 Thank you all for coming this afternoon to this very important community conversation. Sonoma County across our nation we've had a series of very challenging community discussions and what you see behind me is a representation about what our community looks like and how together we are having this conversation. So what I'd like to first do is welcome and let everyone here know who is behind me that will be participating in today's conversation. First Congressman Mike Thompson and we have Sonoma County Supervisor and Chair of the Board of Supervisors Susan Goran, Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Essek and then every Mayor from every city in Sonoma County, Cloverdale Mayor Gus Wolter, Cloverdale Chief of Police Jason Ferguson, Chtadi Mayor Wendy Skillman, Chtadi Chief of Police Mike Parrish, Hillsburg Mayor Leah Gold, Hillsburg Chief of Police Kevin Burke. Petaluma Mayor Teresa Barrett, Petaluma Chief of Police Ken Savano, Runner Park Mayor Joseph T. Kalanen, Runner Park Chief of Police Timothy Mattis. Myself I'm Tom Schwedhelm the Mayor of the City of Santa Rosa, Santa Rosa Chief of Police Ray Navarro, Sebastopol Mayor Patrick Slater, Sonoma Mayor Logan Harvey, Sonoma Chief of Police Orlando Rodriguez, Windsor Mayor Dominic Fappoli, Windsor Chief of Police Ruben Martinez, Sonoma County Junior College District Chief Robert Brownlee and we have several Vice Mayors throughout Sonoma County that are able to join us including Santa Rosa Vice Mayor Victoria Fleming, Hillsburg Vice Mayor Evelyn Mitchell, Runner Park Vice Mayor Jake McKenzie, Windsor Vice Mayor Esther Lemus and Cloverdale Vice Mayor Jason Turner. There will be a number of speakers here today and I'm sure much of this grant of many of you not all of us will be talking and so the order will be Congressman Thompson, then Sonoma County Board of Supervisors Chair Susan Goran, then the President of the Sonoma County Mayors and Council Members Association, Dominic Fappoli will be making some comments, then I'll be making some comments. Sonoma County NAACP Chapter President Ruben Scott will be making some comments and then Petaluma Chief Ken Savano who is the current President of the Sonoma County Law Enforcement Chiefs Association will be making some comments. We will then open it up to questions from the media. So with that, Mr. Thompson. Mayor, thank you very much and thank you for inviting me to participate in your press conference today and I want to thank everyone from Sonoma County for the outstanding job that they've done. You know, the last two weeks has shaken us all to the core. For many of us, it's a heavy reminder that the violence and the discrimination that black Americans and people of color face every single day and for the rest of us, it's a real wake-up call. It's a stark reminder that we need to do a much better job. A peaceful protest here in Sonoma County and across our nation must continue to happen. They must be allowed to continue to happen. Free speech is everyone's constitutional right but remember, they need to be peaceful protests without violence. Violence will do nothing to help the effort that is underway right now. I want you to know that congressional action is on the way. Before areas of reform that Congress is looking at to hold police accountable through our court system to better collect data that will provide transparency about misconduct to ensure that if there's an officer that's relieved from duty one place because of misconduct they're not going to sneak in the back door somewhere else to improve training that will address bias and aggressive tactics and to criminalize lynching at the federal level. Think about that, it's 2020 and we still haven't done that. It's shameful. Now today as you know the House to do held hearings on the bill that's coming out of the House. We're going to have a vote on that bill this month. It's a critical step forward and it's just the start of our work ahead. We can all and we must all do a better job. Our goal in all this is to provide better opportunities for everyone in everything from housing, education, justice and civil rights, health care and labor and employment. We've got a long road ahead of us and our fight is for full and fair opportunity for everyone. We must address the systematic racism and discrimination in our country. We will, we'll do it together and we will succeed. It's my honor to introduce the chair of the board, Susan Goran. Good afternoon. I am Susan Goran chair of the board of Sonoma County board of supervisors and it is my honor to stand here today with Congressman Mike Thompson and the mayors of all of our cities in Sonoma County as well as all of the law enforcement chiefs throughout the county as well. I came of age during the turbulent 60s and 70s. Some of you actually might be of that era. Protest rallies against injustices, the war on civil, the war on poverty, civil rights, women's rights, gay and lesbian rights, environmental awakening, the Vietnam War, protest, marches, youthful voices raised in anger and in frustration are common to me and our experience and yet the voices that we've heard in the past couple of weeks have shaken me to the core because of the conversation that we've had for a century or more fighting for an end to discrimination, a fight for social justice and equity continues and I am here to lend my voice and my solace to that fight, to those marches, to those youthful people who've taken to the street peacefully and raising their voices in unison. I share the anger and frustration over the lives lost, the futures