 Thank you mayor and council. Thanks guys. I'm going to introduce you in a second. All right. Sure. You guys look good. Thank you. Today we received the final report presentation from the police expert panel. The panel was approved by city council back in November of 2019. Some of you were not on the council at the time so let me provide a little context. So it's November of 2019. It was a difficult time for the city. A month earlier on October 12, 2019, Tatiana Jefferson was killed by a Fort Worth police officer. Following the shooting, Chief Ed Krause, he was the chief at the time. Mayor Price and I stated publicly that it shouldn't have happened and that it was our responsibility to do what we can to ensure that it does not happen again. When we set up the police panel, there were three, four main objectives. One, the panel would be independent. Two, the city would be open and transparent and the panel would have access to any and all reports, documents, and videos. Three, the panel would be thorough and four, community involvement and engagement would be part of the panel's scope of work. So the police panel begins their work in the winter of 2019. So it's December of 2019, January of 2020. On March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor is killed by police in Louisville, Kentucky. In that same month of March 2020, states and cities and counties are closing schools and businesses due to COVID-19. Public meetings are curtailed or canceled. It is also in March of 2020 that Kim Neil is hired to lead the new office of police oversight monitor for the city of Fort Worth. On May 25 of 2020, George Floyd Jr. is killed by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I provide this context to share that this is the backdrop for the work of the police panel. In July of 2020, the panel presented a preliminary report which was shared with the city council and the panel continued to work and in 2021 completed their assessment. In the summer of 2021, the city extended contracts for the panel to complete their final report and as part of that assess change is made by the department and the city since 2019. Today is to hear about the work of the expert panel and I'm going to introduce the two team leaders or our co-chairs of the police expert panel. At that time back in November 2019, we were inundated with interest of companies and individuals who wanted to serve as potential panelists. We wanted to recognize experts and best practices for police operations and in the field of procedural justice, bias-based policing, and use of force. We also wanted individuals who worked with cities on a national scale. We appointed an eight-member committee, two team leaders or co-chairs, and our two co-chairs have local connections but are still recognized on a national and international scale. Dr. Alex Del Carmen is currently professor and associate dean of the School of Criminology, Criminal Justice, and Strategic Studies at Tarleton State University and is considered an authority on the topic of race and crime with particular emphasis on racial profiling and law enforcement. Dr. Del Carmen has also served as a federal monitor in other cities. Dr. Theron Bowman began his public service career in 1983 as a police officer with the city of Arlington right next door. In 1999, he was appointed chief of police. He also served as deputy city manager and director of public safety until he retired in 2017. He is a police practices expert and president and CEO of the Bowman Group and he has also been appointed as a federal monitor in other cities. Mayor and city council are two chairs to present the final report on the expert panel for police. Thank you, David. Gentlemen, welcome. Thank you. Yeah, go ahead. While they're setting up, I just want to say thank you to David Cook. We sat here last week and I was not pleased with the timeliness of a report that we received. It is not easy to manage the wants and desires of nine council members and our eight council members and a mayor. I appreciate you trying to be as responsive as possible to our needs. Thank you for getting this to us early and allowing us the opportunity to review it. I appreciate it. Thanks, Elizabeth. Good afternoon. Thank you, Mr. Cook, for those kind words. I'm Alex Del Carmen as Mr. Cook mentioned and I also want to want to briefly talk about a couple of things before I get started on our PowerPoint presentation. First of all, to give you some context, aside from the historical context of our study, you know, I think between Dr. Bowman and I, we probably have covered about half the United States on cities that we've reviewed in terms of policing practices and data and what not. Ever since we started working here at Fort Worth PD, obtaining the data from them and talking to community members and what not, we have been, we've been received with open arms. The Chief of Police, Ed Kraus at the time, and the current Chief of Police, Neil Nokes have given us unconditional access to all the information that is available to them. I think that is that is something that is not only welcome on our end, but is something that we're very happy to report to you because those things need to be said. Secondly, there hasn't been a time, I think, since we started our study early on in, you know, 2020, really when we had, you know, our, we were on the ground and we were working and what not, that they were not immediate in our request. Whenever we made a request, we automatically received the information and the various other components that were in place. It's not your phone. No, it's not there. It's not there. I tend to do that by the way, I just go and inspire people calling. Sorry for the interruption. No, I'm a college professor, I'm used to that. Having said that, I did want to emphasize the fact that Chief Nokes has been incredibly open to all the requests that we've made. And also importantly, you know, I often say that police departments should be evaluated when something happens that goes, that goes, that is wrong in how they address it. And whether or not they can address it immediately, they're open-minded, they're reflective about what happened. And that's certainly been the experience under his current leadership as well. Julie Swearingen, Assistant Chief Swearingen, monitor Kim Neal, the city manager's office, both Fernando, who inherited this project, I think is as excited as we are that today came. And also David Cook, who has been not only someone that asked us to find the truth, but also to report it and ensure that we kept them noticed constantly if anyone came in the way of obstructing that truth. So the panel started and our, you know, basically our commission, our initial charge was not to look into Atatiana's death. I want to make that clear. I know the press is here and they're going to be asking questions later on, which were by the way, we're not going to have any interviews later on today, not on this topic. But I will say to you that when Atatiana died, it affected us all in the community. I've been a resident of the Dallas Fort Worth area for 25 years. And this is my backyard. This is where I work in the city of Fort Worth. And so when Mr. Cook called and reached out and said, would you do this along with Dr. Bowman? I said, absolutely, because it wasn't just a job. It was the idea of giving back as a first generation immigrant to the United States. It was the idea of giving back to my community and ensuring that our police department looks at itself and grows from this experience as well. So our various objectives that we had in place were to identify patterns or practices. And you may have seen these words before, because this is in fact what the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division often uses in their investigations related to police interactions with the public, the escalation, and the use of force incidents. We also examined police policies, operational practices, training, documentation, accountability, systems, corrective and reporting procedures, and technology applications as well. We interacted and listened with many of, we had many listening sessions, although we wish we would have had them in person, and that most of them we had to rely via Zoom because of the pandemic. And that obviously took away some of that face to face contact that we were hoping to have. Nevertheless, you know, we had some of those sessions with community members, with groups, and also with police personnel at various ranks. We reviewed policing, the community policing and engagement component. We looked at internal affair complaints. We looked at the recruitment plan, hiring and promotions component, critical incident interactions with mental health community and interactions with the youth. So we dealt with a great deal of areas within policing, although there are others that we basically was beyond the scope of our study as to what we could do at the time, given the limitations of COVID and whatnot. I want to make sure that this is clear. I'm not a Texan, although I consider myself blind by being here 25 years. I say it like it is. I have a reputation of that. And that's both good and bad, because I tend to make everyone upset and very few people happy. And so I'm here to tell you, we're going to tell you how it was and how it is. We are not going to sugarcoat this. We were completely independent when we came up with our analysis. That is exactly what you have in front of you, okay? And so we believe the community deserves the truth. We believe the police department deserves the truth. And we believe you as the leaders of the city deserve the truth as well. None of the items on this report were changed, modified, suggested, but outside entities. This was our work and our work only. The only thing that we did before issuing the final report is we ran some factoids by the city to ensure that our data was correct and our numbers were correct. But this is our final product and our names are on it for a reason. As Mr. Cook mentioned, Dr. Bowman and I served as chairs. That means we basically led the efforts, coordinated, but we certainly relied on a great deal of talent that we had in the team. With us today is Mr. Tom Petrowski who is right behind some of you and in front of some of you. Tom is the former chief legal counsel of the FBI and someone that I work with on various other projects, including the police reform case in Puerto Rico. He was of great help and also one of our subject matter experts. On video, or not on video, but on call right now is Mr. Jonathan Smith who headed the Civil Rights Division of DOJ and also Rashida Ogletree George, a former DOJ investigator as well. No longer with us, but their names are on the report, but I do want to say that these individuals were part of that first preliminary report was Linda Garcia, Emily Gunston, and also Marcia Thompson and Dr. Rita Villarreal Watkins who happens to head the Law Enforcement Institute of Texas which is in charge of most of the training. The preliminary review report that we issued had some observations. The idea when we met with Mr. Cook initially was for us to do a deep dive right away so that we could provide some feedback to him and to the police chief at the time on things that deserved and needed immediate attention and so we got to work. We wanted to make sure that in the four or five months leading the efforts of being charged with this study that we simply provided the city of Fort Worth Police Department with some immediate findings so that they could address those findings in a way that would improve the lives of the people in the community and at the same time allow for an increased level of professionalism. This preliminary report included recommendations to the Fort Worth Police Department to consider adopting right away. I'm happy to tell you that the leadership took it seriously. They began to implement those changes right away. In fact by the time we actually issued the report some of those changes were already in place and it was just really nice to see that our findings had an impact and we're going to impact the police department right away and the community at large as well. We note that in our report, if you've read the report you know that we actually note the various instances, enhancements of policies and various other things that were actually noted by the police department right away. This led to what we believe is an immediate improvement on some of the areas that were discussed in that preliminary report as well. Some of the members of the panel moved on to other jobs like the folks that I just mentioned right now and other opportunities but some of us remained. Dr. Bowman and I remained as leads, Jonathan Smith and Tom Petrowski remained and we also asked Rashida Ogletree-George who has a vast amount of experience working on cases like this for DOJ to also join us and join our efforts on the second phase or the or the or the second part of our study and so she was incorporated as a subject matter expert as well. The panel continued to focus beyond the preliminary review report on use of force because we felt that that was an important component on training and also the review process by which they review not only complaints but also use of force incidents as well. The COVID pandemic emerged as I noted earlier. This was absolutely devastating to our efforts to be physically present even those of us that are local as all of you know we were locked down and could not access