 Looks like everyone's here. That's going to be here. In that case, I call the orders meeting at 6.05 p.m. We're all present minus you all. And that moves us to local termination, additions and modifications to the agenda. I have one modification and that is to remove agenda item 6.04 video availability path forward. We discussed this last time and I don't foresee us moving forward at this point in time. If anyone else, so I would have to bring a motion to remove that. Anyone else disagrees with that, please let me know why and I'd be happy to not make that motion. Just to clarify, Jebu, this is something we'll come back to later. Yes, absolutely. This is just being tabled right now until maybe next meeting that I foresee hopefully next meeting. We can get back to this, but yeah. This is Randall. I second the motion. Any further discussion? All in favor of tabling agenda item 6.04 to a future date? Raise your hand or say aye. Aye. I believe that was unanimous. I have no further amendments to the agenda unless anyone else wants to bring forth one right now. Not seeing or hearing anything. Moving on to agenda item 2.01. Approval of last meeting's minutes from 2.23.21. Sorry, I couldn't hear you. Sure. I move to accept the minutes. Approve the minutes. Do I have a second? I'll second that. All in favor, sorry, any discussion? All in favor of approving last meeting's agenda minutes? Raise your hand or say aye. Bye. All right. Jebu, I'm just abstaining because I was only there for part of the meeting for about an hour. Fair. I believe that's five yeses and one abstention from Commissioner Hart to T. Moving on to the public forum. I only believe there's a couple people signed up for tonight, but I do just want to say that we have a, I'll take public forum up until 6.30. Then we have a presentation from 6.30 to 7 o'clock. And if we still have people that want to speak, that was not, that could not get into public forum prior to that, we'll resume at 7 o'clock. So with that being said, Sharon, please take it away. So the first one is Winifred McCarthy. And I'm not seeing her in the list, so I'll circle back to that. Next is Sylvia Knight. Hi, Sylvia. Okay, am I unmuted now? Yes, you are. All right, thanks. Okay. I just wanted to share some concerns that I had about the interchanged between Umbayanga Mafuto in an early January and the police interaction with him. I'm very concerned. I understand that he's been incarcerated. And I think my concern is largely that his situation has been made worse. And I'd like to say that I feel that human beings are more important than automobiles, than property. I would like to suggest that the police might have engaged him in conversation rather than beginning to grab at him. And it seems that the police were surprised that he reacted. And that to me implies a lack of understanding on the police's part of what happens when a young black man is accosted by a policeman. I'm not making excuses for somebody if he's trying to break into a car, but the car was undamaged. He was walking away from it. And I believe the police escalated the situations unnecessarily. And they're taught force. They're not taught conversation in their training from what I can gather, from what I've learned from the police commission's materials. So I still remain concerned about that. And I look forward to learning more about what your what the processes will be going forward. And I'm wondering if anybody knows if this young man has any legal representation. If there's any more efforts to get the more of the police videos. So he's been put in a place where he's more likely to get COVID now than perhaps he was before. And the concern is how do we get help to somebody who's you know, appears to be acting out, but his life has been made a whole lot worse. So that's I just so it's about getting the police to communicate before they start grabbing on people. And I hope that that's partly probably what your aiming for somehow in some of your work. Thank you. Thank you. I'd like to I guess I would like some some feedback from somebody on the on the board as to what's happening in that situation. I don't need it right now. But if you can share anything that I don't know that I can that is that you can divulge. I'd appreciate it. Thank you. I'll look into that and I'll get back to you, Sylvia. Thank you, Jabu. Next is Mary Cox. Okay, Mary. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. So good evening. My name is Mary Cox. I'm a resident at the health section of Burlington. I'm an attorney, mathematician and a veteran. I'm also a mother of a young man also resident of Burlington who's been diagnosed with a serious mental health condition and speaking at night with his commission. About 12 years ago, when my son was first diagnosed, psychiatrists told me to call the police. Things began to unravel in a way that I felt unsafe where things were out of control. They called the police on numerous occasions during the first couple of years and my son was in crisis. Best response to the calls were when street outreach team member Justin Barrett was available to respond. He generally came with police backup. The police allowed Justin to take leave and interact with my son. However, when the police responded without trained street outreach, the results were mixed. On several occasions, I wanted to call the police department again and ask them to please send someone else. For many years we didn't interact with the police. However, in the late fall of 2019 and spring of 2020, I sent injured at the period of prolonged crisis. Called the police numerous times, 20 times would be a good estimate. Again, sometimes street outreach team members responded with police backup, but on weekends the police came by themselves. There was a marked difference in these more recent interactions with the police. To some extent, the police officer still intimidated my son. However, they were deft in escalating the situation. One officer spent quite a bit of time calming my son and listening to him. My son later said that this was the only person who was willing to listen to my son's theories. By the way, Chief Murrata, if we can figure out who that is, I'd like to write him up for accommodation because he did just a great job. Also, during this period, I twice called the police when my son's girlfriend became frightened and reached out to me. Both times, police officers and street outreach team members responded. The first time, a very tall street, a very tall street outreach team member stood in the doorway to the girlfriend's house, cleaning in with police backup in the yard behind him. However, my son, who was relatively short, felt intimidated and non-cooperative. The waiter shared his discomfort with the way the situation had played out. The second time the police and street outreach responded, I briefly discussed the previous scenario with them. I asked Hannah, one of the street outreach persons, be the one to go in, and I asked the shortest officer there, who also had a friendly demeanor, to be Hannah's backup and to actually go inside the house with Hannah, sit down and chat with my son. Happily, they all agreed to this, and the interaction went smooth move, although my son remained uncooperative about getting help at that time. My son is currently doing very well and is stable and starting to think about work and going back to school. In mid-2019, so this is before my son went into crisis, I was asked to join a BPD work group on mental health and outreach as part of the working done for the BPD 2020 vision. Our work group met several times and did a tremendous amount of brainstorming, engaged in frank and open conversation, and ultimately came up with a plan for the beginnings of a police-mental health collaboration. The plan seems to be somewhat derailed by the pandemic and other factors. Police response to a person in mental health crisis is one of the most difficult jobs that the police have. Outcomes are not always what we wish they could be. I'm hopeful, though, based on my experience that the police are on the right track in terms of training and community. I asked you to consider the following. First, an expanded personnel and training program for police officers to effectively respond to mental health crisis. I believe this will require more police, not less, more training such as mental health first aid crisis intervention team training. It would be useful to come up with a tentative analysis of personnel and training needs. Second, a method by which people involved in a police-mental health interaction are debriefed after the interaction. Every interaction can be viewed as a learning experience and it is important to know what actually happens afterwards as well as what the perceptions were of all involved. Third, a recommendation to the city council that they work towards more community resources for mental health crises. What's the person experiencing a mental health crisis as calm and is ready to talk? It is useful to have actual crisis or respite facilities to help. The assist crisis unit run by Howard center has only six beds. Everyone else is taken to the emergency room or just left where they were found. Some cities have a mental health urgent care, but folks can go to get help without being locked up in a psychiatric facility. There are various models at work, however we are woefully short of options here in Burlington. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you for that. The only other one that was signed up was Winifred. If you're there, if you want to raise your hand, I don't see your name in the list. At this time then I guess I would open up a public forum to anybody that is in attendance in the attendees. So if you have anything you'd like to speak, please raise your hand and we'll recognize you. I am seeing one. Joey. Hi, my name is Joey Corcoran. I'm a retired mental health counselor. And I'm really concerned as I've just heard from the previous speaker, Mary Cox, and in speaking with my colleagues about the lack of capacity of mental health practitioners and facilities in Burlington. I'm not sure that's really going to be fixable in the immediate future. Mental health cuts have really reduced treatment possibilities, as she says, assist is about it. And then as a previous crisis worker, we would just go to the ER to try and find discharge possibilities of which there were very few, very few beds in Vermont total. And I gather from my colleagues who are still working, this continues to be the case. I think that in view of the lack of treatment facilities, that it might be useful to begin at least to provide trauma informed training to community members as well as to police. I've also been interested and I don't know if you're already familiar with the agency that has been practicing in Eugene up and called CAHOOTS that has used community members to supplement the police's response to calls of distress. And have apparently done that without incidents where they regretted not having armed officers present and effectively were able to deescalate. So I would just encourage you to look at that and see if that might be a helpful model as well as the possibility of trauma informed training and specifically racial trauma informed training, which a woman called Candace Dickens recently gave a very effective presentation at a conference called Psychotherapy Networker, which is a very well known conference for mental health professionals. Thank you for your work and I'd be also wanting to be involved in any forums that could help our community become more racially informed and have a less divisive conversation, a more conscious of bias conversation about police reform. Thank you. Thank you. Peggy. Hi, thank you for letting me ask a question. I am curious as to whether there's a resource that I can look at in terms of what bias training is happening for the police. Is there a resource I can look for? I'll attempt to answer that right now. I don't believe there's something about maybe for current training, but if you go to our board docs, there is a list of all trainings that have been completed, I believe. And that is listed on the board docs under police commission. Click agenda. I believe you scroll down to bias training. It should, sorry, then click on bias training, list of training, and there should be a little link. Click that link and you'll download a spreadsheet of completed BPD trainings. Okay, great. Thank you. You're welcome. Any further public comments? Anyone in the attendees that want to speak? I'm not seeing or hearing any. So that moves us on to, sorry, agenda item 4.01. We are a couple minutes early, but I do believe the NAICOL representative is on the panel. So if it's all right with you, I think we can all start up, because I know you have a hard cut off of 655. Thank you. Yes, I can absolutely start. It's great to be with all of you this evening, so thank you for inviting me. My name is Cameron McElhenny, and I'm the director of training and education for the national association for civilian oversight of law enforcement, or NAICOL for short. NAICOL works throughout the year to create a community for support for independent civilian oversight entities that seek to make their local law enforcement agencies, jails, and prisons more transparent, accountable, and responsive to the communities that they serve. So NAICOL came about, about 25 years ago, was formed by a group of actually ex-law enforcement who felt that there was a need for civilian oversight in the United States, much like what was happening throughout the rest of the world at that time. Since then, we have grown to an organization that has well over 1,000 members. We do mostly training throughout the year, and