 to order. We have a quorum. The first item on our agenda is to amend or adopt the agenda. Do you have any motions for changes to the agenda? Commissioner Comerford. Thank you, Chancellor Guino. I'd like to make a motion to amend the agenda such that we move that five of our commission meetings will be hosted in various neighborhoods and I'll also ask that Mohammed work on that plan with me. Okay, I'll add that as item 5.06, discussing commission meeting places. Great. Is there a second to that motion? All in favor, please say aye. That's unanimous. Any other agenda items? Commissioner Rauh? I would like to propose an amendment to the agenda to move the discussion of review of revised DD03 from 5.04 to 5.01 so that we can get that started. Thank you. Second to that motion? Commissioner Oskie. All in favor? We say aye. Passes unanimously. Okay, we have an agenda and our next item of business is to approve the minutes from the police commission special meeting as well as the commission meeting on April 25th. Do I have a motion to approve both of those minutes? By Commissioner Oskie. Seconded by Commissioner Comerford. Any amendments or changes to the minutes? All those in favor of approving the minutes as they are? Please say aye. Okay, Commissioner Garrison abstains and it passes 123. Five commissioners in favor of one abstention. Public forum? Mohammed, we have anybody for public comment? Just if anyone online needed to speak to the public forum, just raise your hand so I can see you. Great. The next item on the agenda is the chief's report. Welcome Chief Mirad and Mohammed, I guess you have the PowerPoint. Thanks so much and thanks for pulling that up, Mohammed. If you'll click through, so this is the chief's report for May 2023. The lake is looking beautiful there. If you can click through to the next. Thank you. Last week was police memorial week and I'm getting a ring on this one. Last week was police memorial week and that goes back to the Kennedy administration. We do observe the week, made some social media posts, et cetera, but most importantly with the assistance of the Queen City Police Foundation, we put a marker at the third grave of the lost officers that we've suffered over the past history of the department. So the history of the department we were founded in 1865 in the, you know, 150 plus years since we have lost three officers in the line of duty. We had placed markers at each of those gravestones save one and that we rectified this year. The woman that you see there with two members of our honor guard is the sister of the slain officer. That officer was patrolman Robert Provost who died in 1954. He had been a member for only a short period of time, but he'd been a military officer as well. His surviving sister is seen there and his two daughters were in attendance and it meant a lot to them to see that we take seriously the pledge that we never forget. We had a short ceremony there at the grave side. This grave is in the cemetery that is up on Platsburg Ave in the new north end of town. There is also a gravestone in the cemetery that is at the intersection of Riverside and Prospect and there is a gravestone in a cemetery in south Burlington for the other two officers who have been lost in the line of duty. One patrolman McGrath who was killed by an AWOL soldier in 1904 and another Albert Fisher who died in 1947 after falling into an elevator shaft during a building check and patrol check. Next page, thank you. Yesterday we had our 2022 awards. These were awards that covered acts that happened in 2022. We held a ceremony for family and officers and the awardees. We gave awards for the Detective Bureau for example. They won a team award for the exemplary work that they did last year in being able to solve every single murder that came across our transom, a historic high of five and a number of other shooting incidents and also at the same time unbelievably the one of the oldest cold cases in Vermont, the 1971 read a current case. To do all that in a single year was pretty extraordinary. We honored our patrol officers, particularly officers, specifically officers who had responded to several incidents of gunfire murders and shootings. And so we had a number who responded to as many as seven or eight of those incidents and we awarded those officers. We had some life-saving awards for officers who saved people who had been shot. A young man 18 who was shot in the parking garage, saved by officers placing an occlusion seal or chest seal on an abdominal wound. A young woman shot several times by an AR-15 who was the survivor of an incident that took the life of a friend of hers and also of the shooter who took his own life with that rifle. That young woman saved by officers. And another individual who jumped into Lake Champlain in the aftermath of a shooting and was drowning when and rescued by an officer who doffed all his gear and went into the lake to bring him out. We gave an award to Cape after the first successful year. Really, really great success that they achieved there. And to our dispatchers, our full-time dispatchers. Our dispatch room is supposed to have 12. It has often had less than half that over the course of this previous calendar year. And we awarded those full-time dispatchers who hung in there for us with a team award. In the upper right-hand corner, you can see Anna Wagling, one of our CSLs, getting an award. Anna is terrific. I believe she spoke in front of this body. She talked a little bit about work that she's done in the refugee community and work that she's done in doing cultural competency training inside the agency based on her vast experience with people from other countries. Next, please. Our headcount. Our headcount as of May 1st is at 64. That's better than the worst that we suffered during the last calendar year. But it is down one. We're hopeful to see that climb more. We are working hard at getting a good bump in time for the August Police Academy. But we will lose two. This does not count two people who are already all but off our books. So they are not factored in this because they are still on our rolls. But they are both gone. And they are on what we call terminal leave, burning the accrued time that they've gathered over the course of their careers. One of those is Detective Lieutenant Jim Trebe, to whom we gave a chief's award yesterday. Jim led that Detective Bureau for the past five years and achieved amazing, amazing results during that time. We're going to miss him greatly. The other is Jamie Morris out at the airport. And we will miss Jamie too. Another way of looking at our numbers and a picture of a cloudy day on the lake. We have, again, 64 total. 58 of those officers are currently available. And actually that's as of May 15th. It does not count Jim and Jamie. So we're actually down instead to 56 now once we take Jamie and Jim out of the equation with regard to available. They are not the people that are counted there as being on leave. Again, the count of our current CSOs and CSLs, six CSOs, five CSLs, and a description of what those rolls do. We include this in each report. Next, thank you. Some a look from our budget presentation at our anticipated structure for CAPE. And so the Crisis Advocacy Intervention Programs or CAPE is a component of the department that has been called for lack of a better term alternative resources. That's not a term that the community wants. And because there's a recognition that, you know, certainly we do not mean alternative in any kind of pejorative sense or alternative in some sort of less than sense. We mean it in the sense of these are not sworn resources. These are other kinds of resources. The one sworn resource in the CAPE structure is the Domestic Violence Prevention Officer who's off to the side. And that dashed line indicates that by law officers don't take instructions from non-sworn professional personnel. So that officer's chain of command actually goes to the Deputy Chief of Operations. But in function and on a day-to-day basis that officer sits in the CAPE room, works incredibly closely with CAPE and is able to provide police services when necessary for our community support liaisons, for our victims advocate, for the Domestic Violence Victims Advocate with whom the DVPL works incredibly closely. And we just had this Assistant Director CAPE approved, recently approved. The position in the center there, the Burlington Cares Supervisor, the two Cares clinicians and the two Cares medical providers, those are in progress. Those are things that we are still working on and are, we hope to see those in the budget. There's talk about that still. The budget obviously has a month and a half to go. But this was a component of that budget presentation. This too was from the budget presentation and it describes the changing proportions of the department. If you look on the left, that is the authorized total in 2019. The asterisk is because in fact the authorized total was a little higher than that but it included parking. Parking was a component of the department up until June of 2020 and it would have added another 10 little light blue dots to the bottom there. But we take it out so that we can look at what we were versus what we are now without that component. And what you see is, you know, 140 authorized in 2019 and a different ratio, proportions of these authorized numbers are very different. 