buildings or offices for a few months. It also affected the manner in which the panel was able to obtain information. We had to rely on electronic means. The review panel obtained and analyzed information that was received on use of force, crisis intervention, internal affairs, community engagement and civilian oversight board and recruitment and training. I want to make it clear that what we did is we actually put all of our of that information on hard drives. We made several trips to the police department you know acquire that information and it was spread by all of the subject matter experts in that each each of us reviewed different parts of the component. So the the COVID pandemic emerged during that particular component and it had an effect but we moved forward right so throughout the fall and winter of 2020 and 2021 the panel continued its evaluation. The draft report was provided to the city in January of 2021 in the summer of 2021. The panel was contracted to draft the final report throughout the winter and spring. The panel continued to assess gather information gather data and we provided the final version of the report which you should have by now on June 20th of 2022. The panel has not updated any of the report that we submitted on June 20th and given some of the scheduling conflicts that we had since June until now this is our first opportunity to present this before you okay. Before just so you know I'm going to continue on three or four more slides give you some of that background talk about our methodology and then Dr. Bowman will add the findings and conclusion of our study. So the city of Fort Worth and the Fort Worth Police Department and I think it's important to mention both right because not only has the police department been very open to giving us the information and open to adapting and adopting some of the things that we recommended but also the city deserves a lot of recognition it takes a lot of courage to look at oneself in the mirror and and also make those adjustments right and so it you all have long recognized even those of you that have not been around for a while but just the history of the city itself and the and the city council itself has long recognized the fact that there is there needs to be greater trust and legitimacy in the community. In 2015 you were you were selected as part of the Department of Justice National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice. In 2015 as well you created the Chiefs Advisory Board. In 17 the creation of the Fort Worth Task Force on race and culture was implemented and in 2020 you were part of the legislation to create the office or part of the component to create the office of the police monitor right. These are all significant institutional implementations of the fact that you recognized as a community and as a leader that some of these things needed to be materialized and institutionalized as well. The sources for information for the review some of the things we looked at although this is not at all doesn't total the hours and and the various documents that we look for but we put these in categories for your own iteration. We looked at the departmental policies and procedures. We looked at the stop arrest data and other data that was made available to us. We looked at more than 200 use of force uh warrant executions internal affairs critical incident review board files including somebody worn cameras and in-car camera videos as well. We interviewed members of the Fort Worth Police Department as I noted earlier at all levels. We reviewed the training materials and observations of many of the training sessions that took place. Unfortunately our attendance to some of those sessions was prohibited by COVID nevertheless we reviewed the the outlines the the way the instructors managed to deliver the course and some of the attendees or those that participated and the evaluation that they provided towards the instructor. Community meetings interviews of the police monitor we work very closely with Ms. Neal on many of these components towards the latter part of our of our work and the Fort Worth Police Department gave panel members complete access to all of the requested information. The methodology that we followed is we basically identified patterns of conduct that violate policy or civil rights right in order to determine you know if in fact affected community trust of the legitimacy of the police department. We did not attempt to qualify in statistical certainty and I have to say that because I'm a quantitative person right so I will tell you that we did not sit down here and we did not write a dissertation on statistical measures related to you know certainty levels and whether or not there was repeated conduct validated by interviews and supporting documentations but we look for the systematic flow right we look for those patterns that we were charged to look for once the patterns were identified and we review their policy we looked at the training we looked at the accountability components and the supervision for causes of the conduct or failure to correct that conduct and finally we made recommendations based on best practices. All of us have over 200 years of of working in one way or another on civil rights racial profiling police conduct and whatnot across the country so we felt that we had some degree of baseline knowledge on on being able to provide some of those best practices and reform efforts in various jurisdictions and the context of findings essentially what we want to make sure you understand is that we are we are a different America than the America that where we started as as Mr. Cook said you know three years ago I know our country is divided I know people have vast opinions about policing no one here and in particularly me are ever going to undermine the difficulty of the job associated being a law enforcement officer today. I have lost two officers in the line of duty that are former students of mine and I can tell you it is a our hats should be off to them it is a tough job and it is a very difficult job and we should be supportive of our law enforcement community unquestionably but I will say to you that I've never met and I've trained over 15,000 police officers in the past 25 years through limit and I have never met a good police leader that does not want to address the issue of having those few officers that come into the ranks of law enforcement and should be gone they should choose a different profession and it's in that spirit that we made these findings and it is it is my hope that you understand that some of these issues that we've identified are important issues that deserve corrective behavior some of which has already been done but hopefully you can assist your police department in ensuring that they're carried through many large departments across the nation are experienced in similar circumstances Fort Worth police department has made the critical investments in technology which we were very happy to see it has modernized policies and and and the policies of this department are outstanding by the way they are consistent with national practices with a very few exceptions of them for worth pd changed this academy from a boot camp scenario to a classroom approach and we like to we like to take some credit of that by simply saying that we wanted we provided some of our initial findings related to the fact that they needed to that officers needed to be mentored that officers needed to be not only trained but also understood how to speak to the public etc etc Fort Worth pd has the necessary internal committees and structures in place right now to continue to be successful nevertheless we found that some officers do not always meet those standards expected by the department or the community and are not and have not been held accountable right the project before Fort Worth police department right now is one of affecting the culture affecting the and I know the chief is is is is leading the efforts in terms of that I know his assistant chiefs are also helping him as well but but the point important point here is is that this is not a problem that came up two years ago this is a problem that has been going on for many many many years and the hope is is that that the administration the current administration is given the ability to continue to be able to impact in a positive manner the culture of the police department dr bowman he wants to come back here because the water is here just so you know thank you dr del Carmen y'all I I have the opportunity to uh to present with dr del Carmen at a lot of different places and today is no exception I think it's ironic that he usually gets to present the easy part and and and he leaves me to present the recommendations the conclusions and and the harder part so so we're we're partners in this but my part I think is a little bit more difficult but but nevertheless we're honored to have the opportunity to talk to you today and and I'll spend some time talking about what we observe and also what we recommend now the first area is in in terms of use of force it's important to know that when a department when a police department decides to undergo change they typically will start by constructing a policy that has the language that they expect the officer is under department to adhere to the policy is then followed by training training the officers training the personnel on what the policy says and what the policy requires uh so that they will know that the employees have the requisite knowledge to actually interact enact what the policy requires after the policy is written the training occurs then the policy is implemented within the agency and after the implementation of the policy typically an agency will have systems for accountability where they'll know and understand the extent to which these policies are enacted and adhered to by the rank and file in in the agency they'll have audits they'll have reports they'll have checklists they'll have a number of mechanisms in place or systems in place to understand the connection between what's happening in the street and what the policy is saying on paper and so when we look at this issue of use of force we see that the forward PD has taken strength steps to strengthen its use of force policies as well as the use of force training and the review processes on use of force but what we find is that this this body of effective policy of good policy along with the training typically isn't followed by robust accountability systems what does that mean well supervisors have to hold the employees accountable for following policies supervisors have to make sure that what they are seeing on the street and when they review these forms and documents and body one camera videos that that if they see conduct that's inconsistent with the policy and the training they call this to the department's attention and they take the necessary remedial measures whether that be verbally notifying the officers to embrace the change changing the training or changing something else in the agency typically an agency must know that the conduct on the street follows the policy and the training but what we find here in terms of use use of force that that is not always the case so without this accountability piece the policy is typically not translated into action and so looking at uh de-escalation and and use of force what we find is that one there are significant numbers of incidents of officers failing to de-escalate encounters are engaging in conduct that escalates what what does that mean to the layman what it means is that quite often not in every case and not I would say not even in most cases but in a significant number of cases we we saw officers initiate contact with with the person using profanity using some aggressive language initiating contact in a way that would tend to escalate the situation versus de-escalate and when we say de-escalate we we mean to bring it down to reduce the need to use force to result in an interaction that typically does not require that officers use more force than is necessary to bring the incident to a safe conclusion so in a smaller number of incidents we saw officers using force that wasn't authorized by law we saw some force used as retaliation and in the report uh we we provide a number of examples of what we observed but an additional area of concern that we note in our report is what we believe all too often officers tended to display tasers sometimes when the use of a taser was not justified itself we're pulling and take pulling pulling a taser out as a warning that we have this force to use should you not abide by our commands or our demands and then an area of great concern is that officers nor supervisors often appear to understand what de-escalation principles are all about what why do you say that well because the uh the the pre what we found was that when officers use force and footwork they are required to denote that on a form and chain of command supervisors or internal affairs or other entities within the department are charged with reviewing uses of force by police officers here and quite often the use of force focused on what we call the final frame the moment when officers actually use force but didn't account for the moments leading up to the point when force was actually used and quite often it's during those moments an officer has an opportunity to make decisions that will de-escalate and therefore result in not a need to use higher