that takes many forms. We have an annual conference, we do webinars, regional meetings, academic symposia, any way that we can get information about civilian oversight and its benefits to people like yourself doing the work of oversight, but also community members, law enforcement, and other stakeholders that are affected by law enforcement and who want to be part of the process and solution. We also do a lot of support and resources for those working to enhance or establish civilian oversight, and that's really, I think, why I've been invited here today. We have put together trainings for communities like yourself that deal with the different types of things that you might deal with in your work, also some information about how you can effectively do your work. We're actually getting ready to publish a resource, hopefully any day now, that talks about the principles of civilian oversight and effective practices. And when I say principles, we have developed, with the help of other oversight professionals and academics over the years, 13 main principles that we see as guiding civilian oversight, no matter what model you follow, what size of city or town you are, but things that do, when put in place, lead to more effective oversight. These things include things like independence as the number one, community outreach, adequate jurisdiction and authority, adequate refunding and staff, or adequate funding and staffing, procedural justice and legitimacy. So that's just an example of some of those principles. And so we have provided, I believe, and if we have not, we can, some pre-publication summaries of those principles and some of the effective practices that are guided by them. So what we're hoping to do for you is to provide training that would help you in the work that you're doing on a daily basis. But in order to do that, have more conversations so that we make sure that that training suits your needs. One of the interesting things about civilian oversight is that there are about 200 oversight entities in existence now. I will say since June of last year, we have talked with 130 new cities and towns and counties who are looking to establish civilian oversight. So there is the possibility that they may dump a number by the end of this year. But the very interesting part of that is that no two civilian oversight entities are exactly the same because every community has its own nuances. It is as different as the people who inhabit that community. And it requires a very individual and thoughtful touch for how it's created, how the training occurs, and how it's sustained over time. So hopefully, I know that's a very quick overview, but I just wanted to let you know a little bit about who we are and what we hope to help you with, and I'm happy to answer any questions. Sorry, Chris, we know it's your hand raised. You have the floor. I just for those, especially in the audience, the commissioners knew this was happening. But just to let you know that in our last meeting, we talked about what training might be beneficial. And we already knew of NACOL because of the Joint Committee's work, but also Julio Thompson, who is an Assistant Attorney General, recommended NACOL to us. So we contacted Cameron at NACOL and we discussed with her some of what we think the training needs would be. And she developed a scope of work for us that is on-board docs now and which can be tweaked. I think it was sort of an initial draft of what trainings would be beneficial for us. So just to provide some context to why we're taking this up now. So thank you, Kemi, for being here. Absolutely. So yeah. So I got hold of the scope of work earlier this morning. I sent it out to, I emailed that to the commissioners and it was posted on board docs. I understand. That was short notice for everybody. My apologies. But if anyone has any questions, comments, concerns, or anything, yeah. Kemi's here to answer any questions we have up until 6.55. So please ask away. Yeah. Thank you for coming and for joining us. So one of my concerns is just with the turnover in the commission. Usually it happens in June and you talked about making the training, one of the things to consider is sustainability. So I wonder if you can speak to that because that would be a concern of mine is the timing of this training, if there's going to be any turnover. And just because I think it's valuable and I'd hate to see us do the training and then have both drop and join, then how do we sustain it? So that's a great question because it's one that all boards face with any type of training that they do. So one of the ways that we handle it, I might suggest that the training, we work to develop the training leading up to June and perhaps if it can wait that long, given your current needs that that's we start as soon as you have your new commission on board. The other thing that we can do is the beauty of doing everything virtually is that it's easily recorded and shared. We share all of the slide decks that we provide that can then accompany the recording and we make sure that we're available for questions. One of the other things that we do is as we're doing the training and the virtual nature of them now has really helped us, we do them in small increments so that as we're doing them, the next one that comes around, we can ask questions because you've had time to absorb it. Those questions on a recording are really valuable. When you're having a lot of information thrown at you, it's sometimes hard to come with all the questions that you have right then. So making sure there's time for those questions and the recording of the answers is invaluable to those who watch later. One thing I will caution you about is that the world of civilian oversight and policing is changing rapidly. And while there are some basics that will stay constant, it is important to then also have future trainings in mind when you're doing budgets. And those are not just trainings from us, although we have other trainings that you can follow up with, webinars, conferences, things like that. But also looking for training with the local law enforcement agency to make sure that everybody's up on their policies and procedures. And also, you know, there are great trainings that are done by ACLU on civil rights and other investigatory conferences or trainings that can be done. There's also, like for instance, I had sent, we talked about reviewing video evidence. And just the other day, a conference with one of the leading forensic video analysts came across my desk and we can, we share those things with the oversight community so that people have access to them. So there's ways to continue the training and share what's already been done. So just one other question. Is there a membership with NACL where resource materials like that come out, for example, on the video? So, of course, we would love for you to be a member of NACL. But we also, we share that, whether you're a member or not. We have listservs and mailing lists and forums so that you can be a part of those as well and see that information come through. So information is not a condition of membership. Thank you. Karen. I think that was my, you said you have resources, slide decks, you share everything with folks. And first of all, thank you very much for coming. Really appreciate it. Thank you, everybody who helped to coordinate this. You said things are changing very rapidly. And so that sort of indicated, and I, I know that to me that, you know, even if we had shared information that it would probably be best to just have this as an ongoing, I think that's what we're looking for too, is something that can be ongoing someplace that we can go for information and education. And, you know, just, you know, so I hear you on the slide decks. Is there anything, you said there's conferences. Is there, is that just NACL or do you just recommend things for us to attend? I'm just wondering a little bit more about how that works. So NACL is really the only civilian oversight focused organization. And so our annual conference, for instance, you know, every, everybody's conference is a little different these days. But this year we'll be holding a virtual conference that will have 25 to 30 different sessions. And then we will also have an in-person conference in December at the end of the year. Normally, we just have one conference in the fall, where we have up to 32 sessions where on all different aspects of civilian oversight, whether it's innovations in civilian oversight, community engagement strategies, basic training, kind of runs the gamut. And, but then we also have monthly, we have webinars. Some of them are on basic training topics. Some of them are just items of interest. You know, in the last couple of months, we've had one on police surveillance technology, we've had another one on death anxiety and police culture. And sometimes we have them on certain seizure laws. So it just, those also kind of run far and wide in topic choices. So those are all options out there as well. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Chief Murad. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for letting me ask something. Hi. I was able to, I presented at the 2019 NACOL conference in Detroit, and it was a really wonderful experience to get to be there sat on a panel with the IG of the LAPD and the head of the ACLU from DC. And it was a really, really terrific experience. I came back and told the commission about the organization and how great I think it is for setting up civilian oversight. To what extent is the training that you talk about also training that familiarizes civilians and non-sworn people who haven't been sworn law enforcement officers with law enforcement procedure policy and experience? So I hear about the discussion of, for example, Fourth Amendment issues and different kinds of questions about law or new technologies. But what about the sort of law enforcement experience aspect, the training that officers get as well? So in many cases, we recommend that that training come from the local law enforcement agency. It's really important for an oversight entity to understand the particular policies and procedures, general orders that guide their police departments. We also recommend, it also helps to kind of bridge that gap. I know for full disclosure, I served on a civilian review board in Indianapolis for six years. We did trainings, we did ride-alongs with police officers so that we could have a better understanding of what a day in the life looks like. We also had the opportunity for officers to get to know us as well, members of the community, which was also, I think, very valuable. So we often recommend that. Now, we realize that as a civilian oversight agency or organization, we understand that our primary expertise lies in civilian oversight and the primary expertise in training and policy and procedures of law enforcement. That kind of training is best to come from the people who are living by those policies, procedures. Now, I will say we do two training on policy recommendations, particularly we have working groups in our organization on use of force policies and jail and prison policies as well, but it takes a whole group of people to really round out the training that's needed to do the job well, which is, I think, what everybody wants to do. Thank you. I feel like I need to say I'm referencing what you sent out, Jabu, looking over here on my phone, like looking away from the screen. It feels rude, but the scope, I didn't get a chance to look at all of that. So I'm reading as I'm going along and thanks for that. And yeah, are there any other further questions or comments you don't know what I have right now? Stephanie, upside your muted. Maybe, Kim, it would just be helpful for you to just briefly talk through the scope of work that you sent us, just to kind of give a flavor of the kinds of topics that we talked about. Absolutely. So what we put together was a training that consisted of four educational sessions, so breaking it down into two hour increments to make it a little bit easier for the virtual platform. So the first educational session revolves around civilian oversight of law enforcement, basically talking about history, models, overview of oversight mechanisms throughout the United States, so that there's a better understanding of the work that you're doing and how it fits into the broader context. Also, we talk about the principles of civilian oversight of law enforcement and effective practices, and it included with that also kind of talks about there's a lot of talk about what are the best practices. It's a question I get all the time. And we have really moved to a model of effective practices because as you can imagine, if there's anyone that does any kind of data analysis or research out there, when you have 200 oversight mechanisms that are all different, doing best practices is a little difficult when everyone's collecting information differently and doing things a little differently. We also then do some training on effective practices and the conducting and reviewing of investigations. Even if we have a lot of review boards and commissions out there that review investigations, they don't necessarily do the investigations, but it's still important to know what goes into a investigation and what you need to be looking for it when you review it. And then we also do have suggested some effective location based community outreach engagement. I can't stress enough, and I'm sure all of you know, that the importance of outreach and engagement for communities so that there is a level of bringing transparency to a sometimes what a very seemingly opaque process. And it also builds support and helps