 Police and policing are hot topics everywhere in our cities and towns, in the Vermont legislature, in the U.S. Congress, and throughout our state and country. We know that being a police officer is a challenging and sometimes dangerous job. In the recent past, we have seen police behave heroically and with integrity, and at times we have been appalled by their behavior. We know that we don't all have the same experiences or faith in the police. This week, as we go about our lives in Vermont, a court in Minneapolis is selecting a jury for the trial of the officer charged with the killing of George Floyd. We are in the midst of a national performance evaluation for our police, an evaluation of what they are doing and how they are doing it. This legal women voters series is designed to be part of that conversation and help us all become better informed citizens. The first program, how the U.S. police got militarized, provided an overview of the history of policing and how we got to where we are now. The second program dealt with policing and mental health, and the third program addressed racial disparities in policing and juvenile justice. Among the many important issues raised in those sessions, two themes stand out to me. First, we need to make some changes. Virtually everyone agrees on this. Second, we have put police in an impossible position by sometimes asking them to handle issues and situations for which they are not trained and which are not a good fit for their jobs as a whole. To paraphrase a speaker from an earlier program, the criminal justice system isn't broken. It's doing what it's designed to do. Our task now is to fix that design. In a moment, I'll introduce this evening's panelists. After that, they will each spend about five minutes giving us an overview of efforts that they are involved in. I will ask follow-up questions and then they will ask each other questions. We will then turn to your input. I encourage you to use the chat feature at any time to make comments or to ask questions. We will be saving the chat entries so the league and the library can use this info for a compilation of resources that will later be available on the library's website. So on to our three panelists. Dr. Etan Nasredan Longo is co-director of the Fair and Impartial Policing and Community Affairs for the Vermont State Police, Racial Equity Advisor for the Vermont State Police, and head of Vermont's Racial Disparities in the Criminal and Juvenile Justice System advisory panel. A composer and ethnomusicologist, Dr. Nasredan Longo was a professor at the University of California Riverside, a lecturer at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and a visiting professor at Marlboro College here in Vermont. He continues to work with private students and in composition. J.D. As is senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Vermont and previously was a staff attorney with a disability law project of Vermont legal aid, representing low income Vermonters with disabilities through direct representation and legislative advocacy. He was also the 2012-2014 poverty law fellow defending the rights of Vermont's students and youth. J.D. is health law and policy faculty with the Vermont LEND program and the University of Vermont College of Medicine, and he serves on the Board of the Conservation Law Foundation. Robin Friedner Maguire is an issue-based campaign specialist best known for her contributions to marriage equality and high quality affordable child care campaigns in Vermont. Robin was field director for the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force, and she helped launch the very successful Let's Grow Kids, serving as the first campaign director and later as chief executive for communications. She's here tonight representing Mental Health First for Burlington and its new campaign, CAHOOTS for Kids and Young Adults, a non-police trauma-informed response to crisis. So we're going to start with Dr. Aetan Nazredan Longo, and he has asked us to call him Aetan this evening. So Aetan, it is all yours. OK, and this is good evening, everyone, and I'm just looking to make sure I know what I'm doing. Five minutes. The work I'm involved in. I started working with the state police, God, it's been probably 10 years now, as someone who sat on the Farron and Partial Police and Committee, which meets quarterly. And in 2014, that position expanded and I became the co-chair of that committee, along with Major Ingrid Jonas. And it really was only recently that it became a formal position. And that was really somewhere between July and September. Getting hired by the state is not the easiest thing in the world. But I do a lot of teaching. And a lot of the teaching that I do is training, anti-bias training, that I do with recruits to all of the police agencies in the state when they're going through their initial training at the police academy in Pittsburgh. I have done in-service trainings with current law enforcement officers, not simply within the state police, but we occasionally get asked to do these trainings with agencies such as South Burlington, recently Virgin's, places like that around the state. And I spend a lot of time designing these and then carrying them out. It's very like being in the classroom, which is something that I've done since 1987. My work in ethnomusicology was always very concerned with race, very concerned with bias. That sounds really bizarre for those of you who know the field perhaps. It may describe why it is I'm not in it at the moment. And I take that experience and I apply it to work in trying to get officers to understand not simply explicit bias, but the ways in which implicit bias is formed and informs our actions in the day to day. And that's what I spend a great deal of time doing. I also, when racial equity issues come up within the agency, certainly even within the Department of Public Safety, I consult with the commissioner, with the colonel, with anyone who needs it to talk those things through. So that's pretty much the highlight of what I do. Okay. You have a little bit of time, would you like to expand a little more on any specific current issues? Current issues. Let's see. We've spent the last, well, most of today, yesterday and then Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, really getting more of a handle on the traffic stop and race data in the state. Well, not in the state, regarding actually the state police in particular, looking at different ways of gathering that data, different ways of processing the data. Currently, it's released publicly once a year. We're trying to get a handle on it more frequently than that, so that we can look at trends over the course of the year and not simply in June when the data is released generally. That we can get a sense of whether there are problems at various barracks around the state before they become bigger problems. So we are currently in the process of rolling that out. We have a very rough sort of internal website on this. We're giving it a go. In some ways, it's convenient that there, this is a horrible thing to say, it's convenient that there's a pandemic, because there's not a lot going on and it gives us time to sort of fine tune it, because if any of, I'm sure you all know when you're dealing with computer stuff, it's fine tuning it, it's 90% of the task. So we're doing a lot of work on that at the moment. Okay, thank you very much. Jay, want to go next? Sure. Hi, everyone. Thank you for being here tonight. As Tom said, my name is Jay Diaz. I am a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Vermont. I've been in that position for the last five years. But I've been working on policing issues in the criminal justice system, mostly the juvenile justice system, since I came to Vermont. When I started my work for students and youth, a lot of it was based around school discipline, kids getting kicked out of school for one reason or another, usually related to their disability, usually involving some element of racial bias. And those same groups of students being referred to the criminal justice system or the juvenile justice system for minor behavior in school. So that's where my work started, and I kind of helped defense attorneys a number of times with cases where the students were students with disabilities. They had learning disabilities, behavioral disabilities, and