138 are what is authorized right now in 2023. And you'll see that, you know, that ratio has gone from basically a quarter being professional staff versus three quarters sworn to being about two-thirds sworn versus one-third professional staff. And that is a significant change to the structure and sort of makeup of the department. Next slide please. This is similar except that it shows the actual counts. And actually if you could go up a little there, perfect. Thank you so much. So there's a key in the upper corner which you can't see at the same time as the dots. The key is that the black dots at the top are supervisors. The darker dots in the center are sworn police officers. And the light blue dots on the bottom are professional staff. And this is what we had. We had 95 sworn officers actual in May 2019. We have 64 sworn officers actual today in May 2023. We had 33 professional and 37 professional right now. So we are building our professional staff and I'm hopeful that we will see some more added soon. This is a picture of non-sworn response. We've seen this before. This was in previous chief's reports twice at least in the last calendar year, the previous calendar year rather. But in 2022 what we saw was essentially a quarter of calls for service ending up being responded to by these other kinds of non-sworn response, whether that's CSOs, CSLs or street outreach. Our hiring page put it in every single one just in case somebody is seeing it for the first time. Next, thank you. Our priority response plan, which I believe is another agenda item, but this too is something that we put in every single presentation so that it can ground what follows, which is a discussion of our call volume. And our call volume is affected by this priority response plan, not dictated by it because calls of course come in from the public because the public makes them based on external events, but this is a significant part of how we address those calls now. Next please, thank you. Incident volume here to date, nice picture of the opening day. Little League out at the park in the new north end, they asked me to throw in the opening pitch. I did, it was fun, it was a wonderful day. You'll see there that we are down 6% in call volume since 2018, but we are up a lot over the previous years, and we are really where we were in 2019. And of course we don't do traffic stops anymore, so if you were to work in traffic stops again at anything close to the volume we used to do it, we would be higher than 2018 and other some some other previous years. And we'll see some reasons for that, but we are our call volume is absolutely back. The public is calling us as much as they ever have, more in some kinds of calls, and we are addressing it in different ways. We basically put about a quarter of our calls either are stacked or are referred to online reporting, and as the previous slide, well not previous, but two slides ago showed another quarter are referenced by other kinds of resources. So, you know, the call volume to which officers respond is down by, excuse me, it's not down. The call volume is the same. The number of calls to which officers respond, sworn officers respond, is about 50% different than it used to be. But that's because we're using other things to respond. That makes sense because we are well below 50% with regard to what we have on patrol. The number of patrol resources is down by more than 50%. So for us to be responding to 50% fewer calls in person with a sworn officer makes sense. Next please. This is our table of data and where we are for calls as of May 15th. You'll see that there's some categories there that are going in the right direction and some categories that are strikingly going in the wrong direction still. And that includes larceny is going in the wrong direction, overdoses are shocking, and stolen vehicle is higher than it's been ever as well. And last year was as bad as it had ever been. This is priority one incidents. You'll see that our priority one is higher than it's ever been. And this chart goes back farther than that table. I usually use a rolling five-year average. So I only go back five years for the table and five years for the total volume table. But these go back farther to 2017, not 2018. And we're still higher this year than ever. A component of that is the incredible increase in overdoses that we've experienced. And this talks a little bit more about overdoses. That graph is horrifying. There has been some talk, you know, San Francisco is sometimes held up as a city that is doing some things right, but is also experiencing some real challenges. I was struck by an article recently about San Francisco that talked about ODs being up 41%. We're far beyond that. I'll make the, I'll offer the hopeful, the hopeful point that maybe what they meant by OD was fatal OD. And this is not a fatal, these are overdoses, not fatal overdoses. But even even with that, this is just, it's shocking where we are this year. This is a table. I'm afraid it is not updated. This goes to 2021, but it's a table that we included in April of 2022. It is still dated that at the bottom of the slide, just to make clear that this was not, this was not updated. But it shows the, the key is at the bottom. And what it shows is tracks of our, our drug tips, found needles, and then a couple of other metrics that have to do with narcotics data. I think it's down at the bottom there. Yeah. Overdose, overdose via Comstat. And those numbers are slightly different. You'll see found needles and drug tips. And that is the report. Thank you. Chief Nira, I'm going to open this for commissioners to make any comments or ask any questions. We have a quiet group today. Great. Commissioner Garrison. Turn this on. So just a clarification. I think I know the answer, but for others out there in the community, your headcount doesn't include CSOs and CSLs, right? For the department. Well, the, the, the headcount that had the little dots did. The headcount where I talk about sworn officers does not. So if, if you, I'm sorry, if you wouldn't mind just sort of having back there. So, so these, this picture does the shows, this is authorized. And so the CSOs and the CSLs are built into those light blue dots at the bottom. There are no CSOs or CSLs in the authorized 2019 because the positions didn't exist. What there are in 2019 are some other professional staffers and one similar position to a CSL, which was Lacey Smith's position at the time. But you know, now we have a number of other positions that work in a similar function to Lacey. And there are two CSOs in that authorized 2019 picture. Now there are, you know, 11 CSOs and a CSM in the authorized 2023 picture. And if you go just one slide below, thank you, in this picture, which is the actual counts, again, in that 33 professional at the bottom of the slide on the left hand side, there is going to be Lacey Smith. There is going to be the two CSOs that we had at the time. And on the 37 professional on the right hand side, there's going to be Lacey and the five CSLs that we currently have. And there's going to be Cassandra Sterling, who is the CSM, the community service manager, and the six CSOs that we currently have. So that's what's in there. Now I think, you know, if you were asking about the slide that precedes these, if you go up a bit, sorry there, one more, one more, I was wrong, one more, I was wrong. This one, you know, that 26, yes, this is this is a picture of sworn officers. And so is that that, you know, the graphic that shows the fall off from June of 2020 through today. This is sworn. But the other documents do show where we are with the total headcount. Okay. Thank you. Not documents. The other slides show where we are with the total headcount. Commissioner Cox. Good evening. Hi. I heard last night the gunshots. Yeah. And thank you. There's been times in the past couple of years when I've heard similar, but it turned out to just be fireworks going off. And it is sort of graduation week and all that. And I was wondering if maybe the department could put something out to the public to say when you should call when you hear something like that, because we of course don't want to inundate the dispatchers with calls about what turned out to be fireworks. But if it's something more than that, then obviously you want that message out there. So what should people do? I guess this is a question would be something useful to put out maybe on for important forum or social media or something to like say, here's the steps to take and to analyze what you're hearing. Yeah. So I don't know that I can tell people how to analyze sort of what they hear, right? The difference between fireworks and gunfire is to some ears, it's noticeable. To some, it's not. It also depends on how far away you are. Acoustics are really tricky things. When I worked in the Bronx as a housing cop, you would think you heard gunfire a lot and you'd think it came from one direction and it would turn out later to have come from a completely different direction. It would echo off the towers and the housing projects. So that's challenging. What I would ask the public to do and I'm happy to put out a front porch forum post to this effect and perhaps I mean, I think it's a great idea. We want people to call when they feel like they need to call. We don't want them to triage the calls for us. I don't want people to say, oh, they're probably too busy for this. If it's something that makes a person feel like they should call, they should call. If it's fireworks, no, we're not going to necessarily go to that if we know it to be fireworks. But if you as the caller can't tell what it is, then neither can we. Now, it may be that an officer is nearby. There are times where we get calls where somebody says gunfire and an officer is close by and an officer says, no, it wasn't. I know what this was. I've gone to the location. There's nothing here. And we put that call to bed. But there are other times where we didn't know that that was happening and we would look very much like to. I mean, this was a running gun battle between we believe at least two parties. We believe there were multiple rounds that were fired. It was moving in multiple locations. I think that people nearby probably knew, well, we know that people nearby knew what it was because we received a lot of calls about it. We are incredibly grateful that as of right now, it does not appear that anybody was injured. I am incredibly disappointed that the legislature did not pursue a felony reckless endangerment charge as they had talked about at the beginning of the session. Because when it comes down to it, this was a series of misdemeanors. And what happened last night absent being absent finding a complainant who will say that individual shot at me and I felt that I was about to be assaulted and or killed. And should we identify these parties, it is unlikely that either party will say, yeah, I'm a victim in this. They're both going to play them up. It's likely to end up being misdemeanors. And that's a problem. I wish that this had been achieved during the legislative session for this to have a reckless endangerment felony charge for the discharge of a firearm. Nevertheless, we are investigating this. We're taking it very seriously. It's in a part of town that we have seen where we've seen gunfire before and we are very concerned about