to bridge to build those bridges between law enforcement and community as well. And then we also talk a lot about reporting practices for civilian oversight agencies, again bringing transparency to the process and then minimum standard training standards, something that we've already been talking about a little bit and the types of training that are out there and why it's so important. And then we also do a session with most of the communities that we work with identifying and addressing challenges and opportunities so that we can help you work to the next phase of what you're doing and doing well. So and then in addition to that those topics of training, also providing some if needed hours of consultation to the commission on different aspects, different issues, just depending on what comes up. And I think that often is helpful in providing additional resources, having reviews of policies and procedures, things like that. But I will say also one of the things just as a side note, one of the things about the civilian oversight community that I find pretty amazing is that everybody is very willing to give time and resources and advice. No one likes to see another oversight agency have to reinvent the wheel and a lot of them have experienced the same problems that others are and so are more than willing to act as a resource as well. A great example is if you were in a community that wanted to set up a mediation program, well there's some great mediation programs already in existence that have already gone through the work of setting it up. And so NACO is a great resource for connecting you with those communities and the people who have actually set up the programs. So in addition to this training, we do do some things like that and making sure you have the human resources that you need to kind of help you with the work that you're doing. And that happens whether we have a contract with you or not. Our job is to and the way we see it is to help you succeed in your work and we realize that that that has nothing to do with a contract. So thank you. And I was going to ask a question about the ten hours of consulting, but you answered that for me. So thank you. I guess anyone else has this? I see Milo's hand raised. Thank you. This is Milo Grant. Thank you so much for this document and your presentation. This is definitely something that our commission needs. I really like the idea of going through the training and then having it recorded maybe internally we come up with a process as to how often the training is updated. Is it updated once a year or twice a year? So that if there are changes that occur on the commission, we have something that someone can look at because we've just I've always felt like I've kind of come in really raw to the situations that we've dealt with. And despite the fact that I do a lot of independent studying on the issues, I think we'd be a great benefit to be able to go through these type of materials. I have one quick question about the membership. I actually jumped over to your website and it looks like there's like a flat fee for essentially a commission. And would that be regardless of the number of members? Is that correct? Yes. An organizational membership includes all of your commissioners. Okay. And could it also include we have a joint committee of police commissioners and the city counselors that are on the city's public safety committee. So not all the city counselors but a handful of them. Could we include them in the organizational fee? Would that be a separate? I believe that that can be done. I just would need to check with our director of operations. Okay. Very good. Thank you. That is all the questions I have. So thank you. Yeah. Any further questions or comments anyone has for Cammy while she's here? Not seeing or hearing any. Thank you so very much for being here, putting this together. I know this, as Milo mentioned before, this is something that we definitely need. I mean, we're all here because we care deeply about our community. And we all kind of, at least I know for me, I got here and I was like, all right, what's next? What are we trained on? And I was like training, what training? I was like, oh, okay. So yeah, I think this is going to help us out moving forward. And yeah, thank you very much. And we'll be in contact shortly. Great. Well, it's a pleasure being with all of you and thank you for the invitation. Awesome. So then I guess amongst us moving forward, I've never done this before. So I guess kind of help me with the path forward on this. I think, I mean, obviously, I think we need to tweak the scope of work that we got. I don't know what that exactly looks like. I don't know the best way of going about doing that, but I feel that needs to happen. And then we should send, then we send that to City Council and the mayor to hopefully get funding for this. So I guess I'll take any questions or any comments on the path forward. I think I saw Stephanie's hand up. Yeah. So I think that the scope of work doesn't have to be finalized in order to send, to pass a motion to send a request for funding for training to the City Council. I would suggest that you maybe appoint somebody to be the point person to receive comments from the commissioners about the scope of work, to work with Nicole on a revised draft of that as a separate action. And then I think the other issue is whether we want to pass a motion tonight to make a request to the City Council to provide us the funding for this. And I recognize that there are complexities to that, but at least getting the request of them can set in motion dealing with any of the complexities. So good. I was going to say I saw Eileen turn her camera on with me. She has something to say. I mean, I have the floor. I would suggest that probably the request should come to the mayor first. The way that the budget works in the city is that the mayor proposes it and then the City Council votes on it. So usually recommendations would start there. And what, what I would suggest is that if you vote tonight that I would take that to the mayor and to the CAO who would be the one finding the money for it and that we move it forward that way and that we would then get back a response to you all. And I think then probably the idea would be that we would, the next City Council meeting could come to would be April 12th. So I think if we could work on kind of a schedule of getting, you know, back to you as to where and that money would come from and how it would come. And then the process for the City Council is that we would put together a memo on what, and I would work with the chair Gamash on putting together that memo that says this is what we want to do and why that includes the scope of work. And then they would authorize you to do this and work with my office on a contract that would lay out what the, what they are doing, what the scope of work looks like. We have a standard city contract that we would work with to make that happen. Okay, sounds good. So just to reiterate, so we just kind of make a motion to present this to the mayor and then he kind of goes through that, then gets them back to us for a scope then back to you guys and then that's kind of how it goes. Am I reading that correctly? The financial piece can go along. The scope you guys could, you know, work on simultaneously and I will, and we can get my office started on a standard contract language that would attach the scope. Okay, awesome. And I'm sorry, Randall, sorry, your hand raised. My apologies. Withdraw the hand. Okay, all right. Stephanie. Can you tell me, is it a long process to get this contract approved? I mean, assuming the money is found, is that a long term process? You would get, we would, I'm suggesting that we try to get it to the council on April 12th. Got it. Okay. We would work on getting the contract done by then. Okay, awesome. So then I make a motion. Sorry, how should I word this motion? So I think you're making a motion to request that the that the city provide funding in the amount of $5,100. I think that was the number right on for on NACO to provide training. And then we go and then the rest of it will flow from there. Okay. In that case, I just wanted to ask Commissioner Grant. I haven't looked at the membership page, but I'm wondering, Commissioner Grant, did they talk at, I'm just wondering if we include in that or consider what the cost of a membership is and that is a very good point. Hold on just one moment. I don't know if that gives you, anyway, I just so no, I definitely hear what you're saying. And that is definitely that that should also be part of our request. So they have different membership options. And where we would fall would be the organizational membership option, which they charge $400 per year. And as she said, that would include everyone associated with the commission. And then do we want to pull in the members of the city councilors who are part of the public safety committee because we have joint meetings with them with a lot of overlap. But that would be the fee for the organizational membership. And then they next have something they call regular members, which are 150 per year. And they have some definition for regular members, associate members, 100, and then they have a student membership for $50 a year. Okay, thank you. So I think we might want to consider, I don't know what that entails. So I'm just, you know, I, I'm speaking without really knowing what I'm saying, but I just think that we might want to consider membership depending on what that you want to support this organization. We'd have to look at whether that makes sense, but too, it sounds like it's got invaluable resources for us. I was also thinking for a budget request to make it $5,500. I know they said $5,100, but I was like, we're going $5,500 and that $400 covers that. So I think requesting $5,500 to cover that, I don't think that's unreasonable. And before April 12th or whatever that date was, we could confer with Cami as to whether that would include joint committee. I am going to imagine it would include three members from city council on the joint committee, but we should clarify that as well. Yeah. Okay. I think 55 is the number to ask unless anyone disagrees with that number. Corporal, I'm sorry. Oh, my apologies. Sorry. Right now, sorry, your hand pop up there. This is Randall Hart. No, I was just going to say, I think that the question of whether or not it would be appropriate to include members of the joint committee, the members of the city council public safety subcommittee in the membership or in access to the general principles of civilian oversight is a separate question, separate question which we can debate later. I think it might be, it might be that the civilian oversight capacities are appropriately performed by the police commission and not by public safety subcommittee, which has a different set of goals. So I think that's a question which can be debated, I think later. And it's not, it doesn't hinge on whether we pass this motion now. All right. I hear that. I'm sorry. Shereen, you were saying something? We would want to break out the 5,500 to reflect obviously that we're thinking 400 for the membership just so we can be clear and, you know, if there are issues. Okay. Awesome then. Then I propose a motion requesting training funds from NACL to tune of $5,100 with, I guess, an addendum maybe of 5,500 bucks to possibly include membership into NACL. Is, sorry, Eileen, does that sound okay? It does. I second that motion. Do I have any conversation? I'm not seeing or hearing any. All in favor of the motion on the floor. Raise your hand or say aye. Aye. Aye. I believe that passes unanimously. Thank you, Stephanie. Yeah, Stephanie, thank you for all your help on this, on that one. And I think there's a part two for this, I think there's a second motion as well, which is looking at us as kind of a scope of work. I don't think, I believe that I can move at the same time, as you said, with looking at the budget stuff. So I don't think it's as pressing that that one gets out the door, but I just, anyone want to be the point contact for kind of putting together this scope of work? Sorry. If nobody else wants to do it, I'll do it, but I'm happy to defer to somebody else. I didn't hear the question. I'm sorry. Can you repeat that? Oh, it was just, sorry. Oh, sorry. No, you're much clearer than I am, so please take it. I said, if nobody else wants to be the point person, I'm happy to do it, but I defer to whoever would like to do it. I don't know what the it is. Oh, sorry. Basically, fine-tuning the scope of work too, because what we have is kind of like, you know, like a rough draft is kind of fine-tuning that for our needs. Can I just add this, that what Nicole told us also is that it could be iterative in the sense that they could do a training and realize, actually, the next one planned isn't the right sequence or could be redefined. So there, you know, there is that flexibility with it. We don't have to get it totally right the first time, but it would be good for everybody to get a sense of what they think we would benefit from training on that specific to us and submit that scope of work. Okay. I see Randall saying raised. Thank you. This is Randall. Yes, I got it. There are kind of two issues, two relevant issues for any work we would be doing with Nicole. One is training for current members of this particular oversight body with respect to what the kind of powers and capacities and features are completely attention to. The second is with respect to kind of enhancement of civilian oversight. So if there are questions or concerns about whether or not the scope of our powers and duties right now as police commissioners