otherwise. And we're having trouble in school, and that was really the root of the problem is that the schools were not giving them the proper services or adequate services. And so, obviously, school wasn't working for them. And so they stopped working for school, so to speak. Fast forward to my time at the ACLU. What I'm working on now, I'm strictly involved in litigation, but still do a little bit of policy work here and there on issues of policing as well as advising our advocacy director who is the one at the legislature on what would reduce the, I guess I'd say, the problems we have with policing. I mean, the ACLU's range, of course, is we're a multi-issue organization. We work on a lot of different things. But a primary area and, you know, bread and butter for the ACLU going back for all of our 100 years is policing and trying to tackle the issues that continuously come up with policing, whether it's over-policing, whether it is, you know, bias policing, you know, racially based or otherwise, and whether, and the lack of accountability in policing. And that's how we really see ourselves and how I view a lot of my work as an accountability mechanism. So when the system fails, which it does too often and people's rights are violated, you know, that's the opportunity we have to step in and try and correct that wrong, try and get a person some kind of meaningful compensation, not just in the terms of dollars, but in terms of a legal ruling that says what happened to them was wrong and that it should never happen again. And if it does, there will be additional legal penalty. So that's a lot of the work I do now. You know, I've got, we've had a number of cases over the last five years with a number of different police departments, you know, we've sued then banked the police department, we've sued the Vermont State Police, you know, in the state of Vermont related to Vermont State Police cases. And I could talk about those a little later. So the city of Burlington regarding its police, we've been involved in police reform efforts in St. Albans. And across the state, more generally, I've been involved in looking on different police policing policies from the Farina Partia Policing Policy, the model policy that statewide or body camera policies, you name it. So I'll be happy to talk about, you know, what the ACIU's opinion is on what's going on in Vermont specifically. And I think, and I look forward to doing that. Perfect. Okay. Thank you, Jay. And we will get back to that issue for sure. Robin. Great. Thank you, Tom. And thank you for having me here tonight. It's pretty special for you guys to have this discussion. My name is Robin Friedner McGuire and I'm here tonight because I'm a parent of a child who has mental health issues and because she experienced what was preverbal trauma when she was in the home with her biological family prior to adoption. And, you know, she has had a lot of difficulties and challenges and, you know, we adopted all three of our children from the state and my twins who are nine and my older son who is 12 years old, they've all had some experience with trauma at a very young age. And for my daughter, it has really impacted her on a level that just quite honestly, I think as a parent, like I just, you know, my wife and I just weren't very equipped for how to support her. And we realized that pretty early on and we were strongly advocating for help and support for years. And I think it's really important for me to express that at that time, I was the campaign director of Let's Grow Kids and had many contacts with people like our social networks were very strong. You know, we had so many advantages of white people as people who have, you know, education, middle income, you know, in other words, I think on paper, people would have thought you should be getting all of these resources for your daughter. And I was spending up to 25 hours a week just advocating for my daughter. And what it pulled back the curtain on for me is just they're just not very many services and we have a severely broken mental health system here in the state. And I know this is true in other states as well. But we keep doing the same thing over and over again. And it's not working for our kids and it wasn't working for our daughter. And I'm not going to go into too much detail about what happened to her. But what I can say is that she was a victim of police violence at the age of six when she was in a mental health crisis and it was devastating. It was it's still devastating. We're still trying, you know, here's a child who was traumatized as an infant and then retraumatized by our police. And then, you know, it really changed our lives. And this happened to probably about two and a half, almost three years ago. And it's taken quite a while for for me to kind of lift my head up and to say, like, I just I just can't handle the idea of another child going through this. I think, importantly, in mental health, we don't talk enough about our young children and young adults. And I started to do a lot of research to try to think about what are some of the alternative programs out there? Why can't why can't we be doing this differently? What a lot of people don't understand is that there's a vicious system cycle for families who have children with mental health issues, which is if you get into the mental health system, they will tell you to call the police on your children. Right. That is a part of your safety plan. If you call the crisis hotline, they will tell you to call the police on your children. If you need to take them to the ER, they will tell you to call the police to get them in the back of a cruiser to take them to the ER. If you manage to get them to the ER, they will wait there on average for three and a half days. And they're lucky if they get any treatment. So you feel like a gerbil as a parent. And I'm not talking about for like significantly high or violent behavior. The threshold is really low. So you feel at a loss as a parent because I don't know any parent who would want to call the police on their children when they need help, they need care. They don't need to be criminalized for the kind of support that they need. So in talking to other families and doing a lot of research and with the support of some great organizations Vermont Disability Rights, the ACLU spectrum here in Burlington, Vermont Family Network, we decided that we wanted to have a forum on CAHOOTS, which is a crisis assistance street outreach program based in Eugene, Oregon, which is a non-police trauma informed response. And I will talk more about that later. And through that process, we decided to launch Mental Health First for Burlington because we really want to shine a spotlight on what's not working. And we're calling for more investment in both crisis and prevention work. And I really want to emphasize that crisis because people really want to just invest in prevention that we don't even know actually work. So that's that's what we're focused on right now and our first campaign is CAHOOTS for children and young adults. Thank you, Robin. And thank you for sharing the experiences of your children and you working with the systems in place in Vermont. I have a couple of I have some general questions that I'll ask all three of you. And then feel free to go back to what you started on if anything you want to expand on, because I realize any one of you could talk for a long period of time about things you're working on. So any things you'd like to expand on, please do that. But the next general question I'll ask each of you and maybe, Jay, you could start for us this time. But what are there issues in Vermont that are more different or challenges that we have because we are a rural state? We're pretty spread out. We're pretty spread out. We have only a couple of communities that could be really called cities. Even our cities are small cities on scale with most most places. And we have lots of parts of the state that are very rural and don't even have much police coverage. So, you know, so what challenges does Vermont face because of its rural nature? Any comments you'd like to make along that, Jay? You know, to me, it's well, first, let me just say that, like, Robin, I want to thank her for sharing her story as well, because and for the work she's been doing, you know, we have collaborated for a few years now on and off. And