amounts of force uh but what we found quite often supervisors and looking at the body one camera video in assessing the use of force they looked at whether or not the force was required when it was used and not usually looking at those moments leading up to when officers had an opportunity to de-escalate when they had an opportunity to make other decisions and in some cases or or some instances uh when officers had themselves made decisions or engaged in conduct that what we in the industry call created jeopardy for themselves requiring them to use force as opposed to allowing them to de-escalate so in conclusion uh regarding use of force and de-escalation we recommended uh and we continued to recommend that Fort Worth PD adopt these measures here that you see the listen and explain with dignity and equity uh that's a procedural justice approach and what that means is the research has found that a citizen a member of the community who interacts with the police officer typically if they are treated with dignity and respect then they are more inclined to accept the outcome of that engagement or that interaction so uh if a member of the public is stopped by an officer for a traffic violation typically if the officer treats them with dignity and respect they're more likely to say okay I deserve the ticket that I got but if the officer instead goes up to the car is profane calls them whatever just like you if you had that experience you would be unhappy with the officers unhappy with the outcome and more likely to uh resist and so we recommend that the police department adopt the LEED model that the police department implement a formal bystander program there is a program right now going around the country called the ABLE program and I know the chief of the department are aware of it if they haven't already started uh to implemented a formal bystander intervention program that encourages police officers to intervene when they see another officer engaged in conduct or behavior that's inconsistent with what policy requires develop additional guidance on when force is permitted and how to be escalate and just as importantly audit the implementation of policies on reporting and review the use of force it's been said that what gets measured gets done and you can't expect what you don't inspect and so we recommend that uh that these audits be implemented and it's ironic that the new auditors here today uh from a city perspective but the police department really needs an internal audit mechanism and then enforce changes to the disciplinary matrix changes regarding the escalation and tactical violations that have already been inserted into the disciplinary ma ma ma matrix regarding accountability systems we recognize that the department has undertaken some initiatives to improve its accountability systems for example expanded internal affairs consolidated the use of force review process through the creation of the FAU or the force analysis unit but but we also recognize that the lack of meaningful supervisor review remains a serious issue as I just previously stated and because it's a serious issue quite often misconduct or improper conduct or improper decisions are missed by supervisors and some supervisors even have said that they are discouraged from addressing these issues when they see these use of force issues the failure to de-escalate again is very seldom addressed in chain of command reviews of uses of force and then abusive language and other non-force conduct is typically not addressed again we believe that the community deserves better than to have an officer come and initiate contact with them using profanity to start that that we believe that it's important that that individual members of the community regardless of what walk of life they're coming from is treated with dignity and respect and again that treatment results typically in less crime and fewer incidences of force which means fewer community member injuries as well as fewer police officer injuries as well and there is a dollar and economic benefit to that as well and we and we recommend that the department strengthen the supervisor and chain of command reviews and accountability systems again that an office of auditor or inspector general for the police is created as well as creating a police legal advisor position a police legal advisor position we you know we think your city legal team is outstanding we've had an opportunity to interact with them but the city legal team quite often is focused on risk reduction after the fact a police legal advisor can be inserted before uh before incidences occur in review of warrant affidavits can be inserted in review of policy policy changes and make sure that that risk component is addressed before a policy is implemented before the actions occur and we think that overall lowers the overall risk profile for the city and the police department in terms of search warrants the department then has taken significant steps to improve its no-knock warrant execution practices in fact there have been no no-knock warrants here by the police department at all in 2021 but we recognize the city has not adopted some important policy changes so although there have been no no-knock warrants executed uh some of the requirements for no-knock and not gonna announce warrants that we detail in the report have not been delineated in policy and quite often if it doesn't exist in policy then it doesn't exist uh if there is no policy authorizing or prohibiting in action then it's very difficult to hold your men and women accountable for something that doesn't exist in policy so so we we recommend that uh for example the the policy uh has not gonna announce warrants as a default uh execution strategy for for warrants we believe that's the law we believe that's legal and uh and that will help avoid some of the problems that that we observe with uh you know uh uh a no-knock warrant or not gonna announce warrant uh for example uh some officers say well it's required that officers not can announce themselves but it doesn't say how loud you have to knock so that's a no and police isn't announced we believe that policy should specify the right strategy and training should follow that and then limit search warrant executions to daytime hours in terms of crisis intervention the department has made investments in its crisis intervention programs uh and kudos to to the department to the the mayor to the city for expanding the crisis intervention unit from six persons to 20 persons providing this 40-hour crisis intervention training to all officers to convening a behavioral health advisory board that that has been convened I think has met three times the last time in up leave august of 2021 so you've made progress and continue to make progress and in terms of intervening in crisis situations situations involving uh mental health uh service consumers or families with lived experience or or people who are uh impacted by by illicit substances drugs or whatever so you've made progress uh but we think it's important that you continue to develop and increase the community based services that the the department and the city uses uh in terms of uh crisis intervention we believe that this is not just a police department problem but this is an issue for the whole city and so uh the there the efforts to work with this advisory board should be renewed revised the training to focus on deescalation to minimize the use of force conduct a gap analysis and this is from a citywide perspective on uh to identify where the gaps are where these services are most needed and make sure that when somebody calls 911 or somebody calls the city to request assistance that the dispatchers or the call takers are able to identify at that answering point those calls that should be diverted from a police criminal justice response to a social service provider non-criminal type of response in terms of community policing uh the department's neighborhood uh police officer npo program as most know it delivers highly responsive community policing services i don't think we talk to anybody who who didn't love the npo program uh but in fact community policing in fort war texas is almost exclusively the responsibility of the npo's and uh and what we find is that there tends to be a disconnect between what the community policing policies in the department describe what officers actually do and then what members of the community that we talk to an interview actually expect an experience uh and then patrol officers who represent the people who are most likely to interact with the folks in the community and the neighborhoods they are not afforded what we call beat accountability nor held accountable for community policing activities so if community policing is the domain of the npo's well how do patrol officers fit into this equation what members in the community that we talk to what they said is we want to know the officers who patrol our neighborhood we want to know who they are we want to know something about them we want to know who's interacting with us by and large we found members of the community want a good relationship with the fort worth police and the police officers in their neighborhoods they know the npo's they don't know the patrol officers and so we recommend that the department consider revising the management performance and accountability systems around a robust community policing philosophy if community policing is adopted as a departmental philosophy then no employee in the police department escapes the philosophy so every man and woman regardless of what position within which they serve if this is a department philosophy they must be able to understand and articulate their community policing responsibility and so we believe and the experts the professionals the publications that define and describe community policing says that it's everybody's responsibility design police service delivery systems around geographic accountability and provide beat accountability as well now in terms of diversity on the police department what we find is females blacks uh laden member of community uh laden community members and asians are under represented in the department's sworn workforce and disparities or evidence throughout the department in the rank structure as well as the specialized units within the department in our report details a number of specialized units and the makeup within each unit there's been a slight increase in representation of laden police officers however we note that african-american representation as a percentage of total has declined during the period we have reviewed the organization now we recommend that the department invest in in continuous recruitment consider barrier removing programs diversification doesn't just happen it doesn't just occur it has to be intentional and the and the city and the police department can adopt and implement workforce diversification programs that are not discriminatory that are legal that are holistic but but help to build the kind of investment in the workforce that that will pay dividends for many many years to come consider these barrier removing programs and then data drive the recruitment process again understand what's happening measure it and make the appropriate adjustments throughout regarding the early intervention system we also recognize forward PD has made significant process implementing phase one of what we call the EIS and this phase one of this early intervention system is I think it follows best practices now officer wellness is an important topic today for for many reasons one because we want officers that are well we want officers that are healthy officers who are able to perform at the peak of their capabilities and this early intervention system is a component of officer wellness that helps us identify when officers aren't performing at their peak and maybe need to to have some help or an adjustment that's not based on discipline but based on support based on a support system within the agency now virtually every police department in the U.S. is short of officers they're struggling to hire and maintain enough person enough personnel enough people and I think this EIS is officer wellness component becomes even more important in this environment where officer resources are so short and so few because you want to support and keep the ones that you have you want to provide the kind of systems where they'll perform optimally where they'll appreciate their work environment and those systems that identify when adjustments need to be made so we recommend that the city captures the types of complaints made against officers and establish threshold limits for certain allegations that's all part of measuring and monitoring the indicators that something's not quite right and if something's not quite right with an officer you want to make sure that that their chain understands that and they're able to have a conversation with the officer and the data will typically give us early indications that that's the case and then provide frequent updates to the EIS to establish thresholds in real time so that we'll know if an officer has missed three consecutive weeks with days off and is taken off the day before the regular days off and the day after their days off on sick leave then that may be an indication that there's something else going on there so we want to know if that's the case and if it's something that that we can help the officer address to keep them