that. May I have a follow up? I just wanted to say that I'm grateful that your crew, the officers discovered the gasoline. They discovered two. So there was one that was caused by a bullet and there was one that was just happening. And we found that one too. So we're glad we found that one. I want to go back to the name game and say that I think it's really, really important that that whole unit get together and talk about some name that distinguishes them clearly. Like community support services as an over, you know, sort of overhanging kind of a concept. But I think it's really important to make it clear what those groups are and what they're supposed to be doing for the community so they can recognize it. Well, CAPE is the name. So that part of the department is CAPE. But you refer to them as in a different way, right? Alternative services? I mentioned that as something that because that is part of the colloquial terminology, right? So people, that is what people have been calling it and people are familiar with it in the same way that I use at times cahoots, although we're not using cahoots for our own term and for our city. But it is what people are familiar with. They've heard a lot about it, read a lot about it. So when we talk about a system that we've developed and are working still to develop that is similar, it's helpful to use a term that people are familiar with. People think about alternative response. I recognize that there are people in the community, especially practitioners such as yourself, who don't really think that's the best way to refer to it. And I'm happy not to use that as the actual nomenclature. But I think that it's wise to use it at times in order to let people know this is what we're talking about. We're talking about the thing that you used to call alternative response, dear listener, but we don't call it that anymore. In the same way that I don't use the term civilian to describe the professional part of our police department. If they're non-sworn, I call them either non-sworn or I call them professional. I don't want to call them civilian because I think it creates an artificial dichotomy and distinction between so-called uniform services and some sort of militaristic sense that the others are civilians. They're not. We're all quote-unquote civilians in a non-military sense. But I use professional rather than civilian. That said, there are audiences for whom if I say professional, they're not going to know what I'm talking about. So I ground it by saying what we used to call civilians, I think that that can be helpful. Please consider it. Thank you. Chief Miran, I wanted to ask you about the narcotics related data, that slide, if you can go to that, Mohamed. And you noted, and I did as well, the difference in numbers between Valkor and ComSTAT. So my understanding is, there you go, what is in the previous table is Valkor. Do you have a sense for this year, for example, if ComSTAT numbers are substantially different? And just want to think about the issue because the disparity is quite substantial in 2021 and just thinking about getting a good hold on what the overdose rate is. So I'm pretty sure it's because the ComSTAT numbers incorporate fatalities and incorporate numbers that are outside of Burlington. Oh, got it. Okay, that makes sense. Great. Thank you. Any other comments or questions for Chief Miran? Commissioner Comerford? So my second question is the issue of larceny. And just in the last week, there were two people coming out of Shores on Shelburne Road running out with air conditioners. And we've seen people come out of what was LLB with loads and loads of stuff. What are we doing about that, if anything? Well, Shaw's thankfully is in South Burlington. So that's not a number that I had to take. But what are we doing about larceny? When we can, we respond. Certainly part of having two officers on foot on the marketplace is to address issues of larceny on our marketplace. A lot of our business owners are really suffering. And they are experiencing significant property loss. The issue really is, however, that those are property crimes. Many of them are not felonies. They don't rise to that level. If there is not a life safety component, depending on what our officer availability is, it's not something that we can respond to. So today, just towards the end of the shift, we had a pair of people who had been causing disorderly conduct, urinating and sleeping on the UU church grounds. We went to intercede with those folks. One of them was wanted on a warrant. He fled from officers, fought officers, kicked an officer hard enough to, we believe, break his jaw and sent him up to the hospital. Fortunately, the medical review revealed that it wasn't broken, but he was injured. The suspect was not. I'm grateful to say. He has now been transported to be held overnight. That was happening. And at the same time as that was happening, we had a report of a man with a gun who allegedly had discharged that gun in the New North End. That turned out not to have been something that was credible. It was reported by some kids, but we went to that call. And at the same time, we had a neighbor dispute that had turned violent with a woman in the Old North End. All of our officers were engaged in those. And at times like that, we're unfortunately not going to be able to respond to somebody even saying something as egregious as they are literally walking out the store with these goods. Part of the challenge for us right now is that there are a couple of stores in town, especially larger stores. And this isn't true of small business owners for whom their margins are incredibly tight. But it is true of some of our larger stores. They don't do anything to prevent these thefts. And public safety is a shared responsibility. So is protection of property. I understand why. I think a lot of corporations make decisions around liability versus risk and reward. But there is very little done to stop these. And a lot of these, a lot of our online reports, as I said, about 25% total of our call volume is online report. A ton of those are larcenies, late reported larcenies that go to the online report. And we have, you know, we used to have reserve officers, that is people who at one point were employees of the department and then either retired or resigned, but still want to remain officers and keep certification. And we train them and make certain that they are still certified according to the state, but they don't work full time for us. They come in and sort of work somewhat what they, when they want, very helpful. And it's great to have officers, a lot of whom have a real experience to come in and do that work. It used to be they'd come in and grab a cruiser and drive around the town for an eight hour shift. And they would get to just sort of, you know, still be police officers. That's not what we haven't done anymore. They don't get in a cruiser. They sit down and we give them a stack of online reports and we say, work your way through this. And we're still months behind in those online reports. So, you know, what are we doing with regard to larceny? We're working to rebuild so that we can address it the way we used to address it. Thank you. All right. I'm going to say that again. Moving on to 5.01, the review of revised DD03, fair and impartial policing. I think because we have new commissioners, it's useful just to articulate what we're doing here. The consultants report from CNA made numerous recommendations for change to policies and we reviewed one last month. DD03 was one of those policies that they recommended some changes. And the commission reviewed that last month, I believe it was. But one of the areas that the department wanted to work on further was the recommendation from CNA that some examples of biased policing be included in the policy. And again, for the edification of folks, the commission then reviews and approves any changes to directives or policies. And so, that's our task tonight. It's a little bit complicated to do this in a public session if there are numerous changes. What I'd like to do is start with a motion to make an amendment to DD03. I'd like to ask for a second once I make it. I sent these changes to commissioners who have not had a lot of time to review them. That said, I'd like to just put this on the table, this package of amendments. I think what I will do is wait to read them if I could have a second to Commissioner Cumberford seconds that to put these amendments forward. So what I'd like to do, Shannon, thank you for being here. Shannon, by the way, let me introduce Shannon Trammell. She has been shepherding this process. She's executive assistant. Is that your correct? At BPD and is wonderful to work with. I appreciate her patience with us working through this. And so we are providing these comments to her and she will then take these back to BPD and BPOA, that is the union, to approve any changes that we recommend to this document. So that's the process. And so let me, I'm going to read and basically what I'm going to suggest is deleting section E. I think it's eight E of the policy. And I'm going to read for everyone what the changes would be. And then I will explain them. It could be seven. And then I will invite comments from commissioners and we will develop a path forward for approving these. So this is on page eight. You can all, commissioners can also look at your email because I've pasted it into the email. Thank you. Ninety. So I'm going to just read this. It is long, but commissioners do have it in front of them. And Shannon, I'm going to just forward this to you right now as well. Is that okay? So reading this, the BPD shall ensure that all employees are familiar and in compliance with the content of this policy. Violations of the policy shall result in appropriate disciplinary action set forth in BPD's rules and regulations. Supervisors shall ensure that all employees and their command are familiar and in compliance with the content of this policy. Supervisors will be alert for and respond to indications of potential biased policing. That all stays the same. What the next sentence is instead of what is there, indicators of biased policing include but are not limited to. That means to delete the word potential. One, engaging in racial profiling. Racial profiling is any law enforcement and initiated action based on an individual's