we together tried to get the police in Burlington to actually, like, move something forward on, you know, police getting training and having special, you know, officers with the department who were trained to deal with kids in mental crisis and it was totally ignored. So I'm really excited to see what she's been working on. To answer your question, Tom, you know, it's funny the way you put it that, you know, we're so rural and some police don't have police coverage. You know, I would turn that back around and say the issue in Vermont is like we are overpoliced. Our rural state is, you know, and this doesn't apply to all rural states, but there are plenty of rural states in this country. We are the safest state in the nation. You know, we have the lowest crime rate in the country, lowest violent crime rate in the country. And so, but we are, but we have quite a few police officers actually across the, you know, there are some parts of rural areas where there's just the population is low. So you're not going to see a lot of officers and it's very spread out. But we actually have a high number and I'd be interested. You know, I haven't done, I haven't done a comparison of, you know, officers per 100 residents versus other states, but I'd be interested to see that information. The reason I say we're overpoliced is because it's based on my experience and my work. It seems like officers have a lot of time to work on very low level crime. Or if you can even call it that. And things that aren't, don't really rise to the level of needing, even needing a police officer. And so what the ACLU has been proposing for some time and really has tried to push into this most recent conversation around policing in Vermont and policing around the country is we need to, you know, divest from policing to some extent and reinvest in community-based services and supports. You know, we need community-based services and supports for mental health. We need more community-based services for young people. We need more community-based services for people who are unhoused. You know, there are, there's a lot, there's a good amount of need out there. And, and, you know, because we're not filling those gaps as a state or in a lot of our communities, the police are being called on to fill, to rush in and deal with and to try to manage those problems, which is, which has been their historical role for a long time. And that's been a problem for a long time. But I think Vermont has an opportunity to show, like, that we can do something differently because we are such a safe state and we may not need, I would argue, we don't need the number of police that we have currently. Thank you for turning that question around. I really appreciate that because what I was thinking of, that issue came up, overpolicing came up in at least one previous panel and it came up with the topic of traffic stops. The Vermont has a very high number of traffic stops compared to other states and it's like, why? You know, that's the question. But the other part that comes up with that situation is if we want to shift more responsibilities away from police and to social workers and to other support services, one of the challenges is how do you provide those services 24-7 when we don't even have police service 24-7 in most parts of the state? So that was the, you know, part of the framing I was thinking about. What if we could come back to that in a minute? But I'd like to give Eitan the chance to talk about the rural nature of Vermont also. One of the challenge that I'm, I guess, really involved in is I somehow gotten into the data, which is interesting. It's not where I've always spent my life. But certainly being on the fair and impartial committee, that's one of the real directives of that body. That there's a problem in the state around racial disparity and policing is not questioned. What I do think is questionable is the extent of that problem. And it's difficult to get a handle on it because the data can be read in a variety of ways. And they are read in a variety of ways. And that's led to an interesting bifurcation that one body that looks at the data is sort of favored by people of color. The other body is favored by law enforcement. So everything gets put into this dualistic frame and nobody can talk. Because everyone takes a side, which is a good American thing. The problem is that the numbers are so small that there is some question as to the statistical reliability of N when doing a lot of these analyses of what the set that they're used. In other words, when we're talking about minorities, is the number big enough to look at? My qualitative response to that is, hell yes. The statistical response is not as clear. And so the rural nature of the state makes it very difficult to know for me. And I'm working on this. I don't have a good answer yet. Exactly how bad it is, where things need to be focused, where efforts need to be focused. The racial disparities panel just completed a study that it submitted to the legislature that has resulted in a bill that is currently being discussed that would try to get all of the data systems that are in use in the criminal and juvenile justice systems to talk to one another. They currently can't. So it's very difficult to get a sense against statistically of racial disparity across both of those systems in total. Because corrections has a system that doesn't talk to the judiciary, that doesn't talk to God, the police, any number of things. And so the difficulty becomes how to get all of this to speak so that we can answer the questions about how bad is it, where is it the worst. So we can start crafting policy and start crafting legislation that is targeted. And that's, I think, a long answer to the rural nature being a challenge. The numbers are such that it requires a fair amount of sophistication that is sometimes difficult. Well, thank you, Eitan. So on the continuum along the same lines, because we'll do some more on the issue of race issues across the state and also mental health support. But Eitan, we're doing training for state police and for other police throughout the state. How receptive are police officers? I think it varies. I have to say I have found people to be extremely responsive personally. I've had people come in with their arms crossed around their chest, which is a great sign for I am not going to listen. I'm not going to speak. I'm going to do nothing. And by the end of the maybe three hours, they're actually unfolded and they're animated. They're making eye contact. They're asking questions. I've had people get in touch with me long after the trainings and say that something that came up in there really resonated with them. I have to say I'm finding people to be very responsive. And I have to also say that it's changed over time. When I first started doing this in 2014, I would have to set the frame and talk about, okay, what is your expectation? There is a large black man standing in front of you at a thing that's obviously going to be a rat race. How many of you think I'm going to yell at you about being white? And they all want to act like they're not expecting that. And then eventually it kind of comes out, well, yes. And that's not what happens. That's not what happens. Thanks to my mother, who is a social worker, I talk about behaviors and effects. What behaviors are people engaging in and what may those effects be? And at that, we get at race and we get at racism. And I find people to be very swayed by that. That's encouraging. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. So, Robyn and then Jay, if you could address a little bit the issue of Vermont's ruralness in terms of either mental health support or race issues or any other aspect of it that you would like to. I mean, yeah, I can go ahead and jump in. And I think the preface, the caveat here is that I live in Burlington, Vermont. So the services that we have sought as a family has been based in Burlington, Vermont, although I worked on marriage rights for same-sex couples and on the campaign for high-quality, affordable childcare across the state. So I can say that I really understand some of the issues concerning our state. And I'm not going to spend too much time focused on that because what I want to emphasize is that even living in a highly populated area where one might think that we have a wealth of mental health services for people living in this community, we just don't. We're just not investing enough into our mental health system generally and also specifically for children and young adults, both prevention and crisis. So the burden is just really is placed on the children themselves and the young adults and their families to try to manage these very difficult situations, which is why a program like Kahootz really provides us, you know, all of us who care about what's happening in our community and reimagining policing. Kahootz really offers a solution for a community that is as large as Burlington and even in more rural areas. It's a national model that's been in place for 30 years and it's been replicated across the country in other, you know, larger municipalities as well in rural parts of the country. So I think that, you know, on a state level and local level, we should be taking a pretty serious look at it because it has this intention that's very different than policing. It really is about care and arriving to a situation understanding that it's all about this relational engagement for deescalating the situation. It's based out of Eugene organ and the model is that it's a mental health crisis worker as well as a medic who goes out to a situation. And they have over 500 hours of training in deescalation both the medic and the mental health crisis worker and they connect folks to resources and that can be a range of things. It can be, you know, from food security to shelter to medical care. So it just depends on what the need is. Importantly, the Kahootz model in Eugene organ, it serves all ages. It serves everybody in their community. And it's a 24-7 service, 24-hour, seven days a week service where, you know, people are from dispatch. Dispatched dispatch is also trained, which I think is really important. They help assess the situation of who they need to send out. And then the team goes out and they determine if they need to bring the police in, whether it's going to be a co-response with the police or they need to pull out and the police needs to go in. And, you know, this program for a 160,000 population area, they're operating on a $2.1 million budget. The savings to their public safety is $8 million annually. The savings to their ER department is $14.5 million annually. So, you know, just put that alone for people who are concerned about their taxes. We really should be paying attention to that. And, you know, I think most importantly, for family-like hours, we need care. I mean, that's what we need. I don't need for my child to be wrestled to the ground. I don't need for my child to be handcuffed. I don't need for, you know, my child to be pepper sprayed or assaulted or tasered. And that truly is what's at risk. It's to the point where families just don't even access our crisis hotline anymore. They don't call the police anymore. So, people are not accessing the types of services that they need overall. So, you know, I think that it should be looked at both for the rural and cities here across the state. The one last thing I would say is we really need to start talking about mental health bias and policing. It has been longstanding. Every report that I've ever seen about policing, mental health bias really is highlighted and emphasized. And here in Burlington alone, in the past eight years, we've had three people who, three people who are known to have mental health issues who were killed by the police. And in a short timeframe, I'm talking in a minute, you know, and there are other circumstances, but there was a large commission that was a large study that was done by a commission. And it clearly named that mental health bias was an important part of this. And, you know, candidly, I'm just going to say, like, I think training and advocating for training of police officers, I think that's important, but I don't think that's the solution anymore. I would have thought that 10 years ago, 20 years ago, we've been trying to train police officers on de-escalation and to be more professional in their approach to mental health issues. We need to start looking at what's actually working, like cahoots. Okay, thank you, Robin. And thank you for your examples and for using the phrase reimagining policing. It's really a helpful phrase. Jay, do you want to add any points to the things that Robin and Aiton have said or the issues of mental health or racism? I mean, there's a lot to be said on both topics. And I think they've kind of reached the main points. I would say that in terms of bias and policing, you can look at it statewide. You can look at the state police. You can look at, I think, 30 different police departments and the data, all points in one direction. So, and that is that there are significant disparities, not just in the traffic stops, but in the searches and in other enforcement activities that police do. And the most interesting part I found in the data is that every time they look at the searches, there's a disparity. In particular, black drivers are searched more than white drivers, but they're less frequently found with contraband than white drivers who are searched. So it's like, it just goes to the point of being overpoliced. And you mentioned earlier, Tom, that the number of stops, traffic stops in Vermont is like, I think something around four times the national average. And so, and in some places like Bennington, for instance, it's seven times the national average. So it's really important for us to recognize that a lot of these stops, when they don't even result in any enforcement action, it's a total waste of time and taxpayer dollars. The last thing I'll say about training, you know, training, as Robin said, is important, but it certainly is not, should not be the focus of how we reimagine policing. I always say we need three or four separate things. One is meaningful policy and policy being law. Two is training to that policy. And three is supervision and internally that holds people to account for that training and policy. And then four is citizen supervision, citizen control that ensures meaningful oversight of the entire system. And that's, you know, that really, you know, in some places you have some of that, but it's really been a challenge to get it adopted with fidelity for a number of factors that we can get into a little bit more. Okay, thank you, Jay. In a moment I'm going to ask each of you if you have questions for each other. I want to share one example before that. A couple of years ago when I was working at the library, one day we had a man who was in the library who appeared to be having an adverse reaction to a medication or maybe a drug, but he was out of control and he clearly couldn't stay where he was. And we didn't have the skills to work with him. The library is a block from the month of your police department. And we called the dispatcher, described the situation. And I was so pleased that two EMTs came. No officers, two EMTs came, and these two men were so patient. And they were talking gently with a man. They would get him to move 10 feet. And then he'd stop and he'd kind of freak out and then they'd get him to move 10 feet again. And it took them quite a while, but they got him to the ambulance and they took him to the hospital to get some support. But I was really impressed that it was not considered a police issue. And that was great. And one of the reasons that struck me so much is because a week before I had been in a different community where a woman who perhaps was drunk, but she was in a public location at a store having severe trouble and needed help. And in that community, a police car came. And all they did was the two officers, one got on each side of her and they hauled her and put her in the back. They didn't even talk with her. And they just put her in the back of the cruiser and they left. And I thought, that was such an extremely inappropriate response. And the Montpelier response was so much more appropriate. And then once that would be action, action to have a social worker perhaps, but the EMTs did a good job in that situation. And Tom, I think your story, and I've heard so many like them, both good and bad is like the key with people, whether it's, I mean, people generally, when you're approached by a police officer and they're coming for you, you get nervous, agitated, cared. It's impossible to have a like, that is