whole and keep them fully functioning in terms of the police oversight monitor there really continues to be a lack of clear guidance on the police monitor's role for example the monitor's unrestricted access to the department and its personnel occurs but it's not reflected in policy it happens but it's not reflected in policy and then the police monitor has not been assured that removal can be for cause only and it's it's hard to be independent if you're worrying about being fired for making the wrong person angry and so the the police monitor's independence we observe is limited by the position's integration even into the police department's use of force review board the use of force a judgment apparatus and and we think that that to some extent to be a conflict as well so we continue to encourage the the city and the the city leadership to review the structure and the independence of the police monitor the police monitor needs resources the police monitor needs people needs equipment but one of the police monitors greatest assets is independence and so if the the city and the police department will review the office or the police monitor also look at the budget also make sure that those resources that the monitor has includes independence so that the monitor can assign the perform the assigned roles uh can can perform the assigned roles of that particular office and to the extent that happens the community is served by the monitor so we've said a lot today but in conclusion as Dr. Del Carmen indicated previously we commend the city of Fort Worth and and the PD for its commitment to making the necessary changes to create trust and legitimacy in all Fort Worth communities and and I mean this from the bottom of my heart very few cities and very few police departments in the US have taken the initiative to look at themselves have opened themselves up and say tell us how we can be better they didn't have to do this and you didn't have to do this and that says a ton to the other 15 000 police departments out there a lot of them don't care how they're perceived by the community but but you say it by taking this step that how your community perceives and experiences its police department is important to you and you want to make sure that you know where the problems and the issues are and you have the opportunity to address and correct those so we applaud you for that important steps and investments have been made but you can't stop here you can't stop here at the very core what is necessary is to not just change the policy is to not just implement training but you have to create a culture of accountability in the Fort Worth PD and transparency to the community that's what people like me who's born and raised in Fort Worth who attend church in Fort Worth and other people who love this community want to see from your police department and from your city thankful to have the opportunity to interact with this chief who in every way has demonstrated he's the right person that wants to take on these challenges and make the changes that are necessary to make this department what it can be what it is is better than most but what it can be is the best of the best and we believe that with the recommendations our panel has made we're putting the Fort Worth PD and the city in a position to be that shining star that you really are thank you and that's the end of our presentation we'll take on any questions dr del cormand thank you chief doctor chief doctor is what i call him chief doctor you know i'm not sure which which of the two i met him when he was assistant chief and you know now i know him as doctor but as dr bowman noted we thank you for the opportunity to be of service mr cook it's been three long years the world has changed we appreciate the ability of being able to make a contribution and i know you're going to hear from the chief in a bit but if you have any questions for us the report i know it's long and uh we're local so we're happy to come back and talk to you about any aspects of the report if if that is your choosing thanks alex carlos go ahead thank you both uh doctors for that presentation it's a lot to digest um i wrote down some notes i'll i'll probably have some more questions thereafter but uh one of my takeaways after reading the report was that uh as an institution you know policing has been around a long time a very long time and uh because of that established history you know institutions like that they require time to change to react it's not going to be anything overnight your comments both alluded to that again and i understand the need for continued change the operative word being continued you have both acknowledged that steps have been taken you know to to change the culture you have the police department and when i say culture uh you know some of the things that you included were you know use of force you know de-escalation training etc there was one specific question that i had and admittingly i don't know what our general orders say this is more of a legal question and when it comes to use of force and i i do recall when tasers were new to the scene okay they were marketed as a you know non-lethal you know use you know uh you know for police right an option and and in some you know context they were you know viewed as you know the term wasn't used so often back then but as a a ways to de-escalate you know a situation and now you know again you'd said you know we're we're in a different place right we're in a different america there have been incidences that have changed you know us you know as a nation have we view interactions of the police and the public so specifically uh i'd like to know that do our general orders specifically say that it's only for people who are actively resisting that the use is authorized for tasers and that includes brandishing yeah i think that's a question for the chief and i'm going to step away here that amount to that marion council and you'll know chief of police for police department it's it's an interesting dynamic you bring up when we talk about when tasers were first brought out into policing the belief of the time was if you showed your taser and it made someone not show aggression that it did its job and we found even pulling a firearm was not as effective as pulling a taser people didn't want to be tased but what we're finding now and we find through years of use years of training years of policy and feedback from cuny members and professionals like this what we thought was not accurate this was something in the policing profession that was even tracked was just the display effective well understanding now that display actually escalates the situation that's the opposite of what we want to do and we have updated our policies when it comes to taser apologies i can't quote that three to your word for word we can get you a copy of that but it's we're making sure officers are using their taser in the appropriate ways and not just brandishing brandishing it to show that they have that force okay and chief while you're up there you may be a good person to answer this uh you gentlemen brought it up uh an interesting uh point of feedback that you got from the public in terms of wanting to know their patrol officers knowing you know our current force levels and how difficult it is at times to to have adequate coverage and i'm not speaking you know for you chief but um what how do you do that i mean mpo's can come to crime prevention fairs can come to neighborhood meetings and they do you know they do take time for that and those are good opportunities for uh you know the folks that do live in the neighborhoods to do know who their neighborhood patrol officers are but when it comes to patrol that's a different animal all together and and while you know generally i'm supportive of the idea how do you implement that and not impact you know your primary duty which is to be out there and uh make sure that things you know stay orderly and people are safe how do you do that sure i'll i'll address it first the chief may may want to come in on this as well it starts from a patrol perspective with implementing what we refer to as beat accountability that's signing assigning the same officers to the same area day in and day out so that people who live in that area have a chance to when they interact with them have a chance to meet them have a chance to see them become familiar with them face to face the officers do the same they learn the members of the community who's who watch what they also learn a lot about the intricacies within the neighborhoods and are able to address those entomies and intricacies but it starts with beat accountability trying to assign the same people the same areas uh day in and day out in between the pardon me in between the patrol bit period it uh it happens uh in departments large and small around the country but you have to develop and design your patrol deployment philosophy around this concept of beat accountability and that is something we have done as far as assigning beat officers it's something the department got away from several years ago but we've been back to the beat system for quite a while now as far as what you mentioned with some of the difficulties um part of it is just that community policing philosophy every call you go on you're a problem solver you're trying to help a community member solve a problem in their neighborhood to your assigned beat uh because staffing levels are low as we know we've got about 100 vacancies right now there are times that beats go unfilled there are times if someone is off duty and it's a busy beat we may have to move someone to cover that beat ideally we would have the same person on every beat every single day uh we are not able to do that first of all just because we have to get people a day off and because of some of the staffing challenges we have what I want to do is come in the city for what you're doing as far as addressing that so we can have more officers out there so instead of going call to call to call to call may actually have a little more time to invest in each call they go on to actually deal with the problems the citizens are facing all right and then my final question if I may uh we talk about the lack of robust accountability okay you know that's an important metric and and I don't know if there is a single or or a or a or a shortlist number of things that impede that from happening I think our police officers do want to do the right thing and do endeavor to do the right thing but but what are what are the obstacles there is it uh administrative is it uh mountain of paperwork that you'd have to go through because it's uh you know it's one thing to say well okay you lack robust accountability or it could be better all right well with that said how do you implement and I mean you mentioned one thing uh the use of audits for example to check a use of force patterns of non-compliance are those two related is that what you're talking about or am I missing something else they I would say they they are cousins uh accountability starts with supervisors who conduct reviews reviews of offense reports reviews of of police officer documents reviews of body one camera videos that when they see conduct or behavior that's not consistent with what policy requires that they call that out that that they address that with the officer or with the shift or in whatever ways are appropriate what we see more often than not is when uh we the committee have seen misconduct or improper tactics applied to a use of force we recognize that there has been an internal review process where the supervisors where the chain of command has reviewed this and nobody said anything about what we saw so so we believe that when supervisors see conduct that should be addressed or changed it starts with them addressing it with the city with the police department having a formal system for supervisors to hold officers accountable and then supervisors themselves be held accountable when they are not properly applying accountability accountability measures now one of the problems that that we found that does impact this is the city has very good data systems but the systems aren't used to the extent of their capabilities and so a lot of what can be known is not known because the data systems and the data within the systems aren't aren't aren't properly addressed and and and consumed and so the use of data systems can uh the existing systems without investing in new systems can actually enhance the accountability that's applied by the chains of command and the supervision so that's one example of what can be done to address this all right thank you sir thank you jean i think jean had one and alan and chris chris was next okay we'll just go around the table jean and go ahead dr bowman good to see you again and you just took away my decision to use your words and you use them again but when when we've got these systems in place that are not being used is it practical to think an employee charged with that responsibility could be a pd employee or could this be a six sigma black belt somewhere else data still has to come in but i just sense the air of intimidation if you put that person in pd so that that's one question tied to that i tag team with the chief chief is there any type of penalty uh discipline for when an officer fails to activate the body camera and if so i'm assuming there is uh do the penalties sink with the damages a citizen may have experienced and so