race, ethnicity, or national origin rather than on the individual's behavior or information identifying the individual as having engaged in criminal activity. Racial profiling is based on stereotypical assumptions derived from a person's race or ethnicity. It is separate from criminal profiling which relies on actual behavior or on information about suspected activity by a person, the description of whom may include the person's race or ethnicity. Number two, using a personal characteristic such as race or ethnicity to determine whom to stop for a minor traffic offense and the outcome of the stop. Oops. Let me just see. I'm going to just change that. Sorry. I didn't make a change of my notes. I'm going to just, what I said about two, if you all would just, you might just want to take note of this. Instead of what I just said, initiating a motor vehicle or foot patrol stop because of the race, ethnicity, or national origin of the driver of a vehicle or pedestrian. Number three, stopping or detaining the driver of a vehicle based on the determination that a person of that race, ethnicity, or national origin is unlikely to own or possess the specific make or model of the vehicle. Number four, failing to act to prevent crimes or respond to calls for assistance based on the race of the person. Number five, treating individuals differently based on their socioeconomic status or perceived social class. Number six, stopping or detaining an individual based on the determination that a person of that race, ethnicity, or national origin does not belong in a specific part of town or a specific place. Number seven, using slurs or derogatory language towards or about persons based on their group membership and or making comments that express bias or prejudice towards or about such persons or groups and or traffic and stereotypes about such persons or groups. I'm going to just stop there for a moment to give everybody a moment to absorb that and I'm going to explain my reasoning Commissioner Oskie and then we'll come back. Okay so if you look at your email I sent an email to all of the commissioners this afternoon that lists exactly what I just repeated but I will paste this into a document right now. Jessica is on the email. Correct this afternoon's email. So sorry let me just forward that to you thought you had everybody. So the definition of racial profiling I thought was could be improved and the one that I gave you is from the Houston Police Department. Some of the examples that I added were also from the Houston Police Department. The only other thing substantive and some of this of course is not changed I just thought deleting the whole section and reading it all would be more helpful. The only thing that I wanted to ask you about Shannon and Chief Murad is the so sorry I'm going to find the right document and that is the section that the item that says subjecting a person to law enforcement authority based solely or predominantly on that person's membership in any protected category. It seems to me that at the beginning of this document we define personal characteristics that fair and impartial police policing means that you shouldn't base it on personal characteristics. That's a little bit different concept than protected categories and in fact all of the protected categories listed here are also listed under personal characteristics except for military service. So it seemed to me that that item was redundant and that was the reason for striking that particular example. I'm just going to pause for a moment to just let commissioners digest and then to see if you have any questions or comments. So there's a motion on the floor and the commissioners would be welcome to make friendly amendments to the motion or ask questions. Commissioner Oskie. It's a little bit hard for me to digest this because I did not have it and I spent a lot of time reading through the policy that we did receive the updates and while we have looked at this before I think that there is a consistency error while we define personal characteristics and that list is I'm not exactly sure exactly where those all those criteria came from but it is a list that has race, ethnicity, national origin, color, gender, sexual orientation, gender, identity, marital status, mental or physical disability, age, religion and socio-economic status. Earlier in section two of the policy titled policy in sub-C it lists and there's an amendment proposed here it lists citizenship, immigration status, national origin, origin, race, ethnicity and proposed to add gender, gender, identity and sexual orientation but that does not track with personal characteristics it should include marital status, mental or physical disability, age, religion and socio-economic status but maybe it should just say personal characteristics there and instead of having a list anywhere throughout it should just say personal characteristics and we should make sure that we are all aligned with what's in personal characteristics. So I appreciate your point I'm having a trouble tracking also what you're saying and where it is in the document but I think I understand what you're saying and it's an issue of consistency and in defining personal characteristics. If people are comfortable with that we could we could I could work on correcting that inconsistency with Shannon in this document given that it's not substantive in terms of what's I don't mean that it's insignificant but it might be something that we could agree just to defer to me and Shannon to correct in the document and commissioners we welcome to email me if they want to recommend specific changes with regard to Commissioner Oskie's point. Okay I have one other comment on the proposed change that's not the section that you are proposing to change but it's in sub eight training and compliance there's a proposed change there to add and legislative requirements regarding fair and impartial police training. There's not legislative requirements is not really a thing it's either statutory or policy of some kind but I don't think legislative requirements is the right word and as far as I know I don't think that the Vermont Criminal Justice Council has specific requirements other than the adoption of a policy and training that's in compliance with the adopted policy so I'm not I guess my main comment is legislative requirements aren't really a thing. So I'm going to accept that as a friendly amendment to the changes that were requested as well as the changes to make consistent the discussion of personal characteristics. Commissioner Comerford. Can I make a suggestion that if we have amendments we follow up after we have a discussion with an email to you so the language is there? Absolutely. Any other comments? Questions? I don't want to rush this process because this is important in terms of what we're doing and so we could do one of two things right now and I will just check in with you to see what you all would prefer. We can vote on this these amendments to the policy now if you feel comfortable with that. Alternatively if you all feel that you would prefer more time to study this more carefully then we can I can follow up with commissioners individually seek your input amend amend the amendment and we could vote on our next meeting. So could I I'm gonna ask if I could ask for a show of hands how many of you are prepared to vote on this now to how many of you would prefer to wait until the next meeting follow up that's what we will do then Shannon oh and Shannon as well I submitted that definitely seals it thank you so we will table this until next month and I will be following up with commissioners to get the precise language of the amendment thank you so much Shannon appreciate it. Thank you for letting us see tonight. Enjoy your vacation. Thank you thank you so much. Okay thanks. The next item on the agenda is the update on the priority response plan Chief Murad. I'm sorry if you don't mind Chief I just want to introduce this so this was a request of commissioners to hear about that we because of of concerns we hear about responses to calls for example so we thought it useful to hear from you again about that about any changes that have been made and is a way to inform the public as well as commissioners thank you. Thank you yet no there really have been no real changes since we introduced it in June of 2022 actually in May of 2022 that's not correct there there you know we do tweak it every now and then we change certain categories to to say that we want this kind of response I have significantly clarified with supervisors that anytime they have a sense that something is halfway between priority one and priority three they should defer to sending people if at all possible but the priority response plan itself in its structure has not changed and that structure was you know its origins were the pandemic so during the pandemic we created a we didn't call it a priority response model but we created tiers and ironically at the time they were reversed what we now call priority one was was tier three and what we now call priority three the least important was was tier one and I always felt that I was always frustrated by that but we'd come up with it on the fly as a means of not going to certain kinds of calls in order to minimize face-to-face contact at a point in which frankly people felt that face-to-face contact might be deadly and so this long preceded the staffing crisis that was engendered by the decision to cut the department by to 74 percent excuse me to 74 by 30 percent the or at least through attrition to diminish it through attrition this decision was made about what do we consider to be things that we have to go to and things that we won't go to that we can get away with not going to and trying to to move either by call or other means in the the face of this illness we then you know ended up creating those they were also useful categories for checking the volume of calls that are you know important to the public or have life safety components because that was the nature of the decisions that were made to initially sort of divvy up our our 130 categories in Valcor and that's where all this starts when a call comes in from the public or when an officer creates a call him or herself it is entered as one of 130 approximately 130 call types and those call categories are things that are all on that page that