ought to be expanded, that's also something that Nicole would have would be a broad some insight into. So I assume that the scope of work would cover potentially both of those issues, both kind of current training and also consultation or guidance on the potential expansion or re-designation, as a re-courification of what our oversight functions are. I'll say that in my conversation. Stephanie, we had a conversation with Cammie last week, I believe was, and I did mention that there's a lot of moving pieces with this that the powers we have now could be completely different from one year from now. I explained to them how there was a movement to try to get new oversight that was vetoed and I explained that. So they are aware that things very much could be different moving forward down the line. Randall followed by Mila. Yeah, but just to clarify, the idea would be that they would help to offer guidance about what about how those powers should be redefined or clarified going forward. So not merely that the landscape might be different a year from now to years from now, but that should we desire it, they could help provide some guidance about how those powers should be further developed for us. Yes, I'll say I assumed that much, but I can ask pointedly to clarify. I decided to answer your question. Yes, so it was not necessarily a question. Again, this is Randall. Sorry, it's not a question so much as just a request that whoever is the point person for clarifying the scope of work Okay, yes. Keep that in consideration. That was my apologies. Mila, I saw your hand raised before. Yes, I actually to Randall's question and just from the limited poking around that I've done on their website, it definitely I think from having an ongoing membership it gives us that additional although it sounds like they would be willing to do certain things without a membership. But with the membership, we definitely we get the additional access to update get more information as things change. So that definitely seems to be part of it and they have they've got like a membership survey that's pretty detailed what their membership uses them for what they want to see what workshops they take in advantage of and training that they take an advantage of. So I would definitely recommend when we can schedule it in that might be something we want to look at in more detail. I recently became familiar with them when we were asked when they were asked to look at the oversight document that was presented and then of course vetoed. I would be interested in being the point person on this if no one else wants to do it. I'd be happy to have you do it. I see Randall's hand raised. Yeah, thank you. This is Randall. No, I was just going to say, you know, obviously that membership is not necessary for access to their materials. I consulted their reference materials extensively over the last few years I've read hundreds of pages of stuff that they've written both in previous committees have served on and in this. I do think that there is additional resources they could provide to us, but you know, but I but the materials themselves are available. And, you know, those can be accessed by any of us anytime we want. So then the question would be, like I said, not necessarily getting access to the resources, access to materials, which we have right now, but getting access to to kind of precise structured feedback. So Milo's volunteered to be the point person for kind of scope here. So I guess I spoke before we'll, yeah, I asked that everyone here just kind of email Milo. Sorry, Randall. No, just just that I would hope certainly that that the point person for refining that scope of work to keep all the other commissioners, you know, in the loop, and it thinks not go out without having been viewed by all of us, but I'm happy to have Commissioner Grant serve as the point if she is willing to do so. I'd ask that as well too is keeping us in the loop, but I expect that from you. So, yeah, so I guess then I guess how should I, how do I phrase this motion? Just Randall. I'm not sure that we need a motion for this. So yeah, it's just, you know, we've already made the request. And then as far as who gets designated to work on that document with Nicole that I think is just that's a commission product and so that can be done by any one of us to take the lead on that. Okay, that is my understanding. I see a nodding in agreement. So works for me. Awesome. Yeah, I guess people just for sorry, email Milo. Any thoughts and comments on this and then circle it around back and guess something out the door. Milo. I have a quick question for Eileen. Would I just go ahead and email the mayor and advise him that, hey, this is a draft, we're working on the final version, but these are the funds that we would like to request to get the formal request in. I think from what you were saying before, we didn't have to have a finalized document just to get the financial part of it rolling. Is that correct? Yeah. What I was going to just, when I'm not busy on this call, send an email to him and to the CAO and see if we can, they and probably John Murad would be involved, too, would have some discussion of where this money could come from for the commission. So that's probably the group that would have a discussion on it and I'm happy to take it forward so that you don't have to do anything with it, Milo, at this point. I would do that and get back to you all. I will also, assuming that every indication I have is that folks are interested in trying to find that money within this year if we can find it and I will also get started on the parts of the contract we can do without you having worked on the scope of work yet. And then if you all can figure out how you want to deal with the scope of work, and that will be the last piece of it. But I think, you know, even if you haven't finalized the scope of work, if we have, we have a draft scope of work, we can write the contract generally, we can get everything moving to go to the council on the 12th. Okay, very good. So I will let you move ahead with that formal request for the funds and then I will work with the commissioners to on the scope of work to get that finalized. Thank you. And just to clarify, we do not need to send out the request for funds to the mayor. You're going to take care of that. Yes. Okay. Awesome. Thank you. All right. I think that covers item 4.01 unless someone else has something else they want to comment on. I am not seeing or hearing anything. And that moves on to agenda item 5.01, which is the chief's report. And with that, I'll give the floor to one of the chiefs. Hi. Thank you very much for having me. I'm sorry for letting me speak to the commission. So we've had a busy period since we last spoke. I'd like to begin by acknowledging two, I'm sorry, radio. I'd like to begin by acknowledging two terrible incidents that have occupied the public consciousness over the past week. Mass shootings in both Georgia and now in Colorado, I think that we sensed during the pandemic that those kinds of incidents had receded somewhat in our country, which sees far too many of them, and that seemingly alone, among other nations, had seen them become ubiquitous. They receded in 2020, and now we've had two. And I think that we can pause and think about those and hope that we are not seeing a return to what unfortunately was normal in this nation. But I do want to point out that despite those two incidents occupying the public consciousness, that there has been overall in the country over the past year an increase in violence, not of those kinds of incidents that are driven by hate, by racism, by persons' madness, but are more what we think of as routinely criminal. We've seen intensely troubling increases in shootings and homicides across the country in 2020, and we're going to have a very significant spike from 2019 in which there were 16,425 people murdered in the United States to 2020. And we don't have those numbers yet for this year or for the early part of 2021, but shootings and firearm homicides have seen very large troubling increases. And we are not immune to a piece of that here. Our numbers are very, very small, but we are seeing some troubling indications of gunfire activity in our city. In 2020, there were more than a dozen incidents involving gunfire. And I want to distinguish here the difference between an incident in which a bullet strikes flesh, which is an aggravated assault or an attempted homicide, or in worst case scenarios, a homicide. And attempted homicides, homicides, very small number, thankfully, in any given year in the Queen City. But for gunfire incidents, which includes incidents in which guns are discharged and that we can go in and find evidence of that discharge and have some indication that that discharge was meant for a person, is that that's a separate count. We're working on developing a count for those because we haven't counted them well in the past. And I've been spending some time trying to figure out that what we have in those technically shooting at a person, if you can prove that it was at a person is in and of itself, reckless endangerment at minimum or aggravated assault. But with regard to the ones that we actually track, they tend to be the ones where we're something where someone is struck. We're trying to track better the ones where people are not struck, but guns are discharged in the city in an aggressive way, because we've seen an increase, as I said, about a dozen incidents in 2020. And over the past, the reason I'm bringing it up in this chief's report is that in the past month, we've had three. And since we last spoke, we have had an attempted homicide on Walnut Street, in which an individual fired into a home through a door in a place that individual had recently been striking a woman. Officers responded, applied a tourniquet. I firmly believe that they saved that individual's life based on the time of night that it was, based on the fact that they were the first responders, based on the fact that the FD has a policy of not going into a scene like that without officers on hand to secure the scene. We also had, thankfully, enough officers on staff that night to be able to not only address the scene at hand and apply that tourniquet and save that woman's life, but to have officers also canvassing the immediate area where they were able to locate a suspect, that suspect attempted to flee, crashed a vehicle, would not heed warnings and instructions from officers who surrounded the vehicle with rifles, in some cases, with less lethal munitions in other cases. That individual had a firearm in hand, waved that firearm in the direction of the officers, and yet officers resolved that situation safely for all involved. The restraint that was at play in that and the level of professionalism, I can't speak highly enough about that and how it was resolved. Had it occurred an hour later, we would not have been able to apprehend that suspect. We would have still responded to the scene. I do believe we would have saved that woman's life, but we would not have apprehended the suspect that night. A few nights later, a number of shots fired in the south end of town, shell casings recovered. We still don't know what that incident is or is not, but it's the kind that we track, but have to develop intelligence about. It gives us pause to think that people are discharging firearms, even if there is no effect in the city. Then a few nights after that, on Friday, we had a incident that began on Murray and Allen and then proceeded to Murray and Peru and ended up ranging across other parts of the town, in which an individual armed with an AR-15 style weapon that shot 5.56 rounds, which are the same type as used in an AR-15, apparently was firing at another vehicle that that individual was pursuing, and we are still actively investigating this case. We worked really well with a variety of partners. That pursuit included two officers attempting to stop the suspect vehicle. That suspect reversed into one of our cruisers, hard enough to disable it, knock off the driver's side front wheel, essentially. It's a miracle that our officer wasn't injured in that. The person abandoned the vehicle. We were able to use investigatory techniques in order to find that individual. We were aided immeasurably by South Burlington and an officer there who helped us apprehend that individual. Federal partners assisted as well, and the federal government currently has this case and has held the individual. We're still working on building state charges against this individual and in determining exactly what happened at night. But the fact that it happened at all, that kind of gunfire in our city, multiple rounds being fired during a car chase going into multiple residences near the location of the gunfire, that's disturbing. It's a picture of a trend that we saw uptick a lot in 2020 and to begin 2021 with it is concerning. That's one thing that I wanted to mention in the chief's report. Another instance I wanted to talk about some other things. We had officers respond to a person with a physical disability who had had a medical event and they were able to take that individual's service animal and are working with the hospital to make sure that that service animal is taken care of properly and fostered out. And those are the smaller things. They're not as Adam 12 or as drag net as a car chase involving a semi-automatic rifle being fired at a fleeing victim, but they are part and parcel to the work that officers do and indicative of the heart that they bring to it. So that's my brief chief's report for March and I thank you for the opportunity to share it. Thank you chief for that. Right. Moving on to agenda