an escalating event automatically. And so that's what, at least in terms of like a mental whole situation or otherwise, that's why we can do more to prevent that. And as Robin said, preventing that in these cases means not sending police. That's the only real way to ensure that we're gonna do everything we can to prevent a situation from escalating. Right, thank you. So do you have questions that you would like to ask each other or bring up? Any one of you can jump in. If you don't, I have more, but I'd like your perspectives. Oh man. I'm just listening. I take in information that I will use in some way to keep doing what I do. Yeah, I'll go. I have a question for Robin. Oh gosh, yeah. You know, it's nothing too hard. This is not a test. I'm interested to hear you talk about the reaction to your work and what you've been advocating for, what the reaction has been from your local police entities and public officials. Yeah. Oh, thanks for that question. I mean, first off, I think from a family perspective, because we're a family-led group of people, are people with lived experiences, and also interestingly, mental health professionals who are on the front line who are feeling like they need to have a stronger voice and change in terms of how we respond to crisis. I mean, one thing that I've realized is that a lot of families have been working on this issue in kind of these siloed ways, or they have been just completely silenced out of fear. So it's been really, when we had the forum, I probably had about 30 emails the following day from families and some people who didn't attend the forum but had heard about it. So it just, you know, I've been able to connect with a lot of families, which has been really nice. And also I would say that people seem to have responded really positively to the idea that there's a solution that we can start talking about. And I have had regular meetings with the Howard Center, which is our designated agency here. And, you know, they do some really amazing work. They have a street outreach program in Burlington, and they also, throughout around Burlington and the other cities, they have what's called a community outreach program. It's very limited. Both of those programs are extremely limited. And I think our efforts have helped really push internally a discussion within the Howard Center, as well as with the specialized agency, NFI, a real questioning of what do they need to be doing differently. And from their own policies around calling police on residential patients to why are we advising people in their safety plans to call their police. So I feel like there's some progress that's being made there. I think the stickiness for us is that we currently have a mayor who has long allied with the police and has, for whatever reason, I mean, he was very aware of our situation with our family and other families who I know also went to him about their situations. And I don't, I'm not quite sure where he is right now. Like I'm very interested to meet with him, but my hope is that he can recognize that this is a moment and an opportunity for change. And I'm not, I'm not sure kind of where he lies on this. He was invited to attend the forum. We're reaching out to him again. But I think that that's kind of the next phase of our work is to really try to engage the mayor's office and city council to get better educated about the issues that our families are experiencing and about cahoots and what's possible. Well, good. Thank you. So I have a two part question for each of you. And I want to remind the participants that you could be putting questions into the chat function. We don't have too many questions in there yet. We have a couple though. But I have a two part question for Etan, Robin and Jay. The first part is what changes or actions do you see as feasible for the near future? And the second part of it is, or the second question is how can citizens become more involved in efforts to change policing, to improve policing and lean it more towards public safety? So what things are feasible for the near future and how can citizens become involved? Etan? I would, I really believe, and this is sort of getting back to what Jay was talking about. I really believe the oversight issue is critical. We have very little of it statewide. I mean, I'm often asked about issues of fair and impartial policing for people in jurisdictions. They just think that somehow I'm responsible for it at a state level and I'm not. I work for the state police. I'm like, there are 80 agencies in the state. And something comes up. What do we do? Well, you got the police chief, but if you have a complaint about an officer, that feels a little strange. And if you go to the select board, that may not get you much more, given that this is such a small place. One of the things that I would really push is that I think people need to demand more of these fair and impartial committees that really look at the policy that has been put in place, the model policy. That's also being tweaked because it's not perfect. And I think that there needs to be more local control. And people need to also ask that this local control not simply be advisory, but it needs to have teeth. Because people of color, and that's what I work on a lot, not solely, but a lot, are tired of being asked for opinions that are not taken seriously, that are not actually processed and held to be something that's in fact in a certain sense sacred, particularly if you're working as a peace officer and are therefore in the public trust. So I think that one really basic thing is to start structuring that kind of local oversight that has teeth. Okay, thank you, Eitan. Robin? Yeah, was the question, what is feasible? I'm sorry, Tom. Two parts. Yeah, what's feasible, something that could be accomplished in the short term? And then the second part is how can citizens become involved? Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that has struck me is people have been so positive about cahoots. And it's been out there for 30 years. And honestly, I came across it doing desk research and listening to an NPR story about it that took me down the spiral. It was a great spiral, but it took me down this path and I think I've gotten a lot of people reached out to me and have been like, how did you hear about this? How did you find this? And I think the reason why people are so responsive is people are just thirsty for change. There's a recognition that some of the systems that we have had for decades, they're just not working for our communities. Placing being one of them, mental health being the other. So I think people are, there's sort of this moment right now that people are recognizing these things aren't working for our community and we need to start looking at what is working for our community. And that's at a critical mass point. This isn't like a small group of people. We are at that tipping point, as they would say. We're at that tipping point. So I would say that there's actually will of the people who want to see their leaders move forward for dramatic and drastic change that actually works for its community. So I think doing something like Kahootz in Burlington is very feasible in the very near future. And I think the way that people can and do need to get involved, of course, is to talk at a very basic level, talk to their family, friends, and neighbors about these issues. And on a larger level is to engage with their local leaders and decision makers about the importance of this type of change and to not get stuck in this mindset that incrementalism is somehow healthy because what we have found is that incrementalism is not really healthy for those of us who are more vulnerable. It truly isn't. And so anyways, that's how I think people can engage. Okay, thank you, Rob. And Jake? Yeah, I mean, in terms of feasible solutions, I mean, there's a lot of good work happening right now at the legislature over the past two sessions and over the past many years. I think that there are bills out right now that are being discussed in the legislature that need your support. So I think there are a lot of ways to get involved. But these are around reducing the uses of force and holding officers to higher standards. There are bills around data collection and analysis. There are bills around accountability. So I mean, there's a lot there, of course, that I think is