we do include in every single presentation this is also still the top button on the Burlington Police Department web page anyone can go and click on this presentation that I have in front of me but they range from you know a 911 hang up which is a priority one 911 hang ups can be all sorts of problems it can be a child calling for a collapsed parent it can be a domestic violence victim who is calling and you know and is unable to complete that call or to speak on the call but 911 calls we're going to go to 911 calls there are you know arson excuse me an alarm you know an alarm in a closed facility without a key holder is not necessarily a life component event that's if there's nobody home that's not a life safety issue an alarm in a place that we know has chronic issues or that the company itself tells us that we've had chronic problems in this location that is not a priority call an alarm in a location that is you know a bank during the middle of the day and nobody's picking up that there's no 911 callback on it that's a priority one right so that's a priority two with an asterisk meaning that in that second case that I just outlined where it's a bank and nobody's picking up on the 911 callback as dispatchers try to say you know are you really in trouble and nobody's picking up we're going a you know a chronic location that has disruptions all the time and and maybe even an alarm company says actually we're looking at this on the camera we're canceling you that's not a priority one that's a priority three three alcohol offenses animal problems priority threes and we gave both of those to cso's that was part of the modification when we created this for the first time in may of 2021 we didn't have all those cso's that was a component of the public safety continuity plan that I created and introduced in december of 2020 through uh february of 2021 when it was finally approved by the city council and we weren't able to hire until the beginning of the fiscal year which was july of 2021 so in 2021 when we created this the first time we didn't have the cso designations that you can see on that page uh the bright yellow uh spots where it says cso would go to this that was a component of our our modification and updating in may of 2022 uh just over a year ago so um we now send you know cso's to an animal problem uh and right now because we actually have a different deployment for the summer uh if it's an animal problem that doesn't involve a safety component and it's outside the city core we're probably not going to send a cso to that right now um and that's simply because we want our cso's to be in the city core as much as possible addressing issues here and uh maintaining the posture that we've so far established this year of a safer uh downtown where public uh safety presence is clearer you know there are tons of calls here and you can look at any of them or ask me about any of the categories and what makes it a priority one versus a priority three uh but this is the structure of it and uh you know I recognize that this causes a lot of consternation for our neighbors I wish we didn't have to create this but we created this because various minds in the city decided that the department should be a lot smaller and didn't do much to look at whether or not that was accurate and in being smaller we don't have the ability to code to every single call our default up until 2020 was every single call got a police response and it was very rare that one didn't most of the time it would be a matter of like a police supervisor choosing to override dispatch by saying something to the effect of I'm sorry this is a you know a parent asking us to to get their kid to dress for school we don't do that we're not going to that um that was rare most of the time people called we went uh and did our best to figure out what was happening we simply don't have the ability to do that now and so uh so it causes frustration it causes frustration for people uh no one wants to call and not have a direct answer I don't like that that is the case uh but it is where we are as we try to rebuild questions and welcome that I'm going to Commissioner Oskie and then Commissioner Cox and then Commissioner Rao um I think we all had a some it was a little confusing last month on the use of force reports there were two that were evictions or trespass I think they're probably listed as trespass but um they had multiple the one at the at the pods had multiple police cars responding three I think and then the one in the new north end had like five police cars responding and it was confusing to for us to understand um and that's I think part of what inspired this conversation it seems like we don't have enough police officers to respond to calls but sometimes there's five or six cars in a tactical vehicle um and so can you talk a little bit about that sure so uh the you know the priority response plan talks about the idea of officer availability and it only kicks in I mean if we have six officers on a shift and for whatever reason the call volume the way they come in and roll and are handled leaves us to the it gets us to the point where we never have fewer than three officers available then the priority response plan doesn't apply that day and we never ever we go to everything right um but uh for for a trespass for example you know that was a trespass that I think was a known drug house it was a drug location uh a lot of those officers were not officers on the road they were officers who were actually assigned to detective bureau or to uh to our emergency response unit and so they were coming in to do a check on that I think it actually may have coincided with training I'm with a training session I'm not sure um but it wasn't all road resources right so uh you know road resources um are going to uh be sometimes if everybody is free uh even a simple priority two or three may get everybody at that scene they they go they check it out they say okay they back each other up um if they're not otherwise engaged but they're not fully assigned to it and they're very easy to break from it unless it turns into something that's a little bit more serious um you know the the issue with the house I think in the new north end is that it was a known location uh we we just executed warrants there and we were addressing a situation with regard to the pods you know we have an understanding with cht that we're going to be uh do our best to be more responsive there within the confines of the priority plan the priority plan is what it is and it's dictated not by you know fiat or preference or or whim it's dictated by how many people are available and how many calls are currently occupying those people um but to the extent that we can we we want to work with our partners at cht uh the elmwood pods are are a very important part for the city uh I think it's you know I visited I I really I like what's happening there I think that it's good for the city um especially with the way it's being managed and making certain that people can't enter right uh that's very very important um is is making certain that there are rules for the people who are inside that uh people who are not authorized to be inside don't go inside uh but um but we try to be as responsive as possible there within the confines of that plan and I'll say that you know one of the challenges is that right now on midnight we are always in the plan and in fact often maybe not more often than not but quite frequently we don't even have two police officers for the city we have one one non-supervisory sworn police officer covering the entirety of the city and when that's the case we are only turning out when we know that there is something that is uh violent and actually threatening happening to a person thank you commissioner Cox I guess I'm thinking I'm one of the things I notice on friend porch forum is it for whatever reason many people don't understand what to do in terms of registering their bikes or keeping their bikes inaccessible to bike thieves or not keeping stuff in the console of their unlocked car or a myriad of things to just be a little bit smarter in terms of self-protection yeah and I was wondering if um you'd given any thought or if you could give thought to um doing more like public service announcements or front porch forum postings to just remind people sometimes it takes people like 20 times to see it but just say if you have people from coming out of town remind them that right now it's just a time when we have a low number of police and we can't respond to everything and you need to keep your belongings safe that means locking your bike inside your apartment it means locking up your car carefully don't leave valuable things in the console or inside your car take them inside with you those sorts of things yeah that's a great idea and something that we can definitely look into uh and have our pio focus on you know the mayor's office put something out to the entirety of the city they spend a lot of money to send it to every single address in the city talking about some of these issues and these bike theft issues um but it's true our our theft numbers particularly vehicle theft is unfortunately driven tremendously by people leaving their keys in their car leaving their cars running uh you know we don't recover cars that have broken steering columns and hot wired cables it's just not a component of our car theft that said you know the people who commit these crimes are criminals they're the people that do it it's not the victims and i i i'm always sort of at war with myself with the notion of how far to go to tell people to be wary and to become more uh you know cognizant uh we have a city that for very many years got away with a lot of different ways of of living with we didn't necessarily have to lock our doors or our cars or worry about our bikes because we didn't suffer this but the reason we didn't suffer it wasn't because people were were doing something it's because criminals weren't uh as you know as proliferate uh we have a lot of people who commit crime in the city and i don't i i you know i don't want to minimize their culprits they are the ones doing this this isn't about you not you know leaving your your car locked or or or you know not not uh locking your bike it's about somebody deciding they have the right to take something that's not theirs um that said uh you know