lost, people of our community, the contributions that they could have made in the future to recognize and correct the injustices. I will never know what it's like to live in a brown or a black body but as a woman I certainly empathize and understand what it is to feel to be powerless, to be seen as invisible at times. We've been fighting against intolerance of all forms of discrimination and yet we're still in this conversation. Today I pledge to you that the Board of Supervisors is recognizing how we need to end our voices and work together with all of you. Today we had our budget conversations and we agreed to support a new position for the county, an equity officer, an office of equity that would examine all forms of discrimination by this county and the community and work to seek redress and a change of how we perceive what we're doing and all kinds of disparities in Sonoma County. On June 23rd as Chair of the Board of Supervisors I will be announcing the formation of an ad hoc committee to explore strengthening of the iolero ordinance and the Evelyn Cheatham ordinance has been proposed. Let's examine that. Let's figure out what is relevant, how to move forward. And I do this in collaboration with the Executive Director of iolero, Carly Navarro and our Sheriff, Mark Essek. I think we now is the time to work together to change what we are doing, how we are working as a community and create a much better and adjust community and county for all of us. Thank you. Hi, I'm Dominic Foley, Mayor of Windsor and current Chair, Head of the Mayors and Council Members Association. So, first of all, I want to start off by saying that all nine of us mayors have been meeting weekly, actually oftentimes more than weekly, which I'm trying to address all of the issues, but especially this current issue. And we are in absolute solidarity with our community. We also want to support, we value and encourage and actually for a lot of us, we've been participating in peaceful protests and showing our support for a movement that I can't believe that we're still having to deal with in this modern day society. So, all nine of the Mayors in Sonoma County have joined in signing a pledge. So, we've pledged that we will review our police use of force policies. We're going to engage our communities by including a diverse range of input, experiences and stories in the review. We're going to report the findings of our review to our community and we'll seek feedback. And finally, when necessary, we're all committed to reforming law enforcement policies. I want to kind of finish by saying that a message to all of our residents, we're listening to you. We support you and we want to hear from you. So, I would ask that each and every one of you reach out to us, reach out to your Mayors, reach out to your city councils, get engaged and work with us on making our society a better place. Thank you. I'm going to turn it over to my colleague, John Schwedhelm. Thank you, Dominic. I also missed one attendee here who's behind us, Officer Stephen Bissell from the Santa Rosa Police Department. He is the current president of the Santa Rosa Police Officer Association. So, thank you, Stephen, for joining us here this afternoon. As a mayor of the city of Santa Rosa, it's my duty to serve every resident in the city of Santa Rosa. I stand by here today, united with representatives, elected by their communities and the chiefs of police who serve those communities. We are all committed to meaningful changes in policing. And as our responsibility as community leaders to reflect and evaluate the changes that need to be made to ensure that our community members feel like they are treated equally and feel safe to call law enforcement when they need help. We need to make swift and thoughtful changes to our police policies. And we need to create an environment for productive community dialogue. Because each of our cities so too will be our processes for working within each of our respective communities. So, I want to share with you some of the steps that we're doing in Santa Rosa. We have formulated what that plan that looks like and we're taking steps to make policy change. Yesterday, Santa Rosa Police Chief Ray Navarro announced that the department will no longer use the crowded restraint as a use of force option. I'm pleased with the police department's decision to end this use of force technique in alignment with the state's most recent recommendations. We also announced Santa Rosa's community empowerment plan. The city's plan to address Santa Rosa Police Department policies and practices through a strategic process guided with community input. It is our hope that this plan will strengthen community relationships and trust in the city of Santa Rosa, including the police department. Additionally, I'm establishing a new public safety subcommittee of the Santa Rosa City Council. This new public safety subcommittee with reviewing public safety issues, annual reports, and after action reports for police, fire, and emergency services. I will make the announcement at next Tuesday's council meeting as to who will be on that committee. This committee will also be responsible for reviewing Santa Rosa's public safety policies and procedures and the independent police auditor function. I'm here. We are all here today because we care. We see our communities are outraged. We see, we hear you, and we understand that changes need to take place. We want change too. So let's work together to create meaningful change in our communities and local government. I would like to also now introduce