 First of all, I will be presiding at today's meeting as far as that is not here. She's in Washington, D.C., and she asked me to provide. She will be here on the phone if she has any comments to help us along. I want to remind each and every one of us of something which I think we all know, but I think we need to put into the front of our minds today, especially with the topics we are going to be dealing with. We are not able to change the past. Although we'd like to look backwards sometimes and say, this is what should have been, this is how things should have been done. We cannot change the past, but we can. And we must influence the present and the future. So I hope that's something that we can keep in mind. Therefore, today during this meeting, which I'm sure many of us have questions, just please remember that we are not here to accuse, we're not here to attack, we're here to continue to dialogue with our invited guests and we need to thank them for coming. And we have prepared questions for each and every one of them. We would like, all of the co-chairs would like for them to be able to finish their presentations and then we will go into the questions and answers so we're not interrupting in the middle so we can get all the information to all of our guests. We want to thank you very much for coming, but also remind you that this is not a political forum. This is not a place for cultural attacks. This is a place for dialogue. This is an open public meeting, but this is a public meeting which is open to the public, but it is a task force meeting. Therefore, there will be no questions from our guests. Should you have a question? Should you have a comment? We definitely want to hear them. Please go to the website 1-4-worth and you can put them there or get in contact with any of us. We'll all be happy to speak and take those comments and bring them forward as well. Now there's a comment made by a former prime minister who once said, promoting tolerance and human dignity is one of man's unfinished challenges. So I hope today that we are able to rise to this challenge, to be able to bring about tolerance and human dignity not only to those who we are seeking to bring them to, but also to everyone here, both of our guests and our fellow task force members as well as the staff. So I thank you very much. We look forward to this meeting. I now open it up to my co-chair. Will it come? Just thanks for everybody making time to come tonight. The same thing. Hopefully we'll get some good work done. So if that's it, we will go to item 3 on the agenda approval of the minutes from the March 8th Town Hall and the March 19th regular monthly meeting. Does anyone have any comments about those minutes? If not, I'll entertain a motion to approve. All in favor? Any opposed? Abstain? Motion passed. Sheriff Weyberg, we would like to thank you very much for coming this afternoon and coming to let us know what is going on in the Sheriff's Department. We truly appreciate it. And on behalf of all of us, thank you for being here. There are a number of questions which we provided, which Fernando provided, the Sheriff in his office, which were, and once again I ask out of respect that we let Sheriff Weyberg give his presentation and then I'm sure he will be happy to entertain questions in an orderly manner. We asked the Sheriff to provide general description of his office, the demographics and the profile of the staff, the demographics and profile of those who are incarcerated, any programs that you have instituted, remember, only four or five hours you have for this. Any programs that you have initiated for racial and cultural equity and then to comment on SB4 and the agreement with ICE 287G, and once again thank you as far as yours. Well, thank you for having me. We get to finish up with the Constitution. We're sorry about the intense ones, but I'll try to cover all this in revenue and maybe, you know, I understand there may be questions. Is that correct? Yes. Well, thank you for having me here. First of all, we have an extremely diverse staff of here, 16 million persons now, and it is made up of all the community as it were, and very much people of portions and a lot of females represented there, and we've set a path to success for them, and I'm proud to say that this is the last three months. We've promoted the first three female African-Americans in the history of the Caribbean, and so we have those things on staff where they're making strides to become great leaders in our department, and they certainly have a steel ability. The group of jail are, we're near 4,000 prisoners this morning, is where we're at for us, the number of people in jail. And, you know, I look over there and why I cannot tell you, I cannot tell you with any certainty how many African-Americans that we have are the Spanish or others or anything like that, is we have very antiquated technology. But what I can tell you in some of those things is some things that they have in common, some common variables that I see among our producers is, one is, is about 80% of them have high school education. And about 80% of them don't have a father or wife. Those are the top two high variables. And one of the things that we started when we got here is the, the old GED program had gone away from the jail for several years, and we brought that back in. In fact, we just had some of our first graduates of that program, we celebrate that with them, and we have aggressively, in regards to our prisoner population, has taken on reentry, and different reentry programs, and we have celebrated general partnerships with a number of groups as far as reentry. We've hired two reentry specialists to put them in the gallery. We've also just tried to set a table of those folks coming back into society to try to make them as healthy and as equitable to our society as possible. And we're aggressively pursuing other programs. We've, we've, we have, like I said, we have partnered with several groups that, you know, we look at that, and we try to get them into education. We're trying to get them out, and get them on the first stop, which that program along gives them shelter, gives them food, gives