item 6.01, approval of the mayor's press conference items. For this I'll give the floor back to city attorney Eileen Blackwood. Oh, sorry. My apologies. I thought we talked you were going to discuss on why we can't move forward on this in the email you sent me earlier on today. This is an item I refer to misconduct release policy and then the next agenda item is in regards to the body worn camera. See, okay, I was prepared to talk on the body worn camera issue. So you might have to give me a little bit more. Well, in that case, then we can we can jump to that agenda item 6.02. Yeah. Okay, great. The super. So on the body worn camera policy, I apologize that it's taken us a long time to get to it just given the scope of work you will that we have in like in life and this is I think we have fairly minor changes to it. If you look at the the second document that's on board docs that is our comments back on it. So the I have underlined the words that we have added into this, which is just some things like we suggested that say body worn camera that that it you know what this is not the right document. Apologies. Let me get let me email to you all the correct document. Could you go on to another item and come back to me? That is not a problem. In that case, then we're going to jump to agenda item 6.03 template on data reports. So for this, Stephanie put together a template that would aid BPD in filing their use of force monthly reports. Because I do know that Nancy I believe has changed positions. And so she's no longer working over there. But yeah, I guess Steph, you want to explain this template a bit more? I'm sorry, I muted my apologies. So this was, you know, the majority of the commissioners wanted a monthly report on use of force. And rather than having something written, just a table of data seemed adequate. And so the question is, is this is this sufficient for what commissioners would like to see? Prior to this meeting, Commissioner Hart mentioned something to me about de-escalation and deceleration as to whether those were was data that's being collected. I'll ask Chief Muir about that. But I did call Nancy Stetson today. She said she believes that it's in there. It's a question of extracting it. I would say if it's available, I think there's a lot of interest and de-escalation in particular, it would be useful to have numbers on that. But if not, then I think that could be eliminated. And I want to make just one other comment here. I don't know what version. Oh, I see the version that you have. Actually, when I spoke to Nancy again today, she reminded me something that was relevant in our earlier data request, that rather than ask for data by ward, we should ask it by area. So A, B, C, D, and E. And so this should be revised to say that instead of wards. And then I guess within those areas, we could possibly put it in there. Area, whatever includes this ward or these two wards. Yeah. I see Randall's on the hand raised. Yeah, thank you. This is Randall Hart. So I'll ask this is a question of as one question of the chiefs. And then I'll express I said, I guess there's two questions of the chiefs. The first is whether again, this is following up on the question that that commissioner Seguino asked. The first question is whether or not the the categories de-escalation, de-escalatory actions and deceleration or deceleratory actions, whether those are sufficiently clearly defined, that those will be able to be easily extracted from the use of force reports, which are usually filed. So that's the first question. And then the second question is whether and this is just a clarifatory question, whether or not the boxes on the use of force report, which indicates alcohol, drugs and mental health, whether those are kind of always unambiguously used to refer to whether or not in the officer's judgment, the subject of the use of force is impaired by one of those conditions. So those are the two questions that I have. I'll let the chiefs answer that. So as far as de-escalation goes, I mean, almost all of the incidents that would include there is no, I don't know that there is a way to extract that data specifically out, although traditionally what we've been doing is reading the reports themselves, but generally officers will always use verbal commands. There may be some rare exceptions to that. And then also keep in mind that de-escalation covers both verbal de-escalation and physical de-escalation. So once an officer engages in a physical use of force, they use enough force to try to control that situation and then they need to de-escalate the use of physical force once they've gained control. So I don't know that that would necessarily accurately be reflected or be able to be documented other than, again, reading the detail of the incident themselves. De-escalation is, again, another thing that's more of a contemporary term that is used in our most modern version of our directive where it discusses creating time and space in these incidents to slow down an incident, and that, again, would have to come from the detail of the incident and the facts. And then I'm sorry, Commissioner Harper, was the last question that you had? Yeah, thank you. The second question was just about whether or not, so use of force support will contain boxes, one for alcohol, one for drug use, one for mental health. And the question was whether those are kind of always unambiguously used to refer to, in the officer's judgment, whether the subject of the use of force is impaired by one of those conditions. So I guess it's quality control there also. I mean, there is a lot of data that we ask officers to input into the system, and that is one of the issues. So I would say, generally, speaking, the officers do a pretty good job, whether in the incident itself or the, I would have to actually pull up a use of force report to see if that is, I believe it is documented in some way in the use of force report itself. But I know in the incident data, we do have a mental health check box, we do have an alcohol check box in the incidents themselves. So at least that is documented. I don't know if there is a general drug category, there may be as well. Yeah, so I mean, again, so I believe there are those three boxes and on the use of force, on the summaries of use of force that are posted on the current data portal, they will say alcohol involved, drug involved, mental health involved. It's just not clear to me whether or not that term, alcohol involved, drug involved, is always taken up to mean that in the officer's judgment, the subject of use of force is affected by that condition. Yes, it would be the officer's perception is what that's based on. Right, understood. Thank you. So I can't see her hand get raised a second before. Okay, no, sorry. Milo. Hi, thank you. Just a quick clarification, and also for members of the public who are following the discussion, we would be moving this from wards to areas because that reflects how our officers patrol, correct? That's my assumption. Oh, Chief Sullivan, take that, Chief Sullivan. Yes, that is correct. And the wards, I mean, there is some direct correlation, for example, Sierra, generally is wards one and eight, but other wards, it blends multiple different areas, but officers are assigned to areas of the city to patrol. Okay, thank you. I think it would be good. Let me ask a question to my fellow commissioners. Ultimately, we want to be reviewing this information, but will our ultimate goal be to also have this information public? And if that is the case, I think the areas definitely should be defined. Any thoughts on that? Yeah, I said before that, I think with the areas that should be included, like area A includes, you know, arbitrarily this ward or that ward, area B could control that. I'll let DC Sullivan respond and then I have Stephanie followed by Randall. We do have an area map that we can provide. It may be already available online in some fashion, but generally speaking, A is the new north end, E is the south end of the city, B is the old north end, C is the hill section of the city, and D is downtown. And that's generally how we break it up because they're distinct districts with their own flavor. Sorry, Mila, was that suffice? Yes, thank you. And I do believe it's on the site, although I can't remember where. I guess I'm just concerned about being consistent when we offer information. I've been meaning to do a summary on the site. There's some areas where there's definitions provided and then there are other areas where definitions aren't provided. And so when we think about wanting to educate the public to where they can find information, it would just be helpful to always make sure that we're just defining certain terms, including the areas everywhere that someone could potentially look at information. Hopefully that makes sense. Thank you. Stephanie, your hand was raised before. Just to say for consistency, we actually, for the other data reports, ask for the data to be reported by area, not ward. And I think to solve the information problem, Milo, that you identified at the bottom of the use of force report, you could just define what those areas are for people. So I think that's an easy way to make sure people understand what they are. And Randall. All right, thank you, Mrs. Randall. Yeah, including you can have an easy link to the area map. But as far as responding to Commissioner Grant's question about whether or not this was intended for the part of the goal was for public facing reports. My understanding was that that was almost the entirety of the goal, in part because again, all this information is already accessible. This is available on the city's open data portal that can be accessed right now. Again, there might be information which is being requested on this particular use of force report, which is not currently easily summarized or made available on the open data portal, but all this information is already there. And so it was my understanding that in asking for a monthly report, all that we were doing as commissioners was just asking for the information to be made particularly salient to the public by posting on board docs or whatever every month. And as I said, I'm not sure that every month is the appropriate timeframe for that. But I gather that the only reason to do that would just be to make sure that certain documents are made available or made salient to the public because it isn't, in my opinion, they're already available. Thank you. All right then. So we have the chief, sorry, Stephanie? I thought we might be ready to move to vote on this. And I was just going to recommend a couple of revisions of that document. I was about to do the same thing, but you're a better community than I am. So please take it away. So change wards to areas and delete deceleration and deescalation techniques from the table. So should I do that, make a motion to request that this be used as a template for monthly use of force reports with those two revisions to that document? I second that. Any discussion? I am not seeing or hearing any. All in favor of the motion on the floor. I'm sorry. I'm struggling with the term emotionally, mentally, emotionally disturbed. I'm just wondering if that's the right terminology. DC Sullivan? Not my place. I was just going to add that the way I believe it's documented in our CAD RMS system is mental health simply as mental health. And that's the way the checkbox is labeled. Yeah. I'm pretty uncomfortable with this terminology like this. So I know it might be what's used elsewhere, but I would be in favor of saying it a different way. All right. In order of the hands I saw, Karen, Chief Murad, followed by Randall. I just want to apologize. I'm behind on this conversation. I wasn't able to attend the last joint committee, but I'm wondering who is, this might be very simple, but who's doing the admin on this? Is this going to be done by the officers? Is it going to be done by the chief? Who's doing the admin? I'll let Chief LeBrock answer that. I'm assuming this is in lieu of the report I would give, so I can put that document together. Thank you. I believe when Chief Murad, then Randall. Yeah. I just wanted to point out that many other agencies do use the term EDP when speaking about people who are in mental health crisis. And I am in concurrence with you that it's not one that we want to use. And it does stand for emotionally distressed person or emotionally disturbed person. And it's probably an outdated term. This agency does not use that term. We have a radio call for those kinds of incidents that is among our 10 codes for 1096. But otherwise, as DC Sullivan says, insofar as how we track them in Valcor, it is either a mental health incident, which is an incident in and of itself, or there's a mental health checkbox that can be checked for any incident. You could have a car stop that had no apparent connection to mental health, but you believe that the individual was displaying certain kinds of signs or symptoms and you could check that box off, perhaps to indicate why it is that you not only issued a warning for a motor vehicle violation, but also offered to make a connection to, say, first call or asked if the person wanted to speak to the street outreach, for example, or something. And you might check that box in that instance. I'd love to see a change to something that still conforms with how the department tracks data, but is a better term and more respectful and understanding terminology. Yeah. So again, we do not use that term. I mean, distress is better than disturbed, but if you put mental health there, would that be giving everyone the data that they're seeking? Would that be, that's how you would track it? When I tell you