be there this time to do my part. So Martin, do you want to catch up a little bit or? Yeah, let's catch up. Yeah, yeah, I do need to figure out what I'm going to say this afternoon as part of my report, but it shouldn't take long. So yeah, you won't call me right away. Sure, okay. Great, so we are going to.