i'll go to dr bowman first in the chief okay in in terms of the data systems when we talk about systems we have the hardware itself the software of the application of the systems and then we have the maintenance of the system so there are a lot of different moving pieces to this but they're all tied to pd they're they're all they're all tied to pd what we find are better practices is when the police department actually has its own internal it team to help manage the systems that that are operating in the police department now i talked earlier about an audit and the audit uh should should audit to see if the police department is using these systems that that it has what data does it have to what extent are they using these systems and these data and and then the audit can call out the differences between system availability and the employment or the deployment of those systems in the police department so i think it's a better practice to have the police department with internal capabilities to manage these systems but you have to have an audit function that's always checking to see the extent to which these systems are used now what's the best city i know you mentioned seattle and new orleans where where do you see this working the best i don't want to say i see cities like where i see good interaction or good it engagement louisville kentucky is one but that that that also has a combined city police department it function and they have kind of equal responsibility for for what happens there new orleans uh to i think to a lesser extent have done some innovative work with it and and planning i think uh would be benefit to look at uh and a handful of others okay chief and one thing i'll say as far as uh being able to use other resources when it comes to integrating data using data wisely uh city manager cook has been good about promoting the use of planning data analytics don't forget my question i'm sorry don't forget i won't okay uh using planning a data analytics in partnership with our internal team and also with uh the audit department within the city as far as uh not using body cameras yes there's a policy on that and the disciplinary options range depending on maybe it's the first time maybe it's a coaching session but we document each one of those it happens and it becomes a pattern a pattern of behavior that's something we have to dress with something all the way up to uh days off if necessary yeah i i saw that range that that you gave but i i guess the concern i have is in several cases you have friends supervising friends behaving badly and i don't know what you do so that we get more data poured into this reporting so that these audits that we're going to see conducted more become reality one of the things we've done is not only uh through the use of the use of force review board but this new force analysis unit added a level up of objectivity so we're talking about lieutenants within the department who are not directly supervising the officers that are involved in these potential uses of force so say it's a someone who's a friend who may want to try to do their friend a favor which we hope doesn't happen but let's be obvious or let's be honest it could happen this adds a different layer of accountability and a different layer of objectivity to that review well i got just one one more question for this round and this involves diversity and recently i think councilmember nettles and i were included on an email from a former officer where we were being invited to a meeting to discuss a real concern about diversity being encroached upon that meeting did not take place but it turns out the concern was stemming from something from legal i don't know those details because i didn't go deep into that it's not my business but when we're talking about diversity there was some type of directive or advisement from one of our lawyers that dealt with the language of diversity and recruiting and police does that ring a bell with anybody yes ma'am it does tell me about it so we had uh the city attorney's office reach out a member of the department who's no longer with them now but reached out to advise us that the policy we had for diversity was actually in violation of federal law the policy we had not in a way that we were disparaging to any protected class but maybe showing favoritism to protect the classes and just like you cannot discriminate based on a protected class you can't show the preferential treatment either i love the way the policy was written it was uh seemed very intentional as far as our commitment to increasing diversity in department but when we have an attorney with the city attorney's office tell us the ones who were supposed to be enforcing law that we were actually in violation of federal law i believed was my decision that a change had to be made i i failed in the respect that i did not handle the messaging well when that went out i should have been more in front of it explained why it happened and i think that would have coiled some of the fears that came after the fact thank you to be continued miss ma'am miss jena cress and alan uh thank you mayor um thank you guys for this report and i i have a couple of comments i want to say um because when i look into this room and we have had a lot of um workshops on police equipment exxon and all these different types and i believe it was the exxon and his room was full of officers standing room only but i look in this room today that we receive a 90 page report about the practices and the policies of the police department and i can probably count on hand how many officers here today it's kind of it's not good i think we're gonna get a report that talks about the practices uh police officers we should have full a room full report of police officers today that's just my take on that uh when i look at this report because you guys haven't seen it but i'm looking at it it's a 90 page report um talks about the escalations and i want to read a couple things before i ask a question because it's about some of the things that you guys talked about um it says the escalation uh some of the officers feel that when they show up to a scene that they're their form of de-escalation just their presence alone um some of the practices should be asked by followed with commands it says video video footage talks about and confirms that true de-escalation was not the uniform practice and just to give some context to that uh we see officers every day in their uniform because they have to wear their uniform in order to do their job and so when you have these practices that are not uniform practices that mean they don't come to work with these practices to do the things that are laid out in policy so there are some policies that are in place but just not practice i think that's kind of what i receive from your report am i taking that right yeah so yes so part of it is the accountability component as dr bowman suggested right that that needs to be a a pretty substantial part of where the police department goes forward but i want to kind of backtrack a little bit and give people a historical context to this law enforcement has changed over the years and we know that in may on may 25th 2020 when george floyd died uh it really did move some things around the country and one of the things that many experts many of us that have been working on police reform and inventories on use of force and whatnot many of us began to perhaps allow the historical opportunity to propagate the following i think some of the council members like quote so i'm going to give you one and that is just because you can it doesn't mean that you should and what i mean by that is is that if and i think this is what dr bowman and i were referring to earlier is the idea that when you review a an escalation or de-escalation component or practice if the if the standard is was it legal was it allowed by policy all those checkmarks are there i mean it to that extent the job of the supervisor is being done however the question should be was this necessary right because in many of those circumstances if you look back at you know many of the individuals that have ended up dying in police custody or dying as a result of uh of an officer initiated you know component many of those many of those individuals the issue was escalated to a level that the officer ended up using lethal force and and some of those kind of scratcher heads not not even for worth just throughout the country scratch your heads and say how can this be how can we get to a point where for selling uh you know uh uh you know candy without a a a a permit or with or walking down the street because you know you don't have a hoodie on or you have a hoodie and you're a particular color why should that aggression why should that encounter invite that that escalation instead of de-escalation and and keep in mind that we have moved beyond the context of legality it's not an issue of legality anymore it's an issue of whether or not officers should be engaging at that level of aggression with individuals when we know that the end result is not going to be a positive one and that's kind of how that those are the lenses in which we look at some of the things that we reviewed hope that answers your question yes it does and I saw a map um I guess a graph here that kind of deal with and I think initially it said that you didn't go back and redo that from the initial point because one of my questions was when we talked about uh de-escalation or we talked about use of force I want to know what percentage of use of force was in the minority uh area of of town okay yeah it's in there and I don't recall of hand I don't want to you know give you a wrong quote but what I will tell you is is that as you as you noted and and to be fair to the truth one of the things that I often say is also note the level of violence that was used by the perpetrator like all of these things have to be taken into account far enough and so so so putting that in context I think it's important to be able to balance and say okay if you control for the type of aggression the type of weapon that was used or circumstances therefore and you still have a problem then obviously it needs to be addressed and that's what we wrote in the report for a never and I appreciate you explaining that and I want you to give you some context of my questioning okay uh number one I support the police department 100 I think that we need them here in the city of Fort Worth um what I will say is that I will be one of the loudest voice to challenge to make sure that our police department is not just taking care of citizens uh who need the help but also the ones that don't need the help and so I appreciate your report I'm going to just analyze it and just rip it up in all kind of ways so that we can get to the the facts and I think you stated that when you first came that we are here to say the truth and the facts and so I understand that our minority areas may have high violence but at the same time they deserve high level of policing as well on question so if they are giving commands or in some of these reports I think it says that and I go to that it said one of the policies is when they're in handcuffs the use of punching while they're a handcuff and I have it here somewhere that basically we're not acting in the way we should in some manners and I think we get emotionally involved and we push people to a level where you have to then use the use of force and so I appreciate your comments and I want to say this thing and I may come back in a few because I think it goes to what you were saying and what Carlos was saying it says on page 49 generally the supervisors note use of foul language as a policy violation in their administrative review but responded by talking to the officer only and so I think we have gotten to a point and I talked to Dave a little bit about this is that our supervisor maybe a little bit for a cheek to our supervisor people who are the first to run the punishment chooses a lesser punishment so that it doesn't reach a level where it's notified citywide versus you want to talk about the g file was in the g file was not in g file what we know what we don't know and so we have from what this report shows and some incidents that we see that we choose a lesser discipline action so that it's not reported on a citywide location yeah so what we're seeing is a disparity right and that's what we noted in the report is that in some of these circumstances we saw that there was a a different type of mechanism of discipline as per the type of discipline that was administered look I'm a person that believes in data and I believe in science you know I often tell my graduate students that data doesn't lie statisticians often exaggerate and sometimes they lie but the data doesn't lie and at the end of the day and one of the important points that dr bowman outlined is they have a very healthy and robust mechanism of acquiring data they really do they there's data you know I can I'm probably tell you Fort Worth is on the on the leading edge of how much data is being collected on police officers as it relates to response rates you know the mileage and various other things that are really important what what you need is what a lot of other police departments across the nation need as well Fort Worth is not alone in this in this context in the sense that you need nerds like myself that come in and basically spend a lot of time on the data and make some sense out of