all, for example, or when I present to the city council and state these are the percentage of our calls for service or the incidents that we track that involve mental health, I am aggregating mental health incident as a call type and mental health checkbox and saying, here's what we have. And as I believe, I think that Commissioner Seguino has pointed out in other materials that she's produced, the significant uptake that we saw in the past year, if I look at mental health issue for 2019, it was 764 and for 2020, it was 946. And if I look at mental health checkbox, it goes from 1260 in 19, excuse me, in 2019 to 1754 in 2020. Those are significant increases after, for a mental health checkbox at least a long period of decline. And it really, really spiked over the last year. Some of that is an emphasis inside on checking it more. We want that checkbox better used and more accurately used when appropriate. Some of it is an increase in encounters that we're encountering it more in the street. And I think that based on the past year, it shouldn't surprise anybody that perhaps we've seen an uptake in instances in which we believe that there's a mental health component to the incident. Would putting mental health issue be adequate? You wouldn't need, right? That would be adequate. That would be adequate. As I said, it's already one of the categories that we track. It's one of our 133 Valkor categories. So, you know, and then the checkbox just adds to that. But I guess one thing I would want to be cautious of is disaggregating those and making it clear that not every, as I said, of 946 incidents in 2020 that were mental health issue, there were nearly double the number of incidents that involved the check of the mental health box. And I can't tell you how many of those checks of the mental health box were mental health issues because truthfully, probably some officers, once they know it's a mental health issue as a call type, they don't necessarily check the box. It's self-evident, right? So, they don't even bother checking that box. Those, the bulk of those are going to be incidents that were not mental health issue, but had a mental health component. So, I guess I'm asking, well, I'm not asking. I'm trying to sort of figure out how we could make certain that we're capturing both of those, that we're not accidentally calling both of them what only one of them is, but also finding language that works for us and discusses this matter and tracks this matter in an appropriate way. Okay. So, its subjects are perceived by officers as, and then that's where we have mentally slash emotionally disturbed. So, we, I think you could say subjects perceived by officers as having mental health issue. That would be the one, and I don't know what you do with the check box data. That's not really what this is about, right? Correct. Correct. So, I apologize. So, I would ask DC Sullivan who knows the use of force reports better than I, and by the way, these use of force reports are all being, we're, we just had a meeting this week about the new benchmark system that all of you were, were integral in helping us get and that we are rolling out and we're experiencing some, you know, shifts and growing pains and some of these discussions are incredibly apropos because we are attempting to have benchmark customized for us based on the terminology that we use. But I would defer to DC Sullivan and ask him sort of how in the use of force report it is indicated that that was a component. I think that in the annual, and I'm distinguishing here between the officer created use of force report and the use of force report annual that I think most of us are discussing right now and the way in which data analyst Stetson tracks whether or not mental health was noted to be a component of a use of force or an arrest. And in those instances, I'd ask DC Sullivan to clarify whether that's something that she's getting from the use of force report or from the valpool report with which the incident is associated. Do you know, Matt? I do not know where Nancy Stetson is pulling that information from. Again, she's pulling it in a different way off the system that we normally would. She's pulling it off the backside of the CATRMS system. And so I'm not exactly sure how she queries the information that she pulls. I don't want to slow down. I don't want to delay, but I'm wondering if this is something where we can get clarification and fix it going forward. So it shouldn't delay this tonight moving forward, but it's something that I think if we can get the proper terminology in place going forward, it would be great. Sorry, Randall's hand has been up for a while. Follow by Stephanie. Thank you. This is Randall. Yes. So I would just say, my understanding is that with the use of force reports that officers file, they have three check boxes, drugs, alcohol, and emotionally disturbed is what the box says on the use of force report. Now, again, I agree whole heartedly with Commissioner Hart that we should try to avoid that language. And I trust Commissioner Seguino to, you know, to restate that language in a way which is better and more appropriate. I will say that, I would say in kind of in my suggestion to Commissioner Seguino as she revises that language is just, and so I think that the ambiguity that we do want to avoid is what I was identifying as the ambiguity that I perceived in the Information Post on the data portal, which is so just the phrase alcohol involved or drug involved or mental health involved might be in big use about what exactly the involvement is, whether it's a kind of, you know, whether the call type is involving drugs or alcohol and mental health or whether it is a perception by the officer about the condition of the subject of use of force. So I get that that was part of the reason why it was phrased the way it was on this document. And so I trust that that ambiguity can be resolved while still couching it in a better way. And I trust Commissioner Seguino to do that. Thanks. Stephanie, sorry, Henry. I'm good. Good. Sorry, Shannon. Is that a hint? Yeah. Sorry, I did just want to clarify. This is the report that Nancy is going to do is just confused because D.C. Lebrecht volunteered, but this is the report and format that you're asking Nancy Stetson to do. Is that correct? Oh, okay. Stephanie, I have a chance. I'm not sure who will do it. My understanding is that Nancy is leaving her position doing that. This is just a template for whoever does it, whether within the department or whoever pulls the data for us, put it in this just this one sheet. Thank you very much for clarifying. So I can make sure that they're on task over here. Appreciate it. So back to the motion and I believe it was mostly put on the floor to prove this template with those minor adjustments. I believe it was seconded. I'm sorry, Randall. I was just going to say, yeah, I mean, I would say with the understanding that the categories will stay the same, but that they can be worded as Commissioner Seguino being appropriate. That's the motion that I, so if that requires a friendly amendments, you know, so be it, but that would be my understanding and voting on the motion. I think for clarity, I think just for we will say, I think maybe just restate the motion, including that. And we'll go from there. Yes, please. So the motion is to approve this template for monthly use of force reports with several changes. The deletion of de-escalation techniques and deceleration techniques, the change from wards to areas, and a revision of the category around mental health as per our discussion tonight. Any discussion? I'm not seeing or hearing any. All in favor of the motion on the floor. Raise your hand or say aye. Aye. That passes unanimously. All right. Eileen, can we jump back to 6.02, the BWC? Thank you. So the body worn camera footage release policy, can I share my screen here? Yes, you may. And I think that'll be the easiest way to do it. All right. Can you see that document? It can. Maybe want to zoom in just for the public, but I can see it. How's that? Better? Better. Thank you. So what I've done here is just underline the changes. I think pretty much on this policy, our changes were really mostly for clarity. Body worn camera in the title because that's used elsewhere. And I tried to, sometimes it said body camera, sometimes body worn, and I corrected that. Wanted to be clear, this is a proactive release to the public. And then, so the BPD will proactively release to the public primary. Why don't I just run through the whole thing since you probably haven't looked at it for some months. We'll proactively release to the public primary or representative, body worn camera footage within 30 days of an incident, unless a criminal inquiry would prevent release and related to the following types of incidents. And then there are three types of incidents. I don't think we added anything to that except the word preserve the peace in the third one. So it's an incident involving police use of force resulting in serious bodily injury or death to any person. An incident of using various aerosol agents or other least firearms, lethal force. Any incident for which the chief police mayor or the majority of the commission determines release is appropriate. And then you had in the version that came to us that it had a subsection D. And instead of that, we put it as a note because it wasn't really another type of incident. And the note was to provide citizen oversight that police commission can and does view unredacted body worn footage upon requesting it from the police department. And we thought it made sense to add even if it does not fit the above categories, because you're not just limited to those categories. And I thought it made sense to make that clear. In rare cases, release may be delayed beyond 30 days if necessary under specific circumstances. We did add a couple things in here. You already had such as to protect individual privacy of a victim or witness, right to a fair trial continuing investigation of criminal conduct. And we added ongoing litigation related to an incident or continuing internal investigation as two other times when something might be delayed. And then the next sentence was already there. In number three, in cases that require the police department to redact footage, for example, to protect the privacy of individuals or defendants right to a fair trial, the department may in its discretion blur the video footage so that individuals cannot be identified and or redact audio data. This was written up in a way that was a little difficult for us to follow. And so we tried to put it into just to make it a little bit more clearer statement. Any member of the public who wishes to view the blurred footage or redacted audio may request that in accordance with the Vermont Public Records Act. Relevant body camera footage will be posted on YouTube channel and sent to the media. So I think there's not a lot of substantive change, but I'm happy to answer any questions that you all might have about what we what we're suggesting here. I can't see everyone's hands. And now there's current when the screen being shared. So if your hands raised, please state your name and ask a question. Thank you, Chair. This is Randall. I have a question. May I? Oh, absolutely. Thank you, Chair. Yeah, I don't thank you, Eileen. So my question is about the ways in which the bullet point on redactions was done. So I have two questions. The first was in the same where it says in cases that require the police department to redact footage so that there's no kind of precise account there of what those cases might be. It gives one example, but that example is of course not exhaustive. So I was wondering kind of whether that could be spelled out more clearly about what those cases might require the police department to redact footage. And then the second was just one of the things which was excluded from this draft was a kind of governing principle about how those redactions should be done. So in the initial draft, there was the principle that those redactions should be as minimal as possible while still carrying out the goal of this document. That general principle has been omitted. So I'm wondering whether there's any way to, whether that was intentional, whether that there's any way to for the public and for the commission to be reassured that the cases that might require the police department to redact footage are going to be narrowly circumscribed. And second, that the principles according to which such redactions would be done are understandable and appropriate. Thanks. Sure. I think the general principle could be in there. I will say I went back and looked at your original version. I said, hi, I wonder where this got redacted because it was redacted by the, it was deleted by the time it got to me. So I think the general principle is a is a good idea that you that you to redact as little as possible. So I'm happy to add that back in. Unless I just wasn't sure if that was a change you all had made in your considerations, because it just it wasn't there in what I saw. So but the whole process has been a bit messy. So I'm happy to add that back in in terms of more information on redactions. It's one of the things that's holding me up a little on the on the misconduct release of disciplinary records because I'm trying to spell those out a little bit more in terms of footage that the general most of the time the issue is privacy of folks, but we have and by that, that's a very broad term. The law requires us to protect the identity of witnesses and victims. And I'm calling that a privacy concern, but I was using the word privacy very broadly here. So I think that there are a couple of there