them an oxygen to the plane, and gives them a shield, and get them plugged into the employment portal. And those people are key in some of the things that we have done here. We have, we've brought in alcohol connoisseurs. We've brought in internet. We have brought in other people like that, and in different ministries, as well as the Bible, on the seat groups, to give these people an opportunity to stabilize their life. And we feel like our job is to set that table to make that happen inside the four doors of the jail. Because I haven't, you know, when we talk to the police officers, and I've been a cop for a long time, is I try to describe to them that I believe that none of these people in the world are good or working folks. There's about 2% we need to keep her out. And about half of one of those percentage points truly probably needs to be locked up for the rest of the natural lives of your family, and my family is safe from that. And about half percent really needs to get out of politics. And then there's that 1% that's going to come in and out of our jails on a steady basis. And if we can set the table for their success, and you know, it's that old phrase that you can leave the worst of what, often you cannot handle great. But without the programs, we get 58% of the civility work inside the jail. With people who engage in complete the programs of reentry, like the first time, that drops to about 6%. So it's an incredible success, but at the end of the day, most of the society's got to get in the wrong thing. Again, the things that I stress to people with the big variables to me is, this is rocket scientists, is that 80% of those people don't have a high school education, nor do they have a father-in-law. So often I think when I think across things, what problems do we have in our society to think we have a lot, but the majority of it comes because we don't have, we have a father-in-law's problem. As we do that, we have, like I said, we've engaged all those groups, and we're trying to reduce our positivism rate to give those people the opportunity. And we try to train our staff that their hands-on impacts them, whether we want that to look at life, whether they're vacuuming or not. Because most of them will be our regular people. And also in that meeting, though, that out of that 4,000 people, 25% are regularly under the care of the LHMR. If they have mental health issues, that's the ones that we know about. That's the ones that we know are in the care. There's probably another 15% or so that need it and refuse it, or we don't detect it. What a way or the other. That's a little bit about our jail and our staff is SB4. You know, what SB4 came about and all the writings of it, quite frankly, there was just a few changes. One is, is that we want to make sure the racial profile there happens. That's unacceptable. It's an unacceptable price. The second thing is, is that SB4, what it did to us was, is that it made it more educated about some of our population. But one of the things that it did say is that if you're interviewing somebody because you're taking a report from them, or that they're a victim of a crime, you cannot ask them their immigration status. The second thing was, it's a simple, by the administrator, if you have a policy that says, officer, you cannot ask about immigration issues when you make that traffic stop. And the fail that does not clarify there is no peace officers out here on the street in our neighborhood. They may be asking immigration questions indirectly, but they're doing and conducting an investigation. There is nobody, and I think I can speak for the whole of Tarrant County because I think you can go each department and you're going to find the same thing. There's nobody acting, as I say again, out on the street. That's not what we're there to do. Now often what happens is, is the police officer makes a stop on somebody and suddenly they don't have any idea on them. And so they begin to ask some questions about who they are. And the police spoken things, they begin to ask where they're from. And it comes out that they're here, they don't have a passport, they don't have a ring card, they don't have a visa. What have they done? They've asked immigration questions. But what are they doing? They're conducting an investigation to clarify that and they're talking to them. They're not performing ICE operations. They're performing police investigation services out there on the street to figure out who they're talking to. Inside the jail at Tarrant County, we do have a 287G program. What that means is, is that we have trained a group of hard people and empowered them to act as ICE agents. Inside the jail, where are they at during the booking process? Who are they booking in? Is they're booking in plastic miscimeters or higher? And they are checking immigration statuses of those people. And if they are, they do not, that have documentation that they belong in the country, there is a ICE container on them. The ICE container goes up to a higher level in the ICE world and they get an administrative order. And so those things go up. And so they get this warrant on them and they stay there. Now let me give you a snapshot of who has the tanners on them at Tarrant County Jail. We have nine murder suspects, one for capital murder. We have about 71 major drug dealers that have the tanners on them. We have 68 that have been arrested and charged with aggravated sexual assault on a child. We have 13 for aggravated assault on a child. And we have several that have been arrested for murdering, robbery, and the SDWI. And that's the snapshot of people that you will see with the tanners on them. These are not people that aren't getting into trouble. That's the only way that you can get the attention of our ICE officers is to be arrested for a class to be acquired on the door of the jail. So these operations only take place inside the brick and mortar on ADCs. Well, thank you very much. We appreciate your going through the questions. I'll now open it. If someone here has a question, I'll be happy to entertain for the sheriff. Right here, everyone. Sheriff, did you sign the contract with ICE? Yes. And