Ruben Scott, who I recently had a conversation probably about a week ago, and Chief Navarro and I met with Mr. Scott and other representatives at the Santa Rosa Community Baptist Church with Reverend Lee Turner. So I'd invite Mr. Scott here to share some words about what we were planning on doing and how he wants to be engaged in the Santa Rosa community engagement process. Ruben? I want to say thank you for inviting me. This isn't the first time that we actually have been in communication and have been working together. I think this was a time that allowed us to understand that it's more important than before. Since 2013, I have been working with the city and I have been working with the police department, Park and Rec, and trying to create and develop cultural, social activities, ways to clean up our community, ways that we can come together, and this when this happened, a lot of us in our black community were stuck inside doing COVID. When we were looking at what was going on in our community and wanted to have a change, and while we were talking about the dialogue, I actually received a call from our mayor, Tom, which said hey, I'm going through the same thing you're going through, let's get together. So we went ahead and gathered many leaders, large black leaders from Sonoma County. We created demands. We thought our demands would be something that he would not be interested in. Him or the chief of police wouldn't be interested in hearing, but they did. We sat down, he heard our expressions, he heard our frustration, our anxiety, he heard us being scared, us being fearful, but then he also heard that we wanted to develop with them our community so we can go forward together in a cohesive manner. And with that, they were all gain for it. So I want to say we're not only having dialogue now, but we're going to continue dialogue in the future. We're going to try to have meetings once a month, come up with positive resolutions that we all can agree on and move forward together in. So I want to say thank you. I want to say thank you to our police chief, Ray Novaro. He has been an inspiration throughout this whole time. He understands what we're going through, and he feels what we're going through. So at this point in time since we expressed that we're tired, but we want to move together strategically together. They expressed we understand. And so together, I'm hoping that we could all come to more resolutions in the future than just today and move together forward in the future. So I want to thank you for all the outreach that this team behind us exactly had for our community. And then I want to introduce the Chief of Police for Petaluma, Ken Savano. Good afternoon. Ken Savano, Chief of Police for the City of Petaluma, proudly serving alongside my fellow law enforcement leaders as the President of the Sonoma County Law Enforcement Chiefs Association. I would like to acknowledge all of the elected officials that are here today, along with the community members and guests specifically Congressman Thompson for your continued support of the men and women who serve our communities with professionalism, especially right now. Unfortunately, the events that bring us together today are not new to our profession or its history. Just as much as the reality of inequality is not new to this great nation, law in order cannot exist without neutrality. As law enforcement officers, we must always maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police. And that we're only paid to give full-time attention to the duties which are incumbent upon everyone and the interests of community welfare and existence. This basic community policing principle reinforces that we are all in this together. It also states clearly that we are you. And like you, we stand here with you today frustrated, angry and heartbroken that our intended mission of peace and safety is not felt by everyone that we serve. I have not spoken to a single police officer who does not feel the same way. As we turn our emotions into change, I want to assure you that each of us and all who we command are committed to giving everyone voice, being neutral, treating everyone with dignity and respect and being trustworthy and having the goodwill of our community in mind before ourselves. As law enforcement leaders, we are committed to reviewing our policies, engaging our communities in dialogue, listening and making meaningful changes to policies and practices that will prevent these situations from happening. As we leave here today, let this be the beginning of positive and peaceful community dialogue in this range. Whether it's a simple coffee with a cop or a neighborhood or city-wide town hall meeting, let today be the first of many so that we can listen to those we serve, find common ground moving forward to support our communities and our public servants in their mission to create communities where everyone feels equality, safety and peace, while at the same time experiencing the highest level of trust and confidence to serve them. Thank you. And I'll turn it over to Mayor Schwedhelm again. Thank you. So at this point we'll open it up for questions so I'd ask if you have a question please share with me who the question is for and then whoever will step up to the mic, repeat the question and please answer it. So are there any questions for any of the folks before you? So I'm going to hold on a second just with this safe social distancing let Mr. Scott step forward and if you could repeat the question when she asks it, thank you. What would be some potential reforms that I would like the city to adopt that is a great question. I would have to pull out my emails because once again I didn't speak for myself I spoke for a lot of people in the community so is there a way I can email you that? Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Generally what we talked about is a way to look at diverting some information to the police department and try to focus or allocate those funds into mental health services for people of color. We talked about creating a resolution platform so that way the mayors have an open line of communication from the community and once a month organizations can create resolutions and submit them to the mayor that way the mayor can have an open platform and understand what's going on in this community and that people can feel like maybe invested in making change and titled to say something so that way change can possibly happen. We looked at park and rec centers in each district where we spoke. These are things that we spoke on as far as demands to them and hoping that if we have park and rec centers we can create cultural diversity and ethical training there and then we can create resolutions there and ways that we can divert some negative feelings and intentions towards the local government and try to have places that can deal with those frustrations and anxieties in a therapeutic manner. There was a lot of things on the table that we talked about that's why I said it would be difficult for me to counter this. Correct, sounds good. Any other questions for anyone? Alright, not seeing any. I appreciate everyone's attendance here. Folks will be here for a while if you want to do some one-on-one conversations but thank you all for attending this and I hope that you Okay. Say it again. Well, I'm assuming that your reporter knows that the house in this congress the house passed an anti-lynching bill and it's centered over to the senate and it's been held up in the senate not unlike a lot of other legislation and it's been held up by one person Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky the legislation that we will be sending forward that was heard in the committee today will also include an anti-lynching provision and I'll just add to that I think it looks very positive for the passage of this legislation. There doesn't seem to be any major pushback by any of the congressional entities so everybody recognizes something has to be done and I believe that the anti-lynching bill will pass as part of the package that we negotiate and pass. Problem with wearing earrings and a mask you get it caught up all the time. Oh, for that very reason I'm so glad to hear that. As you know, we had a dramatic episode of the loss of Andy Lopez on the streets, officer involved shooting and it took a lot of thoughtful community members to come together over 18 months to make a variety of recommendations on how a body should be created that soon became IOLERO the independent office of law enforcement, research and outreach I believe and recently a group of community members looked at that ordinance and found it wanting. It needed to be strengthened so they proposed a strengthening of that ordinance to be and they were in the process of gathering signatures to put it on the ballot when the COVID pandemic interrupted the signature gathering so we decided just today and I will be announcing in two weeks the formation of an ad hoc to work with our Executive Director Violero and our Sheriff and County Council to review the current ordinance to review the Evelyn Cheatham ordinance and to make a recommendation to the board on how to strengthen the ordinance and I think more importantly rather than just oversight of law enforcement forge or renew a commitment between law enforcement and the community on how to work together to review use of force policies and other complaints and community concerns that they have and I think in Sheriff Essek we have that individual who is ready to join with us and to review how we work together to strengthen that relationship. As you as the board chair would you be able to comment on you see that this office needs more funds or more ability to look at different things when it comes to the Sheriff's office what do you think about that? Yes, to all of the above and it's difficult to contemplate additional funding for this office but we know that the workload even as a result of the protests have increased shockingly that Ms. Carli Navarro needs additional help perhaps additional attorneys to work through the audit process and actually to organize community outreach meetings and to answer the voluminous emails that have come to all of our offices recently with some legitimate concerns but also as an expression of outrage about their ability to protest and how they move forward to raise their voices but protest safely and not be a part of those folks that damage the community that's not helpful Does that answer your question? Yeah, I was thinking about that I just wanted to ask about equity opposition and that's still in formation we're very excited about this this is part of the strategic planning effort that we surfaced in January a group of great employees including Sylvia Lemos who was here somewhere worked together to try to understand how the county should be moving forward more proactively and addressing some of the equity issues so we knew that that was a priority of the board and we articulated today our intent to commit some funding to create that position and staffing for the position it's needed not only for the county but for the community