are a number of different things. There's the other concern that, you know, where they may blur video footage. And it does say so the individuals cannot be identified. But one of the other places that we have to consider blurring video is if an officer is inside a person's home. There are things in people's homes that they don't necessarily want published out on the internet or around that's something we have to take a little bit of concern about. And again, if there are other people in the home when they are interacting with someone in the home and there are children or other folks, those would be generally juveniles we would redact. So I couldn't lay some of that out. If you think that would be helpful. Yeah, understood. No, I certainly understand that it might be difficult to list the exhaustive number of cases in which redactions might be appropriate. But the worry was just that this document doesn't seem to give any guidance about which cases it might be appropriate, other than giving a single example. An example is clearly not stated exhaustive. So yeah, so anything which gave a little bit more guidance about that I think would be beneficial, at least for me. Great. I'm happy to do that. Thank you. And yeah, if anyone has any other questions, I can't quite see everyone's hands in this gallery view mode. So just say your name and ask the question, please. I think this is definitely somebody else. So could I ask a question about number two? And in particular, the additions ongoing litigation related to an incident or continuing internal investigation. At the beginning, it says in some rare cases, but is is there not actually a fair number of cases in which there is ongoing litigation or internal investigations? I just wonder how restrictive that is. And any thoughts you have? I think the way I read this is that because it started within some rare cases, that it would not mean every single case that where these things were happening, but that it will depend on where the litigation is, what the nature of the litigation might be that would require that something be delayed in release. So let's say, for example, there was a civil case and there was litigation over whether or not this video could be shared, this body camera could be shared to the public. Got it. Thank you. Thanks. Any other further questions or comments? I guess do we feel comfortable with moving this forward with the edits that were made and the comments that were made by commissioners? I committed to Councilor Harp, I think Commissioner Harp to make some changes. So I'm happy to commit to make those by your next meeting, assuming that's not later this week. And get that back and get this back to you so that you can vote on it at your next meeting. This is Randall Harp. I would welcome that. Commissioner Gamash, may I make a comment? Absolutely. Sorry, I can't see you. So I guess we could do that. On the other hand, it looks like all the only additions that our attorney would make would be the additional detail, which is just descriptive. So it seems to me it's also possible to approve this tonight subject to those additions. Two things, adding the general principle that about redactions being as minor as possible. I forgot the exact language. And then the second on the detail. This is Chief Sullivan. Can I ask a question for City Attorney Blackwood? I guess one of the concerns I have is that police have certain exceptions to enter people's homes. And so I worry about releasing necessarily any video inside somebody's home. And I don't know if this has already been litigated. There may be some case law on this topic already. But it is where people enjoy the highest expectation of privacy legally. And so just because an officer during a response to an incident gets to possibly go inside somebody's home, I don't know that it necessarily allows the public to also enter someone's home. I think it's like a case by case. It depends how far in, you know, what, where, what are, what are you doing? I don't know that you can, it may be that the individual consents to have having their, the video. Right. But do they consent to the public also? Seeing it on video, having a release to the world? I'm saying they may consent, they may have no problem with it. I think it's going to depend. I mean, let's say there's a complaint about how an officer acted inside someone's home. We're going to probably have to figure out how do we blur that or do something in a way that it's not clear whose home it is while releasing the information that the public's entitled to. Right. I just wanted to point out and bring up that that would be one of my major concerns as far as the home goes specifically. That's why we were talking about privacy concerns and when I do the detail we'll try to lay out that specific, that specific concern. Yeah, this is Brando Hart. I can certainly, so the, the, the case that, that DC Sullivan was describing certainly sounds like it's currently covered under the sort of, you know, the sorts of redactions which are permitted by this policy. I mean that, that if, that if someone enjoys privacy rights within their home and recordings are made that all of that footage from inside the home could be blurred, whether or not the audio would also need to be redacted. I think it's a separate question. I would defer to legal counsel on that, but certainly, you know, all of that video footage could be blurred while allowing commissioners to view that unredacted footage in order to, you know, to see what would need to be seen. But, but in general, however the, however the parameters fall about, about how much of footage from within the home is permitted to be uploaded that seems like it would be governed by the general principle of redactions are permitted to protect the privacy of the people who are being filmed. And actually just to say, the other thing I wanted to say earlier was I did that, I would be, I tend to be more comfortable on things like this of seeing the revisions prior to approving them. I mean, especially when it's kind of a matter of, of crystallizing a general principle, which, you know, I certainly think that we all agree upon, but you know, getting those precise is sometimes difficult. So I, while I would be more comfortable viewing those revisions prior to voting on it, I would also be happy if the majority of commission would like to approve this now. I'm happy to approve it now. But I would prefer to wait until our next meeting. I would prefer that as well. Well, in that case, and I think moving forward, I believe Eileen, I guess if you could just keep me loop of when that is, when that is ready. If it's ready with enough time before the next meeting, I'd be happy to schedule a meeting just to approve this. But I think as right now, we should pencil in for our next meeting, which is tentatively scheduled for the 27th of April, which is the fourth Tuesday. So yeah, I look forward to hearing from you about that. I'll check in also next week as well. Great. And I guess this will then move us to agenda item 6.01, which is proving the mayor's memo, which was in regards to the misconduct of this policy. And while I know that you hadn't reviewed it, you haven't fully reviewed it yet, I was hoping for maybe like a little update of when that could be done. Yeah. So the, Ms. Conn, I finished my review today, but I had a couple of questions for my team that I need to get answered. And hopefully we will be able to get this done early next week. Back to you that I'll get comments from the folks I need to double check a couple of points. One of the big issues from our perspective is what disciplinary records can be released and under what circumstances. So that's the tough nut that we're working on. Okay. Thank you for that update. Any questions, have any questions or comments regarding this for the city attorney while she's here? I am not seeing or hearing any. I believe then that moves us to agenda item 6.05. That last meeting Christian Grant wanted a list of bias trainings and a list of trainings that the department had been through. And yeah, I don't know if Christian would like to expand on this any further. But the list was posted on board docs that we were able to review. And sorry, I do see Shannon's hand raised. I'll let you take the floor. If I can just provide just a little bit of context on the list. So it was commissioner grant you had, you know, in the past two meetings. And so I didn't know of what discussion. So we've provided a full list. And if the commission can give some direction on, you know, if they want more details on certain trainings or the topics of some of the trainings, and we're happy to dig into the files to find that. But I wanted to give something to start the conversation as I wasn't sure where you wanted to go commissioner. Thank you, Shannon. So I would like, I would like to focus on I would say the last four years there's looking at the list. There are some trainings that go back a significant period of time. And I guess I would like to concentrate on the last four years. And I'm wondering if it's possible to pull data relative to based on the current makeup of the department, the percentage of officers that have completed the particular trainings. And if you have any other than the name of the training, if there's anything available with detail as to what it covered, like some of them, the training seemed to their names might imply what they were about. But I would just I guess like to see a deeper description. And I'm also interested in any trainings that cover historical aspects of policing in our society. And that would be all I would have to say right now. Thank you. Shannon, to help your focus. Yes, absolutely. Thank you. And if I can just tell you the current equity training, racial equity training that the department is undergoing, is tired of hate.com. And that might be helpful for some background just until the next time when I can compile the list of the sessions for that. And we'll get that information commissioned our grant. That's super helpful. Okay. And you said that was tired of hate.com. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. You're welcome. All right. Any further questions or comments on this agenda item? I am not seeing or hearing any. And so that moves us to agenda item 6.06, which is these four. My apologies, Chair. I do have one other question. Shannon, is it possible to confirm who taught the courses? Was it internal or people who came externally to teach them? Yes, we should be able to confirm that. It was it was multiple different sources. Many of the most recent ones were external people. And traditionally over the years, many of them were external people. Okay, thank you. Any further questions or comments on this? I'm not seeing or hearing any. It was on the agenda item 6.06, use of force incident report. And sorry for jumping around the agenda there, but that is the last agenda item for commission action. So with that, do you see the break? Take it away, please. Sorry, you're muted. Sorry. Thank you, Chair. It worked out well. My daughter was talking anyway. For the month of February 1, 2021 to February 28, 2021, we had a total number of 1,260 incidents that officers responded to. We had three use of force incidents out of those 1260. There were eight uses of force within those three incidents. So the percent of use of force incidents versus total incidents was 0.002. We had the race and gender of the arrestee subjects in the use of force incidents were white males, two and one Asian male. The first incident was an arrest on a felony domestic assault. There was a caller that called the police department and officers were dispatched to a male who was armed with a hunting knife and holding a second female against her will at the residence. The arrestee is known to Burlington police to be assaulted towards law enforcement. He has assaulted law enforcement and he has threatened suicide by cop in the past. Upon arrival, they met with a complainant to get some more information and they went to the residence, which was on the second floor apartment. Three officers heard a female screaming for help. So the three officers made immediate entry and located the female in a back bedroom next to the male on a bed. The officers attempted de-escalation to de-escalate the situation and were able to get the female out of the room. At that point, the male began to scream to quote, shoot me and kill me. The male refused to show his hands as he lay on the bed. The male stated that he was going to get his gun and shoot officers and the male began to reach into a blind spot in the room as if to grab something. Officers unseen were in fear of being shot by the male. One officer was able to use his taser or CEW to incapacitate the male and not allowed the other officers to take the male into custody. While being escorted out of the second storey apartment, the male attempted to break free of officers and throw himself off the second floor balcony, but was prevented by officers in doing so. The male then stated he was not happy with the choice of footwear. He was the officer selected for him and refused to walk. The 260-pound subject had to be carried out the second storey residence and down a flight of stairs to an ambulance. As a white male, he was 34 years old, 6'1", and approximately 260 pounds. The three officers that used force, officer one had his firearm pointed. Officer two had his firearm displayed and used empty hand controls. That means he grabbed ahold of them when they were taking them into custody to handcuff, and officer three used verbal commands. He displayed his taser and then he did fire his taser, and he also used a drive stun, which is pushing the taser