what does that contract say? It says that they will train our people in the empowerment of your abuse, basically. And why do you feel the need to do that? Well, when I came into office, we had ICE officers in the jail Monday through Friday, 25th. And what we saw was, is a lot of the people I just described were slipping through the cracks and not being detained. And so we trained people to be there 24-7, so we had a little complaint bill that forced the law equally across the board. And you were very clear about the number of people charged with murder and things like that. But you said you did not know the ethnicity breakdown of prisoners in the jail? I didn't have that report today. I just said it's not a normal report that I see other than what we're going to get into. But every prisoner is identified by race and ethnicity, right? Well, actually, sir, our etiquette-acquainted system, we're trying to get a new system that helps us with that. They're generally identified either black or white. But we have gorgeous and burned, so if they're from some other place, we will know that. But we have to manually go over the search. Can I ask one more question? I'll shut up. Yes, sir. You made changes recently in terms of visiting hours for prisoners? I did. And the department's going into contracts with how you deliver money to prisoners. What I want to know is, what is that contract? And does it cost families more to give money to people who are in prison? Well, what we had was that... What was the first part of that? Well, the first part was whether or not you made changes in visitation. I did make changes in visitation. And why was that? Well, the reason that we did visitation, we had the folks coming to the jail, we had the talk coming in all times of the day, is that suddenly, is that the defense bar was competing with people saying they're families. And a lot of times they would see their families as what they had with us as defense attorneys having to wait in line for a long, long time. And so we looked at the state and what other people were doing and followed some of those practices and said, why don't we wait a long time if we're going to the dockets? And one of the issues in Tarrant County is people wait a long time in Tarrant County. We hold people the longest for trial. That makes sense to a lot that our docket is not moving as fast as the other urban counties. And part of those issues is getting the ticket required. So what we were trying to do is free up a mess and a fair method where attorneys can get in and see the people. That was the first part. The second part is that we have a new commissary program. And we put in, we tried to come into modern errors. And we had people, if you wanted to put money on somebody's books, just what it was, is that we were the only jail in Texas in the back of the country that was doing this. Because you had to physically show up at the jail, walk in and hand money to somebody and have to put on their books, if you will. And that took a couple of days to translate to where they spent money in the commissary. So all we did was modernize that. Where now is that you can still show up and hand us a, not a check, but a lost money order. Money order? Yeah, a money order. Thank you. A money order. Or you can go into a machine and feed the money into a machine. It's just like an ATM once it has a fee. Or you can do it online from setting up a call. So you don't have to come downtown even to do that. So what we were trying to do is modernize things. And obviously that did cost money. But also if you want to mail in a money order or bring down a money order, we'll happily accept that offer. You have people there who will accept the money order? Yes, sir. That's not my understanding. You have to go to a machine. Well, we will still accept money orders. Sometimes after hours it gets a little bit more difficult. We have people assigned what we call money transactions 247. Any, yes? How many officers have been trained as ICE agents as a percentage of the total? And how often are they trained and who's paying for that training? ICE is paying for the training we haven't done. What percentage of, does that represent? What percentage of the force. Whether it's overall, in detention, right at about 950 people assigned in detention. So my math fields are not with me tonight. It's going to be less than what we're showing. And who's paying for, I guess when someone is being detained, who is bearing the cost of that, I guess, detainment? Well, when they're detained, here's what happens is that they are already there on the state charge. So they have to dispose of the state charge at that point. Once they've cleared state charges for whatever reason, or maybe they can make bonds or something, then we immediately go to buy ICE and they come and pick them up. They come into 30 hours. And here at that time, they need to be fed, we feed. I have a question. What kind of public input was, I guess, collected before signing this agreement? And I guess what was the driving force behind signing the agreement? I've heard from, or I've read about other counties that have discontinued their agreements. Like just discontinued the agreement. So that have, I guess they have signed an agreement in the past and then no longer are involved in that agreement. But so what kind of community input was collected and then what was the driving force? Well, I'll tell you, the driving force was signed. Chef, Chef, may I interrupt you for a second? If someone here has complained they were having a hard time hearing. If you could just speak up a little, please? Oh, I'm sorry about that. Actually, I was wondering if the mic could be turned up a little bit. Could it be in the, don't know? No, we can't. Sir? It's a secret. Okay, now we get it in the signal. Jess? Yes? Thank you, I'm sorry about that. You can start over again now. As the public input I felt was very strong because I ran on that in the campaign and the good citizens elected me. So that was from my perspective an endorsement of what I had in mind if that answered your question on that. And you know, we often hear it says, why are you doing this for us? Well, the