i think that you're right about those warnings and i think that there's a way to do it uh to to sort of keep it fresh in people's minds just these little tips commissioner row is that working yes thank you chief i think in fact um so what you would you had already responded to uh commissioner oski sort of my question was sort of similar to what you had in mind um my this is a question concern and also kind of i'm also thinking through this a little bit um which is you described the structure of the priority response plan which makes perfect sense though i think to a layperson sometimes as we have seen in our complaints it's very difficult right you can sort of say the same thing as many times and all they say is the cops are not coming when i call them you know it's like seems to be the the pattern that we are hearing so i wonder if there's a way to fine tune the implementation of that structure right so you have a structure in place but how do you communicate to the public that these are the nuances of the structure without kind of like okay which seems like at some places 10 of them 10 of cars are showing up and some places people are hiding in the closet of nobody showing up right so there is that inconsistency i wonder if somehow you can address that i mean i don't know i don't have any great suggestions for you so you know that so that's something i wonder if you can address that in any way tonight for us you know i i don't know so i just listen to you i just had this idea that um like i've seen all your videos on your youtube channel and uh there's like use of force but there's also some other things on there and i'm wondering if perhaps making a youtube video explaining things or maybe making a couple explaining things and then and then posting links to it like in front porch forum you know did you know that or something that here go see the youtube video this link just in order to have that educational process be something that's ongoing and something that people can understand and maybe not you but maybe some you know like a public relations type person that you might have on the somewhere in the police department they could make it young and catchy you know so i'm not young and catchy sorry but uh i think that there's ways of doing exactly what you're saying in terms of just communicating better than that helps people understand what the expectations are oh yeah that's a great idea the um i think the answer to your your question commissioner is really that it's staffing dependent and until i put something up that says this is how many you know if every call was accompanied with a there are three people available at this moment or there's one person available at this moment i suppose that might answer some questions but i'm i don't know that that's feasible uh i don't know that's advisable um but that's what the crux is right the crux of why you come in one instance with maybe even more officers than a situation might seem to need versus why you don't respond in another situation that arguably needed a response happen it has to do with how many people are there and do we have anyone to send and in you know when when the midnight had six officers on it that meant that at any given time at least five of them four or five of them were there right even if somebody was on vacation or some of them was somebody doing something else and on double nights where both midnight shifts were in you had 12 people on the midnight shift uh non supervisory uh and when there were eight or nine people on each day shift and eight or nine people on each uh evening shift then you had that number plus on double days on you know on a Monday when both shifts were in you'd have uh you know upwards of maybe 18 people on a Friday night when both Friday shifts were in the midnight shift came in uh and back then there were overtime shifts for the hill section for noise patrol there was a crime team that would move around the shift you might have upwards of 30 police officers available for for response non including supervisors but 24 to 25 police officers non supervisory police officers available for response at bar closing time so around you know 1 30 in the morning we routinely have three to five now and you simply cannot do the same things with that you just can't uh commissioner comrade one of the unintended positive outcomes if we can call it positive in my ward is that through the front porch forum our neighbors police each other in the sense of somebody got into my car make sure you lock your door and it's kind of a regular occurrence in our area yeah i think that's great i think it's you know it's both a sign of a strong community that can police itself it's also sort of unfortunate that it's necessary but yeah thank you moving on to the next agenda item and that is a report on the discharge of a fire armed during a training by a pennsylvania officer chief mirad we just thought it would be helpful i'm just gonna explain that this came in as a complaint but it doesn't really concern the commission because it's not about the bpd nevertheless we thought it would be helpful if you would discuss that so people had more understanding of the incident sure i mean i think it's been covered pretty well in public both by media and by our statements um there was a training that was happening it was being run by a third party entity it was co-hosted in the sense not that we had any sort of control over but that we had helped facilitate the the attendees um it was co-hosted by us in south burlington and maybe another agency um but the the trainer was uh the the uh an officer in south burlington helped set them up with the owners of uh the former l l bean and we were using that facility uh the training hadn't even begun yet um but they were going to be conducting uh sort of tactical movement classes inside that facility uh these were not armed uh drills we don't do any arm drills with the exception of actual firearms training out at the under hill uh jericho range uh that belongs in the national guard um anytime that you're going to do movement drills uh where you're teaching you know entry tactics or how to go through a building uh you do that with uh simulation weapons or or uh or non weapons simunitions are weapons that fire sort of paint essentially paintballs but they're not the same as paintball guns um the uh you know the movement that you see there if you ever watch the there was tremendous video from the most and not sadly not the most recent but a most recent um school shooting incidents uh in in tennessee i believe uh the officers moved through that building in a way that is all about how they've trained and uh you know i i think i mentioned to this body before that we have a video of training that we conducted several years ago that is eerily not even similar it's eerily identical to to that video and it was conducted at the training the old btc uh with students as roleplayers um pretending to be injured pretending to run and flee past officers as they moved through that's how you train for these things and get ready for them this training was going to be something similar didn't have roleplayers it was going to be about movement through a space in anticipation of of doing the exercise an officer from pennsylvania he was attending went to clear his weapon he showed up at the at the event with a loaded weapon not how we would have transported uh such a firearm but um it is a apparently he did drove it up uh from there he pointed that weapon at the ground as one is supposed to unloaded it um the preference is to have a something called an unloading station they are they're expensive they're basically they look a little bit like the funnel on an old you know steamship where you have those curved funnels and they're a metal tube into which you point the weapon so that when you unload it if you accidentally discharge it and it's not an accident it's negligent because the weapon won't discharge unless you put your finger on the trigger with certain very very very rare mechanical exceptions a weapon is not going to discharge unless you put your finger on the trigger so it's negligence it's not an accident but you point it into that device so that it's even if negligence occurs it's done in a safe way the same is true of pointing at the ground and and finding a direction that is safe and that nobody is going to be injured when i take my firearm out of its holster every night uh you know i don't have an unloading station in my home it's it's expensive i point it in a place where i know no one is and uh you know i don't have uh i don't discharge it um that's if i'm going to move it from one holster to the other normally i take the whole holster off and leave it in the holster so i'm never anywhere near the trigger in this particular instance this officer pointed his weapon to the ground uh basically kind of underneath his car it discharged it left a mark on the pavement um there were uh people nearby they heard that they went back into their place of business which was oge uh there were also some other uh officers nearby including some officers from burlington they went they they said oh what was that they checked on the person are you okay what happened i think i let one i mean i'm making this up i'm assuming what the language was but are you okay i think i let one go it's there okay we count for it we sent a lieutenant over to ascertain whether or not anybody was injured or there was property damage found where the round had struck clearly there was no damage in the there was damage to the pavement a little bit but there was no property damage to other locations nobody was complaining of being struck um we even got a complaint from people who are upset about it but that too indicated that none of them had been physically harmed uh we recorded the incident and uh the training proceeded so uh that is sort of where we went we created new rules though uh we made agreements with both the property owner around training and established expectations for ourselves which already existed for our trainings but that we will ensure happen on any train that does have our participation in the city around uh making certain that signage is placed up to tell people that training is occurring uh to make certain that to the extent possible neighbors are informed that training may be occurring nearby um particularly if it's