the data to be able to make that individual like the chief brief the chief you know have him understand what some of those patterns are what some of those irregularities are one of the one of the one of the greatest awful things that happens when people have data and don't analyze it is they don't know what they don't know and so so they sort of walk around with this sort of sense that hey this is the way the ship is sailing when in reality the data is suggesting otherwise I I teach that you know everywhere and I tell I tell folks all the time it's like you have to know what your data is saying because the data is speaking to you and so to your point I think that those are the very important points that they need to highlight but I will say too that again context is important since we got involved T and I talk about this often we have seen a an incredible evolution of the department and and I will tell you that you know I am really proud of the work that went into this report because of the fact that we believe and we we write it in here that that preliminary finding that we came up with a couple of years ago really made an impact on the police department and to that end I'll say that I hope our findings here today don't go on a shelf somewhere and I know the chief is taking them seriously I know his command staff will as well but I hope you all help them out to get to that point because because they need your help I know I'm a citizen I'm not I'm here as a consultant I I don't have a political beef nor do I know you politically right and one of the benefits of being tenured in the academic world is that you can say whatever the hell you want and you can kind of walk away and still have a job right and and I certainly benefit from that often and I will tell you this that I really hope that those of you that are concerned about the police those of you that are at times even critical of the police that you are joined together and and are able to understand their need and help them out because I will tell you this man right here my experience with him has been he wants to make a difference and and to this point everything that I've given him he doesn't ask why is this or why is that but rather show me the way and I will get there so thank you for your question let me end on a lighter note uh in your first thing you talked about uh you mentioned a civilian oversight board but I didn't see you mentioning it throughout the presentation where are we at on your recommendations I know you well you you mentioned the police monitor basically needs some more assistance but where are we on your civilian oversight board yeah we we did not address or make a recommendation regarding a civilian oversight board I think that's something that you guys as as a city leaders will need to continue to discuss and determine thank you go Elizabeth had questions that Alan did too and as a reminder chief's got a few a short presentation yes to chief's that correct okay good deal Elizabeth and then Alan so my first question is councilman nettles alluded to it and I don't know timing wise for the report but we council approved a pretty massive technology contract for our PD and part of the reason that we were enthusiastic about that was the enhanced ability to review body cam and to to prevent officers from from turning it off and to provide more transparency and so my question to y'all and it very well could be no because of timing reasons but was there any analysis done on that new contract and how we can okay no I don't believe so okay and then my second question and this is a little more difficult um but I spent the weekend reading this report and um I to use a phrase that my therapist taught me is that you have to be able to stand in the mirror and look at it and stand what you see um when I look in the mirror that this 97 pages gave to us I cannot stand what we see it's alarming in some cases to read some of the examples that you have included um I think that our police department is in large part made up of really amazing people who truly want to make this city a better place a safer place that don't want to be on the urban battlefield with um with our residents but want to be um you know they want to co-live but you you came in hot with some pretty pretty um disturbing examples and the one thing that I've noticed over and over in this report is you talk about the chain of command and it's not so much the officers but what the chain of command has failed to do and what the chain of command has failed to communicate and so my question to you is chief consent policy and we've all worked with chief on you know we I think we have a pretty good understanding of where he wants to take the department um but you were highly critical of the review process um as it pertains to the chain of command and so my question to you is um where did that buck stop yeah so I'll take a couple of things right number one is that I appreciate your honest comments about the report um we were not hired to provide a you know sweet you know um brochure of the colors of Fort Worth PD we were hired to identify patterns or practices David told us and that's I believe that's exactly what we did having said that when I noted in one of my comments earlier that this has been an issue that has been going on in this police department for many many years this is not something new this is not something that was when we talk about leadership when we first engaged with the city and when we started our work at that point uh we had a fairly new chief of police that had inherited a police department from a predecessor and predecessors that essentially in some cases did not hold their people accountable and I'll I'll go on the record saying that and I think it's unfortunate that sometimes those that want to make an effort to change pay for the sins of those from the past having said that our responsibility was to note it to indicate it to say that it's there so that the chief here can have a roadmap as to where to go from that point forward in the studies of of of law enforcement which have been part of for 25 years I can tell you that no offense to any of the brass that is in here but the most important rank in law enforcement is that of the sergeant the most important rank the sergeant is the person that is coaching mentoring supervising and holding that officer accountable if you look across the country when you have a strong police department is when you have very strong sergeants when you have a diversification in the worst in the in the workforce of sergeants when we talk about the chain of command we're basically telling you that the policies are fantastic in writing y'all are great the issue is what happens once that officer goes out there and do you have both the the number of officers that are going to supervise that are going to that are going to really supervise that and to miss bivens question you know are those officers related are they doing each other favors and and that's not something that may not necessarily happening for work it's across the country by the way those favors and those friendships end once the city gets sued because lawsuits don't have friends they have interest and so i will say to you that what i found over the years is that that that there needs to be that level of accountability not only from the chief's perspective and from the assistant chiefs i don't i personally believe that he's holding people accountable i'm just telling you that in terms of what's happening and what he's inherited over the years needs to be addressed and dr roman i don't know if you want to add to that yes sure you ask where does the buck stop really and truly right there at your table stops with you this man the chief can make decisions to hold his chain of command accountable but if what he does upsets the union and the union goes to you and makes your life difficult and then you in turn make the city manager's life difficult and the city manager it rolls downhill uh then it's very hard for the chief to make lasting permanent cultural changes in an agency unless the chief has the support all the way up through you that's where the buck stops well i could definitely go on the record here and say that chief will have my support when it comes to doing the right thing over uh want to be political forces all right thanks chief any other questions alan go ahead okay so dr bowman dr uh dill karman thank you all so much for being here today appreciate the work y'all have done over all this time i have uh just a couple of quick observations through the report and i'd like you to to uh elaborate on and uh on page 25 you know we note that and these are just a general comment uh despite you know observing policy change it's noted there's a little meaningful movement has been seen which is causing concern in the report of form over substance and then we have the issue of the no knock warrants where you know there has been no policy change but we note that we're not doing them anymore so i kind of look at that and say i'm trying to reconcile it with page 12 and the scope of the final report uh where it's highlighted that not being able to meet in person observe trainings or conduct ride-alongs uh influenced or they would have provided uh important information and insights which would have influenced the report uh and and so i kind of have the the same concern there do we have form versus substance issues and and i really get that concern because over the last couple of years we know that chief nox and this predecessor have been making changes and and are those adequately reflected now or what's your feel on those moving forward and hopefully chief can talk about uh positive changes he's made as well yeah so i i think we had limitations unquestionably as we noted earlier uh one of the greatest tools that we police experts have is bodycams and dashcam video because it puts us right in front of the officer and right by the officer side we've also reviewed thousands upon thousands of data points that we can come up with those conclusions fairly adequately and scientifically without ever setting foot on on the on the actual location per se i will say to you that as it relates to your the latter part of your question we believe that the department is headed in the right direction we believe as it relates to the chief that he's taken it to that point of excellence that we want to see the department go towards but i think our our point in in in highlighting some of these findings is the fact that you know the department needs assistance and as she as as dr bowman noted he can't do it alone and and i don't mean that as a political statement or anything like that i'm just telling you that as a criminologist that he they they need the funding they need the ability of being able to go out there you can't have two people to go recruit for the city of fort worth police department in the entire nation and expect diversity i'm sorry you just can't uh you know and so so so the idea is is to have the physical presence and the economic backing to be able to do the great things that this department has done and can do chief dr bowman nothing more to add to that yeah Alan the question you're good anybody else yeah go ahead Gina and i hate to continue to be speaking with this is very important uh when when you talk about recruitment i will tell you and you know this but the absence of diversity on our specialized teams is really slowing down solving crime if you have a crack house or you have uh what do you call them a smoke shop or the game rooms going on in an inner city where you have people of color living if you don't have a person of color on swat that cop is made time he walks in the door and so it behooves us all to try to do everything we can to recruit minority officers and once again i have offered to visit any hbcu i think it's up to the chief to get a recruiting plan that gives us more than two people going over the 13th largest city looking for cops so that's one thing i'll offer i had been told that we didn't do no knock warrants anymore but after reading this report i learned it's not that that's a policy we just slowed down doing them to the point of march 2020 last one i think that needs to be a policy and but i was led to believe that it was now maybe that's just the way my warped brain interpreted that but i was told we don't do no knocks here anymore one thing i'll mention when you take a look at the the scales of disciplinary procedures if if we keep giving the same discipline but keep seeing the same problems then maybe those need to change and get stronger because it's not getting the attention of bad actors and the last thing i'll say and i do want both of you to comment on this because you know who i'm talking about uh back in the day chief windham over here chief clickin dallas if they had a bad cop shot kill somebody they fire him or her right then in there wouldn't get 24 hours that was to send a signal to the community that felt the injury that you know and they knew that the union would would bring those cops back but they wanted to let the community know we're looking out for you that doesn't happen anymore do you it is is that not happening everywhere do you still see that but i i remember those days and you know those those chiefs those chiefs i mean they they did not want to let bad actors contaminate the the cardin of eds respond yeah i'll respond first just just just really quick chief windham didn't have