up against the skin when it's activated. The arrestee was not injured and the officers not injured. Our second one was an arrest for a felony DUI negligent operation of a motor vehicle, driving while licensed, suspended. That was a criminal, the criminal one, and eluding a police officer. It was originally called in by a complainant and an officer was dispatched. The report came in that was a motor vehicle acting in an erratic operation, swerving onto curbs over the center line and almost striking pedestrians. The responding officers located vehicle swerving on the road and refused to stop when the officers activated their blue lights and sirens. He was in a fully marked Wellington police SUV. The vehicle traveled the wrong way up a one-way street and continued after a continued pursuit at very low speeds. The vehicle pulled into a driveway and then into a parking lot behind a building. The operator refused to turn off the vehicle or show his hands out the window of the vehicle. The officers had to make an approach on the running vehicle to take the subject into custody and had their firearms out at that time. Once officers had cleared the vehicle and could observe the subject s hands, they holstered their firearms. The male still refused to exit the vehicle and officers deployed OC spray and the subject was pulled out by officer and placed into handcuffs. The subject was an Asian male age 31, 5 foot 4 or 110 pounds. There were four officers that used force. Officer one had his firearm displayed. Officer two had his firearm displayed, used verbal direction and also other force was when they grabbed his upper body and pulled him out of the vehicle. Officer three had his firearm displayed. He used verbal direction and he was the officer who deployed his OC and officer four had his firearm displayed, used verbal direction and empty hand controls which grabbing hold of the subject to get him out of the car. The arrestee was not injured and there were no officers injured. And the last one we have is an arrest for a DUI assault on a law enforcement officer and resisting arrest. This was also called in by a complainant and an officer was dispatched to it. The complainant called concerning a male passed out in a vehicle behind market 32 on Shulban Road. The officer responded and ended up taking the male into custody for driving under the influence. While transporting the subject to the police department, the male stated from the back seat that he was in medical distress, quote, feel feeling like he was going to die, end quote. The officer pulled over the cruiser and got out and opened the rear door of the cruiser to render aid. What the officer didn't know was that the male had quietly slipped his handcuffs, handcuffed arms from behind his back to his front. As the door opened, the male lunged partially out of the police cruiser at the officer with a chain part of the handcuffs aiming at the officer's face. The officer had to remove the male from the back of the cruiser to bring the male and bring the male to the ground to gain control of them. And he held them there until additional units arrived. Then the male was re-hand cuffed with his hands behind his back. There was a white male age 40, five foot nine, 225 pounds. One officer used verbal direction, empty hand controls and handcuffing control techniques. Officer one was not injured and the arrestee was not injured. And those were the three use of forces we had for the month of February. Thank you for that, D.C. L. Breck. Yeah, thank you. Moving on to agenda item, sorry, Richard Sweeney. This question is a little out of order, but when Chief Mirad was talking about the incidents in Atlanta and so forth, I wonder, have you had reports of bias incidents against Asian or Asian Americans in the Burlington area as well? Okay, thanks. Awesome. Moving on to agenda item seven, which is commendations that have been received. So, Shannon? I think Shannon's having some technical issues and I think she's joining D.C. Sullivan. Yes, she's here. I'm going to stay away. It's all right, I'm vaccinated, so. I'm halfway there. The department did receive six commendations on officers. I do just have a few of them are quite lengthy, so I do just have two here that I'll share with you. Compliment came in on an officer that recently met with a victim of an alleged sexual assault and the family members of the victim were extremely pleased with the officer's professionalism during their contact and that family member later passed on their appreciation through the DCF investigator. The second one is from the City of Montpelier, the Montpelier Police Department on behalf of the Mayor and the Montpelier City Council and the City Manager. Thanks the Burlington Police Department for their assistance in maintaining the capital safety and security on January 17th and the 20th, but their aid also brought trust and assurances to their community during a time of anxiety and uncertainty and I will post these all of them for you to see. I apologize for not posting them sooner. Thank you. Agenda item number eight. Commissioner updates and comments. If any commissioner have any comments out there for us in public, now is your time. Not seeing or hearing any. So moves on to agenda item nine, next meeting agenda items. So it looks like we'll be hearing back from Eileen on those two policy things. We have hope scope of work to look at. What am I forgetting people? Sorry. Sorry, Chief Mayor, I follow by Karen, followed by Stephanie. I wanted to, depending on how crowded it becomes, I wanted to add something that an officer of mine has been requesting for a while that I had told him I would bring to you. It is a request to amend our uniform policy to allow beards for officers. So this is from one officer. He's produced a request for it and I'd like to add that to the next agenda and we'll submit it to all of you in timely fashion for you to look at it and sort of weigh in on that determination. The other issue is lengthier and probably is going to require a little bit of time to look at. We, in talking about benchmark, in talking about the spreadsheet that we maintain with regard to citizen complaints and in looking at what is currently on the portal with regard to online complaints, we find some discrepancies and some room for improvement and some places where we think that we can hone the language and expand the range of potential complaints, make it a little easier for citizens to navigate what they think their complaint is and then make certain that all of that synchronizes so that going forward we can have the same sets of data. We find, for example, that a consistently common complaint from citizens is what we would call a Title 23 complaint or what we would call cruiser operation. It has to do with people saying, I saw a police cruiser, didn't use its blinker and some of those are viable complaints and we need to look into them and some of them maybe patterns of behavior that we need to stamp out and some of them are people who are mad because they got a ticket, not from us because we don't give them out very often anymore, but somebody got a ticket from some of their jurisdiction and doesn't like the fact that the police officer in front of them made a turn without a blinker too. And all of those are viable, we need to chase them, but that's hard to pick out which one of those it is when you look at the current online complaint drop-down menu. And so I would like to talk with all of you about our thoughts for what those drop-downs should be and then we can together, after you weigh in and change and edit, we can go to Director Low in order to have the online complaint changed so that we can have consistency of data. And that also, of course, we want it to comport with our Directive 40, Department Directive 40, which ascertains how, what kinds of outcomes there can be and etc. So I just wanted to put that on everybody's radar as something that I hope to add to the next agenda as a question. Both of those items, sorry. Mila, do you have a direct response to what the Chief just said? If not, I'll let Karen go next. I actually do. I just wanted to bring up, I attended one of the listening sessions that Talitha had run, and I just wanted the Chief to be aware that there was actually a lot of feedback regarding the online complaint submission. So in addition to what you're talking about, it may be better to wait to get all of that feedback so that, because there could be even more changes in play. There were a lot of interesting things that were brought to our attention. I know for myself, I had been concentrating in the past about getting access to the information, looking at the full complaints, but there were a lot of things that were brought up that would hinder someone from using that online system that I think would be very interesting and beneficial and worthy of updating. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, the Beard updates to that policy, absolutely add that on. And thank you for bringing up. Mr. Chair, now you're not going to be biased about that Beard issue, are you? No, not at all. Not at all. So yeah, that happened, put that on the agenda for next time. And thank you for bringing up the online complaint submission. I hear what Milo's saying, and I would like to hear that feedback before moving forward with that. So unless people will disagree with that, that's kind of my thoughts on that. And with that, I believe it's Karen who's up next followed by Stephanie. I'm good. Good. Okay. Stephanie, I saw your hand up before for a second. Sorry. Nancy Stetson is preparing the annual reports that we had requested. And my understanding is that they should be done in April. And I would just say that if we think there's too much on the agenda, we might want to give her a heads up that May is okay or put it on the schedule for April. I like that. Thank you. All right. Sorry, I see Shannon's hand raised. Something I did want to ask the commission, it was kind of brought up earlier about the forms, some of the memos and some of the policies. The chief and I had a brief conversation about perhaps redoing the police commission's webs like area on the website and commissioners had brought up for the joint committee, some things about, you know, getting presentations and reports and stuff public that doesn't apply for this, for this commission, but I do think that there's several documents and going forward the body warm camera policy and those things. And I did kind of just want to maybe put that on the radar for discussion, redoing an area of the website. That's a little bit more easier and friendlier to find some of the documents. So I don't know if that's something that we can talk about or have people have ideas on that. If that's something that you'd like to talk about. Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree. Our commission website is not great at all. It could be some serious updating. I saw two hands get raised, Karen followed by Milo. Or was that just a nodding agreement? No, no, I agree that we should update. And I also, yeah, there's a lot of old pictures too. I wonder if that would be, yeah, because there's people who are no longer with the police force and so that would be great. And I think what I was thinking too, and you know, I think Talitha is out there getting a lot of feedback, like Commissioner Grant said, and I think one of the things that I got a couple emails on was the website and the use of, you know, where do I find this? Where do I find that? And sending someone to board docs, it's hard. So I'm really excited to hear about that, Shannon. And I hope we can discuss it as a team. Thank you. Milo, flowers. I just wanted to agree. I've actually complained about the website a lot. It's really outdated. And it's not user friendly. And I think there's a lot of improvement that we can do so that the public who is, I believe, hungry for information, but you know, just given a lot of time constraints that people have, like if I go and I want to look at the new dashboard of data, I kind of know where to go, but it's not intuitive on the website, like how someone who's interested in looking at that information, it's not at all intuitive. It needs to be easier because I think it's one thing to say, oh, we have this information available, but if people can't find it, doesn't really mean anything, right? So yeah, I would love to participate in that process as well. Thank you. Awesome. Yeah, so yeah, I'm happy to put that on the agenda as well too. I think as Stephen and Nicole last week, the next couple of weeks, I don't think this will all be able to be fit in for the next agenda, just because it'd be a long time. But yeah, yeah, I'll confer with the rest of y'all and kind of finalize this moving forward. The agenda that is. All right, then. Moving on. So moving on is next agenda item is executive session. So I'm motioned to enter executive session to talk about disciplinary actions and complaints. At the conclusion of executive session, this meeting will be adjourned and there'll be no more actual items. So with that, I would entertain a motion to enter a creative session. Karen, Karen motions. I see Stephanie second. All in favor of going to executive session, raise your hand to say aye. Aye. That looks unanimous. It is 832. I desperately, sorry. I need just a minute to send y'all a link. I was going to say I desperately need to use the bathroom. So it's 832. Let's reconvene at 840. And everybody in the public, thank you for joining us. And we'll see you at our tentatively next schedule meeting of the 27th of April, which I believe is the fourth Tuesday of that month. Yes, April 27th. We'll see you all then. Thank you. Have a great night.