going to use you know noise makers so for example we conduct training in the basement of one north avenue sometimes and sometimes those devices make noise right a sim munitions gun that shoots paint does have a bang it's not the same as as a uh as a firearm sound but as we began the evening talking about sometimes people don't know the difference between the retort of a firearm and the retort of something else um and so we generally do sort of warn people if they're nearby we're fortunate in one north avenue especially in the basement that no sound doesn't really get out from there but it would in other locations and we have used other downtown locations before we've used other locations in the city as I said we used to conduct training in the the former high school and btc uh we've conducted training at the airport um and we do our best to be good neighbors because there are times where people have conducted training that hasn't been great neighbors I think that you know there was a story several years ago about a lot of training that was conducted in houses that were due to be demolished and had been obtained by the city through eminent domain in the vicinity of the airport um and that training left uh you know they left the places sort of messy and dirty and they weren't taking good care of those properties even though the properties were slated for demolition and lost the privilege of getting to use those right we don't want that we want to make certain that we are being good neighbors for people that let us use the training facilities and I'm very gratified that the property owner in writing to us after this incident said you know we want to continue to let you use these facilities and these these properties because this training is important we just need you to do these things and we said we already do these things we will make certain that we continue to do them and to the extent that we have participation in any other training we'll ascertain and make sure that it's doing it as well thank you so much that was really actually very very helpful and uh it's good to know what how you're responding to it I hear see a hand from commissioner oski thank you I just want to say that I'm really happy to hear that you in response to that that you've updated your um your policies for when you do these trainings that's exactly the kind of thing that um makes sense that when something happens even though there was no you know it was it was an accident and nobody was injured thankfully um but you learned from it and realized that this could be done differently in the future and that's great none thank you okay moving on to the next agenda item uh bpd policy on handcuffing I'm gonna um turn this over to commissioner cox she was interested in discussing this question and so let me um do that and commissioner cox if you could you know provide some context for question okay so the context is that um not so much in this jurisdiction but throughout the state of Vermont there's been a number of incidents including recent incidents where the police are interacting with the person in crisis and I think the human thing to do is to want to contain the situation when you come across someone in crisis someone that feels like they're acting kind of wild and and and you almost want to wrap your arms around the person and say okay everything's going to be okay we're all going to calm down but you know each individual person has to experience things as they experience them and they may not be amenable to a big hug and so um the issue becomes like for example uh one of my friends with um lived experience who lives um well works in the uh Montpelier berry area um was um is a is a worker and one of their clients um was having a mental health crisis and the police came and cuffed cuffed the the woman in crisis to just contain the situation but there were workers there including my friend and they were trying to convince the police to allow them to give water to the woman in crisis and the police wouldn't allow that they said no you just stay away from the situation and they were very frustrated because they know from their experience that when a person's in crisis drinking water is often very helpful because the actual act of drinking water brings down the adrenaline flow reduces fight or flight and can really help the person control their demeanor and so forth and um so they said they sent me a note when they learned I was going to become a commissioner here and said please tell them don't have that be the first act to to walk into a situation in handcuff or physically restrain a person and um I I looked very carefully at the videos and in some cases I said I don't know about you but I feel like I I might be in crisis if I was losing my emergency shelter you know so I not only lost whatever shelter I had had before that now I'm losing my emergency shelter and it's possible that that person's in in crisis of one kind or another um sometimes a crisis may not look like a crisis or it may be medically involved so one example I'd like to give and this happened I believe before the pandemic but a friend of a friend who I had holiday dinners with in Shelburne has started getting Alzheimer's and um when when he was home alone he found the keys to his car and he wasn't supposed to be driving he found the keys drove down to a local store went in and when he came out couldn't figure out what car was his car so went around with his keys trying different cars to see which one was his car the police were called they arrived they actually tackled him here he's a 78 year old man something like that they tackled him they handcuffed him they arrested him he's trying to explain no I'm just trying to find my car they didn't believe them they took him off to the police station and um so sometimes a crisis may be medically induced it may be mental health induced there's a lot of different things but all I would like to do is to I've read the um policies that would have something to do with this and they don't only address this one kind of fine detail um and I've read a lot of you know what's recommended by like that what is it the international chiefs of police you know recommendations and they don't really get there was that one sort of detail that's left unsaid and so what I'd really like to do is to see if maybe could I borrow Shannon or something like that or do like a small work group with some people like in the uh in the community of people with lived experience working together with police officers to sort of talk about how this how this comes about where it's we all have this natural desire to contain the situation but does that mean mean necessarily containing the person and and and and to see if maybe policies on that specific point can be sorted out in a way that would be really comfortable for the police and comfortable for the community yeah I mean I think that is something worth exploring in a group like that that could include officers and trainers uh you know for the most part at least in Burlington uh handcuffs aren't used until custody needs to be affected and that's different than deescalating a crisis uh it's not all the time we do detain people at times if we have reasonable suspicion that a crime has been conducted that's been committed um and that detention does not equal arrest uh awesome also you know there are times where we are going to cite an individual um and therefore not technically arrest them there's a difference between citation and arrest and we may cuff prior to the issuance of that citation uh but it generally has to do with with the person's behavior uh with our knowledge of the person and and behavior um and deescalating crisis would not be that now taking into custody would and it's going to be you know I the reason I think that this is a good idea is because I think that even people with lived experience probably need to hear officers perspectives on for example transporting a person that we have in in either custody or custody in advance of attempting to get an emergency evaluation order or custody post a number you know when such an order already exists or custody for a crime but that crime also happened then and the crisis is part of what's driven that crime right so we have legal custody of the individual uh not handcuffing in crime in custody is going to be something that is is going to be a very high hill to overcome for police officers but but interaction in the field you know what you're describing not knowing any other facts about it but just sort of the bear fact pattern that you've outlined for I believe you said it was in the Montpelier area you know going to a workplace for a person who's having a crisis that is hand cuffing is not the first thing that I would think about in that but you're also right that the ISCP and other places don't talk a lot about the specifics about handcuffing in part because the very the vagaries and the variations are myriad and there are going to be uh so many instances that are really going to be fact specific I took uh deescalation training and and what we called back then it was called edp training emotionally disturbed person was the term of art at the time and it's not necessarily the best term anymore but that was what it was called at the time and new york cities which is where I did it in 2005 when I was a police recruit was one of the best in the country they used live actors who were you know Broadway actors and people who were in the business in New York City and and would be paid to be there there was a budget for it they came in and would would act out uh the symptoms of mental illness oftentimes some of them had experienced it themselves and were were developing it that way uh the training cadre was really terrific and yet there was a there was a lacuna in each scene which came at the very end when you had done the things that you had been taught to do uh to to communicate with them to achieve rapport not to buy in to the delusions they are exhibiting but not to dispel them or counter them either to make certain that you are talking with them in a way that affords dignity uh and and understanding um that is not aggressive that at the end of each scene there was a moment where you are going to take that person to help them go to a hospital and you handcuffed each and every one but it wasn't done and you didn't have to talk them into