a meeting confer agreement to deal with and uh and so so much of of the restriction and constraints on the agency and even related discipline is tied to the meeting confer agreement so i was just going to say i'm married to a lawyer so i have to be careful with what i say but i think it's the presence of lawyers ma'am and the abundance of them nowadays in police related issues so that's right i sure do i may i may i may camp out here thank you thank you once to this town so there's we got to make it work well thank you jenna jared you have questions and i'm gonna then go around the table and the chief is going to get to go yes thank you mayor and mayor pro tem you segwayed into uh kind of the question or thought at least that i want y'all to talk about i'm thank you first of all for the report um it it wasn't a easy one to read because of just um the impact that it has on not only our city but also on our residents who who in many of the testaments that y'all shared experience these things so i want to say that first um when we think about like the roadmap of implementation of this report like it resonated with me that this document can't sit on a bookshelf um what does that roadmap look like from y'all's perspective as experts and the chief i would love for you to speak to that as well especially given that we're in a budget cycle i mean i think all of the recommendations that we're in here need to be implemented i recognize that all of them will cost money um that's well worth the investment so what does that roadmap look like to help us inform um how we're doing that in chief i want you to speak to um what is not included in the budget that is in this report that we need to consider adding you want to go ahead yeah sure uh thank thank you for the question uh it it's really the city's prerogative to determine the pathway from here you have some some resources the police oversight monitor you have the the chief and uh i think he's going to perhaps talk about some of the go forward strategy as well but under your direction uh through the city manager i think it's your prerogative to determine where you go we believe we've set the table for you to make those decisions and and to move the department forward but it wasn't our charge to provide you with a a plan of action or strategy for implementation with more than willing as consultants if you want to retain us to do that but uh we we we think the uh you know probably some some action is already occurring if i could follow that with the question what would be the top three things that we need to invest in based on the recommendations like i'm sure there's a level of significance to each recommendation and you know the report speaks to some of that but i'd like to hear from y'all what's the significance levels on each one though it's not statistically speaking but yeah our three may be different i think addressing the use of force slash the escalation issues is one the the audit accountability piece would be two and then the robust data systems would be three for me and i would agree with that a hundred percent except to say that the data system is probably number two in order of importance is i i've always believed that if you don't have if you're not analyzing the data at the granular granular if it doesn't have people that are going to be analyzing the data going over things on a daily basis with him and his command staff you're just not going to be able to do much more than what he's doing right and with that data and audit component is that one office like the inspector general possibly police officer police office monitor or how does that yeah so i think you like like dr bowman said you have you know kim neal who who is here as an independent component but she does need resources right i know she's already making a face of me by saying this but she'll be like okay i've got enough work work for the next you know 20 years so expanding her office or adding an entity and that would simply be in charge of just that i mean look the city has that the city has an auditor the city has relies on people that are going to say where the money is being spent and so so police departments were at a point right now throughout the nation that they need to have that outside entity that's going to look and say hey chief because look something happens right now he's got to go and the rest of us would probably stay here and talk about this for another three hours but but he has to go so the the chief's attention span is limited to what's in front of him or her because it's a critical issue right there's a god forbid a shooting or something like that that he has to go to and that all his command staff have to race through the scene so so my point is saying that is that they can only do so much with what they have and so they need somebody who's 24 hours seven days a week task is going to be to just look at the numbers at the data and be able to say chief you know we've got this issue here that you may want to take a look at from time to time you know the the inspector general's office must be independent it has to be yeah it must be okay sir okay i think well lennard you have a question first before you'll sit down may your chief was going to respond to the budget ask okay great i'm sorry that's okay one thing as far as moving forward i'd like to address that as well something a conversation city manager david cook started recently and we've been discussing with mrs. neal in the office of the police oversight monitor plan is to come to you next month with an overview of where we are and where we need to go and then provide quarterly updates of the progress we've made and again where we are at that point and where we need to go further as far as budget again i would say that everyone at this table has been incredible when it comes to understanding the needs of the department this budget cycle the first thing that jumps out and it's a failure on my part is no request for expanding the recruiting team that's really the only the jumps out in my mind right now we've been working really effectively with the be the change initiative assistant chief swearing in has done some great things but even reading this report shows me despite that great work we have to do more thanks chief lennard go ahead yeah i'm just if i could just curious about the data conversation which i think is really really important because one thing i fear is that we can talk in general general generalities and a department any department can be painted with a very broad brush and and perhaps unfairly at times so my question is on the data is what's the threshold of when you interpret that data and it may not be just one answer here but um what what's the threshold when you would then the takeaway would be we got a problem how do how do you interpret that data yeah so it's a really good question but it depends on the topic that you're looking at right so let's just use for instance uh the escalation um you know i think all of us have been around enough to know that if we had found one or two instances where an officer simply uh responded to a scene and uh and failed to deescalate you know and and it was simply rude or had a bad day we would have we would have simply said okay well that's two out of 50 000 that that we reviewed but i think what when you start looking at the word pattern that's why we use the word pattern or practice is when it's happening at a level that every community dictates it doesn't it's not something that statisticians dictate but every community we just what what is that tolerance level right so so so is the tolerance level at a point where two out of every ten or three out of every ten people that encounter a use of force issue with a police police officer are simply faced with a with a not necessarily an authorized use of force but but it gets to a point of use of force it wasn't necessary to get to that point our bigger concern is if that continues in one sporadic seldom moment you will have that instance where somebody is going to get killed without the need or or justification to be killed and so to us it's an issue of life of saving a life both the community member as well as the officer which is to say once you get to that quote-unquote threshold of acceptance then you you raise the red flag and you say this concerns us from the from the from the point that he hasn't gone away over say six months or eight months or a year that we have reviewed and in how you would communicate or the chief down the line communicate with us is that a tool to use where he in language to use by saying hey in this use of force currently three we have three out of ten or you know some some qualifier that defines what's going on that we can then interpret sure and discuss if that is you know how big a problem it is sure and not only by by virtue of numbers but also by virtue of the context in which some of these incidents took place numbers are important I often tell my students when I teach them the importance of qualitative data versus quantitative that being told how many people died in World War two is significant but actually hearing the stories of those that lost loved ones is more significant and so to that end I would say to the every person that encounters a police officer in Fort Worth that has an expectation that that encounter will be professional ethical and observance of the law that is the standard that we all want to have among all of our police officers but in addition to that the bigger question which is was that use of force necessary and conducive of the incident that took place and I think that that carries a great deal of value and you know to underrepresented communities to poverty stricken communities that means the world to us because we we look at it from the standpoint of how is that encounter going to take place and what can we expect from police if we call 911 there are communities in this nation not here but there are communities in this nation where people don't want to dial 911 because they fear what's going to happen when the police officer shows up at the scene that's troubling whether that happens once or every other instance just a couple more questions comments you mentioned at the start the observations that were contributing to the study yet covid certainly influenced that so could could you expand a little bit on what observations in like on the street activity were actually yeah it was an observations on the streets about police interactions as much as it was engaging with the community our concern for the most part was the fact that we weren't able to meet with people face-to-face and we had to do it through zoom most of our review probably would have taken place the way that it did anyway and we have people you know that are in Washington DC right now listening to our conversation that have been part of our study and people all over the country one in Chicago at all so it would have been more difficult to have had that type of access some of us that were local did make those trips to the police department in spite of covid okay and in any study is it ever performed where we would get data to see how police are treated what what you know for example how often an officer might be in a life-threatening situation what how he might be abused verbally any or he or she is that data tracked as well sure and and and it's important to track right because in the end you want to make sure that the officers that are being treated a certain way are responding based on that but i will say this officer being a police officer is the hardest job in the planet there's no question there are oftentimes and i often tell my students that want to join law enforcement not to discourage them but to make them aware of it is the fact that it is the most unthanked job that a person can have they're going to risk their life for somebody else and is a hundred hours of boredom and one second of terror so so believe me when i tell you i understand that context but in the end we just feel that there are instances when police officers their ego is being is being offended more than their safety and actions are taken that are unnecessary that's what we're highlighting in the report that instance is where we feel that the officer is a human being maybe chasing somebody and maybe cursing at the fact that he just you know maybe hurt his toe or or ran into a rock or and said maybe a word that was not necessarily appropriate i think you know we were we provided a great deal of context to what we reviewed okay so related to that in the in the summary that you provided you know you talked a little bit there was a slide about the officer wellness and the early intervention system so a comment that i think you made that you know just maybe is a little troubling that yeah something like if an off officer is missing a couple days then there may be something going on and we should investigate that i think that's no it was actually dr bowman that addressed this i'll let him answer it but but i'll just tell you that the eis the early intervention system is not a disciplinary system it is a system to assist a police officer so the idea is if somebody doesn't show up to work a couple of times a week somebody showing signs of depression that there would be some sort of an intervention to help out the officer not to discipline the officer and dr bowman i'll get you and that's not what i was suggesting okay yeah yeah no i i actually agree with dr del karmann