absolutely feasible. And I think having meaningful policy changes and getting better trainings is definitely possible. I mean, you can do this with your state representatives. You can do this in your local community. So how to get involved? And I'll throw a little shameless plug-in into the chat. The ACLU of Vermont has a 10-point plan to reimagine policing in Vermont. We have an action page that's linked to here and that you can sign up for updates and get in touch in ways to volunteer and be a part of the movement. And I think there are a lot of smaller groups meeting across the state. I think there are a lot of ways to get involved. What those groups should be doing is, of course, advocating with their state representatives around certain pieces of legislation. But also what's really important, because it's really about culture, or I guess a lot of it, and the former head of the police academy in Vermont told me this, like, we can do all the training we can do, but culture eats everything. And so it's all about the culture of it. It can be all about the culture of any given department. So you need to talk to your police chief, talk to your town manager, talk to your select board. What are they doing to encourage and ensure oversight? And what's the data looking like? Have they even talked about it? Let's democratize policing. Vermont has a long history of citizen involvement and oversight at the local level. We have community boards on everything. Why do so many communities not have one about their police departments? That is not a hard thing to get started and to encourage. So it's about changing. That's another piece of changing culture, not just within policing, but within our own communities. Okay, thank you. We do have a number of comments and questions in the chat box now. So one of the reporter asks, so is it appropriate as a cisgendered white romanter to step up to try to get our local police to move forward on public safety? On the one hand, I don't want to marginalize populations to have to do all the work. On the other hand, I don't want to step in there and be the white voice all the time. In the process of planning this panel, one discussion that came up with some people we spoke with was the issue of how much white people should be involved in racial issues. Clearly, white people need to be involved in racial issues, but in what ways? Hey, Tom, do you want to jump in on that? Given that the state is 96% white, if the white people aren't involved, we're going to have a lot of trouble here. I think there are times when I've been in therapy and my therapist has talked about playing push hands and that being a model for relationships that you push a little and someone pushes back and you find a certain amount of parity. And I don't think that that's a bad metaphor here. I think I have to say it's wonderful to hear somebody say I don't want the marginalized populations to have to do all the work and to have the compassion to be able to put that out there and also further compassion of not wanting to step in and take over. But there is no reason why your voice should not be part of this. Allyship, frankly, if that's not part of the solution right now, nothing is going to happen even nationwide. I mean, black people have known this for years. We're real clear on this one. So you got to get in there, but the other thing would be then in terms of your personal politics, when a person who's marginalized actually steps in to be able to stand back and perhaps not begin with a declarative statement when you're dealing with them, but to perhaps begin with a question. That gesture on its own is extraordinarily powerful and very welcoming and inviting. Okay, thank you. Another question that a couple related economics in here and there's one that someone gave me ahead of time too, but basically the issue of the challenge of funding in Vermont and trying to balance one program because often what happens if money is taken out of if you need money for one program, it's taken from something else. So what impact does economics have on the failure to fully fund community-based resources at the expense of funding fully police and institutions like jails and hospitals? So any of you want to jump in on the issue of issues relating to funding? Yeah, it's a really good question from my buddy AJ. I think, yes, that's an issue, but here in Vermont and as in many other places, we have this problem of a scarcity mindset. We think that there's a scarcity problem when it comes to funds, but there isn't. We have resources in this state that can certainly be shifted, can certainly be changed, but there are resources that can also be built. And so I don't think that if we keep going with the scarcity mindset, we're not going to get anywhere. We need to think about how to grow. But in terms of just dealing with the dollars that are in the current year state budget, I suppose we need to figure out what our priorities are as a state. I think it was, might have been Martin Luther King Jr. who said, show me your budget and I'll tell you your priorities. And so that's what we need to think about and really focus on. What are our priorities and does our funding actually match them? Okay, a follow up question on economics from Marissa. Related to economics, do you think it's worth it to spend money on things like trainings and body cameras to improve police behavior? Or is it better to direct that money away from the institution of police departments altogether? I'm going to stay out of this. Okay. And maybe, as Jay said, maybe it's not any that were. But a lot of times when people are doing budgets and awful lot of times, having worked on budgets myself over the years, a lot of times it does become an either or. Well, and just to make it like just remember, Vermont does not have a balance requirement that we have a balanced budget or anything like that. So we take out bonds for lots of different things and what it's rarely for community based services. So it's just something we need to consider and how we deal with this. And it just stopped talking about it as if the money is not there because there's a lot of ways to get it done. On the specific question of trainings and body cameras, you know, I don't want to be talking too much, but I do know a lot about the body camera issue in particular. We can talk, that's something we can talk about for an hour. Body cameras can be useful in terms of accountability, but they're really only as useful as the rules governing their use. And so what we focus on in terms of body cameras is like you need to have strict policies about how they're used and what happens with the recordings and making sure people's privacy is protected, et cetera. At the same, while we have these things in place, some of these mechanisms, I would say like these are very small investments. The training on whether it's random partial policing or otherwise and body cameras, these are relatively small investments compared to the $500 million our state spends on policing across the state. These things are a drop in the bucket. So that's not where most of the money is going. However, the question where most of the money goes is to the number of police we have and the number of, and the maintenance of vehicles and all this kind of stuff. Like that's where a lot of the money goes and that's where we think that you need to encourage alternatives by divesting from some of the policing structure and moving it into these other areas. Because if there's too many police, then you're gonna get people in situations that they shouldn't otherwise be in in the first place. And they're not getting, as Robin has said, the care and support that they actually need in a given situation. Okay, thank you. Hey, John, did you want to jump in on that again? First, you wanted to stay away from it, but then it looked like you wanted to add something. No? Okay. I mean, I have something to add. Yeah, I think I have something to add because I think this ties to what Jay was talking about in terms of culture. I think for decades, we've had a culture where we have felt that we need to build up our corrections. We need to build up our police departments. And it's just the wrong way. And this is an opportunity for us to pivot away from that and really think about what we can be doing to support people who have mental health challenges, substance