it you basically just said I'm going to handcuff you now and they went and they did it there was no there was no you know decompensation with that there was no sort of uh escalation from that um and that's an art that was an artificial moment of that training but it was an artificial moment because they couldn't really figure out how to get around the the competing uh sort of understandings of what might actually be good in a given situation and the necessity when you take someone into custody to make certain that they are in fact you know held in a way that that makes it safe for you and for them as well as any other personnel that are going to come along there are times where we do take people if if the person isn't in custody but we're escorting them to the hospital in the back of an ambulance for example handcuffs may not be used but if they're going to be in the back of a police cruiser and it's that kind of custody it would be a very high hill for us to overcome that right it's partly because it's a component of training at the the academy level and it's partly because it is safer for for both parties um or for all parties rather but i think that the opportunity to have those discussions with people uh on one side of the question and officers as well especially officers who may have more experience articulating the training than i even uh would be would be worthwhile just um just to clarify i just want to make sure you understood um it's not just handcuffing but it's also like restraining physically it's like holding down or containing yeah that that's that's not something we would ever do without physical aggression so and that's the sort of thing that should also be discussed i think that if it is not just handcuffs it's like handcuffs and restraint gotcha and um the other thing i would just say is um and actually let me let me clarify no physical aggression isn't the only thing you know a person threatening suicide on the blue bridge or on the top of uh our parking garage we are going to be we're gonna if we can get close enough to that person to restrain we're going to restrain but i think i think but not if that but i mean i mean but we don't want to escalate exactly and so i think all of this stuff would be really good for like some people with lived experience some officers and stuff but if i may just sort out with shannon you know i said it would be great commissioner cox we can talk about that with the format that would look like because it is commission work so it should be done in the context and and so forth with commission um commissioner cox is working on helping now to revise the directives on mental um dd 13 so i think it it's actually very timely to organize something like that because perhaps it would be something that might be incorporated in the directives or not sure but definitely uh excellent excellent suggestion so we'll follow up on that great thank you thanks okay any any other comments okay moving on to the next agenda item which is use of force i'm going to uh as past practice um assign the videos i think this has been working well for us we've made sure that they've all been reviewed but i want to chief mirad something came up in looking at these synopses and thank you for for the changes to that that have come up previously and if you could just explain to us what is protective custody protective custody is defined for people who are incapacitated so it's if a person's incapacitated and is a danger to him or self or others him or herself or others then protective custody is is a lawful it's not arrest but it is dictated by uh by being incapacitated by drugs or alcohol mental health is not uh it does not fall within that so uh a mental health protection would be you you you have to achieve an e if you're going to take somebody in solely for mental health conditions that appear to create a uh a safety issue for that individual or for the public uh you have to forthwith apply for an emergency evaluation okay and just uh given our just discussion us just now people in protective custody are handcuffed uh people who are in protective custody are handcuffed if you take an incapacitated person for and into your police cruiser to deliver them to act one or to the hospital or to the chitin could well it used to be chitin and now that's only for females but to a correctional facility uh for you know the for detoxification uh yes they are handcuffed great thank you uh does anybody else have any questions with regard to the use of force incidents if not i'm going to um assign homework for everyone uh we actually have 26 incidents between um the last half of april and the first half of bay and to make it easy i'm going to do it this way um mohammed will capture this for us but also for all of you so for with regard to the april use of force report uh incidents eight nine and ten for commissioner garrison um incidents 11 12 and um 13 for commissioner oski incidents 14 15 uh 14 and 15 for commissioner and 16 for commissioner kief so sorry did i do that right uh so sorry 14 and 15 for commissioner kief 16 and 17 and 18 for commissioner rau that takes us to the may use of force report and uh for commissioner cumberford incidents one two and three for commissioner cox four five and six and for myself seven and eight this is reminds me that we all got an email with regard to the cgs is that it sieges sieges uh to fill out the forms and go be frango printed uh so please do that uh at your earliest convenience commissioners that uh closes this item out and we are now on to item 6.01 commendations that have been received uh for bpd commissioner rau would you like to read those sure um we received two one is about the half marathon message and i'm just going to read read it um i just wanted to drop a line and say thank you for putting together the officers for saturday's race those three guys were rock stars super good with public facing duties eight plus interactions with their drivers and spectators and our runners we could not have been more pleased i hope you will pass my thanks along to them and i really hope we can get that crew assigned for the marathon next month so that was for the half marathon subject to thank you message last evening around 2am my wife and i call 911 regarding a trespasser potential intruder on our porch in berlington a young man in some sort of mental or drug induced distress was pacing our front porch and then banging his head against our front door while attempting to gain entry two berlington police officers arrived promptly after our call and handled the situation appropriately and definitely for all concern we're very thankful for their hard work professionalism and willingness to keep berlington safe for all in difficult times thank you thank you commissioner rau great item 7.01 commissioner updates do commissioners have any comments commissioner rau i have uh three um one is a report on the joint meeting of charter and ordinance committees of the city council which i attended along with commissioner cox and commissioner oski so i'm going to give a very brief report and both of you can can interject and correct me if my memory serves me wrong um it was an organizational meeting to share general ideas and to chart out a direction the general consensus at least among the counselors appears to be that the committee will have to decide on what oversight entails the role of the commission was discussed but only i believe in broad terms nothing very specific the feeling i expressed was that including the public the commission ought to be involved in all aspects of decision making and the city council be cognizant of the resources which are assigned to the commission we are a body comprised of volunteers and while we take this work very seriously the body will need additional skill resources if our responsibilities change i don't know if you guys wanted to add anything to that beyond yeah the second report is on the public safety committee meeting for april which i also attended along with and the chief was present at both both of these meetings the only relevant information i have from the meeting public safety committee meeting that entails directly informs us is vias report on community engagement regarding public safety uh and they spoke to us um at the last meeting i believe uh both jut alan and debbie and grim spoke at this meeting as well and they're working towards identifying one area of the city to start their pilot program and from what i understand they are looking at starting with the king maple street neighborhood so that's my last my reading of what they were saying my final is of course a reminder continue that we continue to work on collecting appropriate data and links for the website um please be reminded that the city of burlington website has limits and certain restrictions regarding accessibility and how the information is presented the content is vetted by me for the time being and also by stefanie but do visit the website from time to time we continue to need commissioner bios and photos from all commissioners currently the public only gets to meet three commissioners so we would like them to have to meet all the commissioners um we're also at the current moment considering having our own logo which represents the commission in the city thank you any other comments from commissioners uh so one from me um i understand also from the power point but also from former commissioner heart that she received an award at the queen city police foundation uh which is great to hear i think i speak on behalf of the commission to say we would be welcome uh the opportunity to attend those in the future i hope that uh you know it's a mechanism for building rapport with the bpd um to have have the commission in attendance at such meetings great so um going to make a motion to enter executive session pursuant to one vsa 313 a four to discuss a disciplinary action against an employee there will um you know do i have a second to that motion commissioner rouse seconds the motion uh all in favor please say aye any opposition passes unanimously just to clarify that we will not be coming back to public session there will be no additional decisions made this evening so this concludes the public portion of the meeting and um mohammed can you tell us where we're meeting third floor upstairs in shamblin room great thank you very much thanks