what you have for an early intervention system in order to determine if some type of intervention is necessary you have to establish the the parameters you have to establish the triggers uh and what i said was an example of something that might be used as a trigger simply as an example not a recommendation it could be consecutive days off mist it could be multiple uses of force within a small time period there are several different considerations for determining what the appropriate trigger would be yeah and that's really my question and maybe it's to chief that do we track that do we know if somebody in a given week has been in 10 life-threatening situations yes we are tracking that as part of their early intervention system we have a place which we're actually expanding on and it's true it's it's not a disciplinary system it's meant to catch problems before they become big and as far as the days off might go so you have a stellar officer day in and day out at work on time no complaints does a great job engages with the community engages with fellow officers and suddenly calls off sick a lot maybe he's got some complaints for rudeness things that are out of the ordinary for the officer that is a trigger when those thresholds are met for that supervisor to reach out and say is everything okay are there any resources you need is there something that's affecting your work or your work-life balance and it's a way to engage with that officer to prevent it from ever turning into something bad in the first place so as a policy do we have a policy or have you ever considered it that you know if an officer has 10 situations that you could qualify as perhaps incredibly stressful that we just say you know what you've reached this number you need to take x amount of time off and be proactive that way not ask them if they're okay or something's going on we just say you know what you've hit the limit you need to take some time off now there are certain incidents or critical police incidents where that mandatory time off already takes place the way we have it set up not only is it not disciplinary nature we don't force the officer to take time off in that situation but if they reach the threat threshold that would be the recommendation and talking with other chiefs across the country when they encounter the similar situations with officers the officers were so thankful that someone reached out that someone cared that they actually took notice of what they've been through they were actually very responsive to recommendations and especially the fact that they were recommendations and not orders thank you yes sir any other questions or yes this is a quick question yes or no uh this is it may not be part specifically at the scope of your study but did your study reveal any deficiencies in the number of sergeants in the police department we we we did not study uh manpower or utilization so we we cannot respond i just you know incidentally if that may be revealed since you acknowledge that the sergeant position is one of the most important if not the most important in the police department all right thank you sure i did have just one mayor for the chief too and the consultants because i think we missed uh mentioned this uh you talked about a policy for an officer intervening uh with a situation that may be getting out of hand and so i kind of want to know how does that look if we have a policy we don't have policy because maybe uh officer comes on and the officer who takes the call wants to control the narrative of what happens and there's another officer how does how can they stop officer if they're on the same level kind of giving some context on that yes we do have a policy it's our duty to intervene policy and regardless of rank regardless of tenure regardless of anything if one officer observes another officer engaging in conduct that they should not two things are required they're required to intervene with force if necessary and they're required to report it to a sergeant if there's not already someone there on scene that it is aware of the situation um i think an example that we all saw we all saw was george floyd you had multiple officers on scene who did not intervene the only ones who started to and tried to a little bit were newer officers but because of the culture they didn't think that they had the right to actually tell a senior officer to stop doing something they suggested it one even said it two or three times i'm kind of worried about excited delirium maybe she just get off his neck what we're requiring requiring is if an officer sees that and an officer says that they're to push that officer off that person if they have to and one of the best ways we're dealing with that um i mentioned this before the the in 2015 there's the final report of the task force on 21st century policing which was commissioned by then president obama one of the things he found this commission found in training the future of training and police departments is scenario based training it's not sitting and looking at a powerpoint it's not sitting listening to a lecture it's actually setting up realistic training so that your body experiences the same physiological responses you would feel if you were in the community actually doing it because when you're encountered with that situation in the community you don't think man i saw a powerpoint about this you don't think about that but if you've gone through the training you felt that physiologically your body says i've done this i remember this an automatically responds part of our training for officers and through our continuing education for current officers is this duty to intervene where they actually have to take action and if necessary put hands on another officer to make sure they stop whatever action it is they're trying to stop and if they don't intervene is there a consequence yes sir any questions chief for years marine council thank you so much uh normally i wouldn't add to the end of the presentation but i felt this was too important not to so if you'll indulge me just momentarily i would appreciate it the panel found that officers do not always meet the standards expected by the department or the community and are not held accountable the project before forward PD is one of culture change at the core what is necessary to create a culture of accountability and forward PD and transparency to the community that is what's necessary these are two direct quotes from the presentation you just saw and councilmember beck as you said there's some disturbing facts and figures in this report digesting this took me a while but i knew i had to have a response i took time i thought about it i prayed about it i sought wise counsel here my response i as the chief and we as an apartment know we must do better the panel acknowledged we have made significant improvements even so we realize we still have work to do i am and we are committed to that work and to continued improvements i want to thank the panel for the work that has been done this is a very well respected group in criminological circles and law enforcement circles and we appreciate your time and attention and we appreciate your honesty please remember this is work that we as a city and as apartment asked for we know we're not perfect and we want to do better as an apartment and as individual officers we are here to serve and we are here to protect we're always seeking ways to do the job even better to that end the city hired this panel of criminal justice experts to study the policies and practices of the forward police department and to make appropriate recommendations for improvements i'd like to briefly outline several of these steps the department has taken some since the last review so mayor pro tem it's going to deal with that question you had about no knock warrants first i do want to say the presentation went all the way back to 2015 whatever is going on now rests on these shoulders and these only i want to commend prior chiefs such as Fitzgerald and cross for the work they did with the national initiative and with responding to these recommendations here i appreciate the work and they should be commended some of the changes we've made include revisions to use of force policies to emphasize de-escalation techniques supervisory reviews and discipline and clarifications to departmental policies and training on the appropriate use of tasers and force we modified our disciplinary matrix to clarify that the failure to de-escalate is a violation of policy for which there will be consequences de-escalation and problem-solving are being integrated into our overall training philosophy we are in the process of implementing the active bystandership for law enforcement or ABLE training in partnership with the police institute we created a force analysis unit for more thorough complete and objective reviews of uses of force we expanded internal affairs to enhance accountability we expanded the crisis intervention team to help respond to the mental wellness service needs of the community we created a community safety partnership whose sole function is to be intentional about creating opportunities for relationship-based partnership policing in the community we eliminated no knock warrants except in the most extreme conditions such as a hostage situation the policy has been changed and we now require an advanced review of warrant service requests by a SWAT commander and their review goes all the way through a deputy chief we've increased supervisor review of body camera requirements for officers we're continuing our effective NPO program but we're also working to enhance the departments community policing services and culture we have implemented an early intervention system which you heard about before and we're looking to expand that to do even more we're working to increase diversity and recruitment specialized units and advancements as well as being supportive and inclusive so that all officers and employees realize they are appreciated and valued and as you know at this table where we are looking to create a new deputy chief position in the department to highlight the importance of community policing our community policing units and to enhance community policing culture throughout our entire department we have more than 2,200 members of the forward police department team and i'm proud of the men and women who consistently provide professional service to all forward communities the recommendation for more community policing activity by patrol officers highlights the need for improved staffing and we applaud again the city of forward leadership for taking steps towards those improvement to allow us to do just that ultimately all this is my responsibility and dr bowman all the respect my perspective the buck is going to stop with me you're much wiser and much more experienced than i am but that's the perspective i believe i have to have to remind myself of the importance of this i want to say on behalf of the hard-working men and women of the forward police department and the communities we serve i am committed to this process as you can imagine absolute consistency in every instance and every aspect of policy and practice is difficult to achieve in a workforce of this size especially considering the range of volatile settings and split second decisions to come with the job but with this report these recommendations and your support we will continue to strive to be the best of the best i salute the panel members for their hard work for enduring a once in a lifetime pandemic as you did your work as you said i also regret the fact that you were not able to be in person for more interviews um we that could not be helped given the situation we appreciate your work ultimately my prayer is that we continue to build upon the progress that has been made and the trust that has already been built culture is not something on a poster or words in a policy i read recently culture is defined by the words actions and beliefs of every member of our team every single day and that all starts with me perpetually building upon improvements will build the desired culture in closing a considerable amount of time and energy has been invested along this journey into proving forward PD's relationship with the community and we are still on that journey we're not done but i firmly believe we will make progress and we will make improvements as long as we are in this journey together thank you very much thank you chief any questions for chief nox no thank you both thanks to the expert panel for being here today in the city management this was something that this council really inherited i think lots to think about probably more review needed we can come back to this as necessary but i'm proud that chief nox is our police chief and i'm incredibly proud of the four police department i don't want that to be lost that everybody has room for improvement no matter what profession we're in and truthfully across the country there are cities that are in crisis for police officers and it's really hard to keep them from leaving the profession too early or to creep them to coming in so we've been really lucky that we haven't had that crisis here in Fort Worth but it doesn't mean we don't have improvements to make and significant push from this from this dias i know that we all share that so thank you all for working with the city i think there will be continued relationships here thank you thank you excellent thank you