abuses, and start to build up those community resources rather than continuing to invest in these systems that just aren't working and are burdensome on taxpayers. So why do we continue to invest in our corrections at the level that we are investing when we know that a lot of people are in the corrections for nonviolent crimes, for example? So I think we know we can identify these opportunities, but it's the political will to make those changes. And I think that that's where people's engagement back to the previous question is really critical. Instead of having this question of as if it's a zero sum game, because I agree with Jay. I think the money is there. I think it's about your budget is a moral document. So I think it's about how what we decide is important to us in investing in those things. Okay. Thank you, Robin. Another comment and question from chat. This is from Richard. To follow up on panelists' comments and personal backgrounds, training is clearly important. But how important is actual personal experience to assisting police, EMT, and other organizations to better understand and more properly handle such situations as you've been addressing? From my perspective, full immersion in or language comprehension, fluency with personal familiarity with sexual preference differences can so greatly facilitate individual agents' willingness to accept the lessons they're learning from training. So anybody want to comment on that? Perhaps I'm shameless, but I... Remember when the Army used to have that slogan, be all that you can be? I've kind of fallen to so many categories that the police have trouble with that my training is inherently personally that I've designed around a lot of the personal experience and they do actually sit in the room with a queer person of color who's also Jewish and neurodivergent. And that's the person who's training them also and a power lifter. And I just stand there and kind of go, here we are guys, let's do this. Let's just do this. I think you're absolutely right. The personal experience is essential. I've got a leg up on that one. I'll admit that I'm a little privileged. Okay, thank you. So Carolyn, if you're reading in the comments too, apparently there's some odd visuals happening on some of the tiles. So I don't know if there's something you can do anything about or if it's just particular to certain computers. And also in the chat box, and the League of Women Voters is going to compile these, but there are a number of resources listed in the chat, so that's, and we won't have time to go through all of them. See, and some of the comments include a lot of information here. So find some that are showing up for racial justice, one of the organizations support organization listed, and also information about Robbins Group, Kahootz, and also ACLU of Vermont. So various resources here. Vermont Racial Justice Alliance. So a suggestion, please call your state senator and ask them to support S63, and some of you I'm probably, probably know right away what that is. It's the law to remove enforcement officials, law enforcement officials as school resource officers, which has been in the news a lot. So I don't know if any of you, the three of you would like to comment on that issue. I mean, I think I have something just to add to that, which is that when I was doing some research on what's happening with our kids, I think it was really striking to me how little we know here in the state. But the one thing that we do know for sure is that they're in crisis. Whether you are looking at children between zero and nine years old, or you're looking at teenagers, we are seeing them from a statewide level to our regional level here in Chittenden County that crisis is just going up. And I think a lot of you, we're certainly seeing that in our schools. And my child to my twins, both of them have challenges. And I will say that they have had very difficult experiences in our school system because they're just not equipped to respond. And having police officers respond is not appropriate because of their trauma or because of their behaviors. I think Jay had talked about this earlier, that for very minor infractions, there's almost this over response that in of itself is traumatizing and also impacts their brain development and therefore subsequent behaviors. So this for me ties back to, we need to start investing in our community systems, but a part of that really goes to the data collection. What we know about our kids is that, yes, they're in crisis, but also we don't know what's working for them. We don't even know what the demand is in terms of need. So the depth of the data doesn't tell us a story. So I think that that's one thing that I just, I want for people to understand that our kids really need more help. And we need to actually start asking some questions about what's going on here in Vermont with our children. And it ties right back to that investment question, why aren't we investing in our young kids? Yes. And Robin, your comments about data, they echo what Etan was saying about the lack of adequate data in some areas. And there are a couple of comments in the chat. But we really need to have the information to work with us. So Rilla asks, I wonder if training about implicit explicit bias on race, mental health, age, ability might also engage the participants in the idea of how they hold themselves and others accountable. If they are involved in setting up the accountability systems along with citizens, perhaps the systems will be more effective. That's brilliant. That's really, really provocative. I like that. How do, person, we must exchange email. Oh, wow, I'm all jazzed because I've like got a whole training like come in the mind right now. We need to talk. That's great. Okay, I'll stop now. Well, you can tell us why it's great. But afterwards, I'll give you and Rilla each other's emails. Yes. But do you want to expand on that? What's great about it? Because that's absolutely right. And I don't know why I haven't gone there yet. If you don't get buy-in from the people you're training, your efforts are dead. They are dead. It won't work. And I think a lot of training that is put forth does not work to do that. We can all be very critical of training. It's really easy. I'm really good at being a critic. I'm not as good at like building things. But one of the things that I have learned is how do you come at a student? If you come at a student and you expect the student to be a moron and a container into which you pour things. I mean, this is Paula Friere for those of you who know anything about pedagogy and that you pour something into an empty container, that's not going to work. It's never worked. It really doesn't work when you're dealing with these issues. If you engage the person who you are training and say, I need your help, we need to get at this because your community needs this. Believe me, you get a completely different response. And I don't know why I haven't gone. Really, you said? I don't know why I haven't gone there, but that is really exciting and I need to go there. That's why. Okay. I do. You know, I think the sentiment is a good one. At the same time, I'm very aware because I've been engaged in advocacy to increase accountability systems and policing for the last five years. And every step of the way, it is a fight. And it's about power because no entity wants to be held accountable really. No entity wants to especially have other people who are not of the entity holding it accountable. And that is a real problem when it comes to policing because they already have a lot of power. Inherently, they carry guns. They have uniforms. They have the badge. They are the enforcers of law. You cannot do anything to a police officer and you cannot prevent them from doing anything. You can only deal with it after the fact. They can do anything they want in the moment. And that's a serious responsibility that they have. It's a serious power, but the law has come together in such a way over the last 50 years in terms of court cases and statutes and policies in a way that has only strengthened that power to be a state unto themselves. And so when we think about accountability, yes, police probably need to sit at the table because they know their profession from the inside. But we need to democratize the accountability and that's what's because that's what's not existing. It needs to put the people, put communities over the law enforcement entity. Right now it's the other way around. Can I share? I guess what you're saying is really great, but I think what Rilla was getting at in her comment was that's not a zero-sum game, as you very wisely put it when we were talking about the scarcity model, that we can do both of those things. And that if we change the paradigm and it's perhaps not immediately adversarial, but if we try something that is collaborative, what are the possible outcomes? I don't hear people doing that very often. It's always adversarial. I'm intrigued by someone suggesting that it might not be. No, I think it's important. I think it's really important, an important point. What I mean is that in practice, any time a community attempts to through any kind of process gain greater power over law enforcement accountability, then what the law enforcement entity has, law enforcement will not go along. They will not be a part of it. And that to me is the problem. They will not relinquish their authority in how they hold themselves accountable. It is like it's a line in the sand for them and that's the problem, I think, because we really do need to democratize that accountability. And if they are opposed to that, then there's really nothing and nothing is going to change their minds. I'm not sure what will other than the community coming together and saying, we're doing this. It's a complex problem. Robin, go ahead. Yeah. I mean, I think right now in Burlington is such a fine example of this where for a long time, the police have been invited into these conversations and have fought it tooth and nail. And then you started to see a radicalization within our community. And that's what happens when people aren't heard or listened to over time is they go to an extreme. And quite honestly, in Burlington, it's worked. We're starting to see changes because people are demanding change and are doing the legwork in the community to get that change. And it's unfortunate that our police department cannot be a partner in that. But I think people are tempted to say, well, it's because you're attacking the police. Well, that's not where it started. We've been having polite conversations about policing for years and years and years. There have been studies. There have been reports. There have been pleading from community members for years. And it just got to the point where the community said, enough is enough, we're going to push this through. And they have been able to make progress by working around the police, frankly. But for years, this has been an issue here in Burlington. It just has really come ahead. And I think it does speak to what Jay is saying. And even now, we can't have, there's some research that's being done on the police department. And it feels like there's just a circling of the wagons. And really, it's like, let's look at what police need. What does our community need? And let's get real about this. It's a tough, it's tough to feel hopeful to be honest that you can collaborate in these moments. Okay, thank you. So we're going to need to wrap up in a few minutes. I would like to just give each of the three panelists the opportunity if there are any points you would like to add. I mean, I appreciate your comments and questions and your ideas and insights. This has been very helpful. And I know that there are probably lots of things that you could continue talking about. Are there any things you'd like to highlight in the last couple of minutes we have? Any one of you who'd like to go first can go for it. I mean, I feel like I've learned a lot. So I'm really appreciative of that and for everybody to be on it for the questions here. I just, for folks to know, if people are curious about the Kahootz model, you can go to our website at mentalhealthfirstbtv.org. And there's a whole Kahootz page. You can listen to a four-minute NPR interview or there's the actual presentation that Kahootz gave to us at our forum. So the director of consulting from Kahootz in Eugene, Oregon, gave a presentation his segments about 20 minutes long. And he gets into pretty substantial detail about their de-escalation model and the impact that it's had on the community and in their partnership. So I just want to encourage people to look at that and to spread the word about it. Post it on your Facebook pages. You know, follow us on Facebook and Instagram so you can help get the word out about this alternative and also change the conversation to solutions and what we can do together versus us kind of being stuck in place. That is it. Thank you, Rob. And the website is very helpful. I appreciate the some of the statistics you have there and from the program in Oregon where they point out that the vast majority of cases where there's mental health assistance needed, they handle it very smoothly without needing to call a police. And occasionally they do need to call a police but most of the time it's mental health professionals and volunteers who can handle the situation. Of the 16,000 calls that they responded to, they only needed to pull in police 315 times. So I think that that speaks volumes in of itself. Thank you, Rob and Jay. A couple of things. You know, I want to say like first off that when I talk about police or I think when people talk about policing, you know, it's really, it's rarely about, I guess, you know, there's always a lot of focus on individual officers and the wrongdoing or uses of force and things like that. You know, I still choose to believe that most people go into law enforcement with good intentions and that they just want to help their community. Like I think that that's broadly true. The problem is systemic. It is a systems problem. It's a culture problem. And so, but if, but if we don't change the system, if we don't change the culture, you know, it doesn't matter if the person is good, bad or indifferent because they're going to do what the system requires them to do and what it tells them to do. And so, and so that's what needs to be addressed. You know, I think that, you know, and I like to give some good news, good news, bad news, I guess, you know, good news is like Vermont, you know, we do better on a number of fronts than many other states in the nation. And I think that's something that we can be proud of. You know, and we're currently leading the nation. We have the strongest as a last legislative session, the strongest use of force bill in the country. You know, the strictest use of force language in the country. Which is great. We had, we have banned the use of facial recognition in policing, which is great. You know, we've been doing a number of things and in response to the killing of George Floyd and the protests of last summer. The bad news is that there's already movement to claw those things back. And I think it's imperative that people don't sit down and go home and think everything's taken care of because it's not, we need, we still need, there's still a lot of work to be done and there's still, there's defense work to be done now for the victories we have won. So I encourage you all to stay involved and to get involved as much as you can on these issues at the local level and at the state level. Okay. Thank you, Jay. Aitran, any closing comments? I'm not sure it's going to be clear in the amount of time we have left, like, which is 60 seconds. I think I would simply say, and I hope any, this is comprehensible, we need new models for discussion. We need radically new models for discussion if this is ever going to move anywhere. And those models have got to stop being adversarial in their inherent nature. I think that was pretty clear. Yes. Thank you very much. So a reminder to everyone that the information that the panelists and participants have been putting into the chat box will be compiled and that will be available on the Kellogg Hubbard Library website. And also this program has been recorded and the previous three programs were also good and they were recorded. So all of those are available on the Kellogg Hubbard Library website under adults, programs, past programs. So again, I'd like to thank the League of Women Voters and the Kellogg Hubbard Library and Dr. Aitran as Red and Longo, Robin, Friedner McGuire, and Jay Diaz, and all of you for participating tonight. Thank you, everyone, and have a good evening.