Sheriff's Office, just like any other municipal offices and stuff like that, we have people in the DEA task force. We have people in the FBI task force. We have people in the one-terrorism task force. We have people in the narcotics task force. We do joint things with the majority of federal law enforcement agencies. We serve us to silence and everything in between. So we felt one that it's there. Secondly, is that that's why I agree with most people that we need a strong comprehensive immigration program. And that we haven't got it. And by the way, I didn't run for U.S. Congress. I just ran a chair. I don't want to be a part of that. But I think that those things need to be done. But in the interim, the law is small. And I think we're responsible for participating in that portion. Any other, yes? Thank you for your service or account. Appreciate it. I noticed some interesting information again. I like to look at macro issues. So my question is a little bit different. You talked about bringing, that there are organizations that are bringing solutions to accessing prisoners that are being primarily ministries of 501c3 groups. That's what I do. And we love that kind of stuff because we really love our community. We love these people. You know, one question, I have a couple questions for you. One is, I doubt you can answer because I doubt you take these statistics either. But how many of the people who come into your prisons are part of a local church in their community? That does happen. But I don't know what this is. I know that we have ministers that are on our books so that they can come and see people. And are we getting ministers that show up sometimes that need to be on our books? But I have no idea. And another one is, you know, this group is about proactive. We're talking about the future and dealing with the future. One of the things that you said is that you get this 90% figure twice. So it's a big deal to you, and I heard it loud and clear, of education, lack of high school education, as well as fatherhood being something that 90% of your prisoners have in common. There's a common barrier. And so what do you believe this community can do to help with that education and help with the fatherhood problem? Because we want to keep people of every culture and every race out of there as best as we can. Okay. I'll give you a little way of immersion with that. What I think that we need to do, because I do think we have a father's problem that allows people not to get education. We in Tarrant County, in the Greater Tarrant County area today, this morning when our feed is grown, we have 400 children in a foster care program whose parents' rights have been terminated fairly over adoption. Go ahead and say it. We also know that if those children say in perpetual foster care, we let the government do this, that 70% of them will end up in my custody or no major more. That's the kind of sass that I'm making. So as a group and as a community, this is Bill Weyburn. I would like for the government to work very hard at getting out of the church's way and the church take that on. And what I would like to see as a community is us stand up and say that we're going to stop this and that we are going to reach out to the people and encourage people to rescue these children if we want to change this. And if we go out there and we change this and we adopt those children and they get homes forever, that percentage of 70% goes down the low 10. So it's an incredible thing that we can do, but we've got to focus on the root cause. The root cause, I believe, is fatherhoods. That if we charge out there and we say, church, go get it and we're going to support you and we're going to help you and we're going to get out of it. Then maybe groups like this that we can talk about how we resolve things and turn it down. But those children are going to end up with me and we don't do this. So I think part of the issue is that we've got to get the age of community and that. I have a couple of things. Sheriff, you said fathers, you know there are a lot of that poor adoption of these children. You said they're fatherhood. A lot of children out there need to be adopted. You know that there are lesbian and gay couples that are being denied the right to adopt children. So it's not fatherhood. It's parents. Question for you. Some of the citizens I've talked to have said that the address code on visitation in the jail has been more scrutinized. And a lot of people come in a long way to visit some of these people that are incarcerated. Have you all considered, and I have one more question. Have you all considered, since you're tied with the county, JPS bring over some smocks. If they're inappropriately dressed, you have them put on a smock and then they can go visit. Okay, if you rent it, you can pay $1 and rent this smock. Have you just considered something like that? I have considered it, but it's a great idea. But we do want people to dress. Absolutely. One of the questions you said, we need comprehensive immigration reform. Yes. What is that to you? Well, I didn't run for Congress. I'm going to repeat that. So I don't have all those solutions of what I see as good, but I do know this in a very practical sense. And I don't know what these numbers are. People say that there's 12 million illegally here, right? Or 13 million. I've heard both of those numbers. But I've also talked to immigration attorneys who said they're docking. And immigration boards out to 2022. We can't deport 12 million people. We can't do that. But I think that, you know, if we were in charge for that, is that if we could negotiate it through it, so we do need to secure our border. Because through that border, just side note, is that 15 years ago, if you were to buy a methamphetamine on our streets, you'd pay $100 a grant. Well, all the methamphetamines coming from Mexico, it's $20 a grant. So we have a poor sport. So we need to secure a border not only for a lot of things, but just for the narco trade and for our own security. So if we secure the border, and then if we did something here, what are we going to do with all those people? And my thing was, when I talked to an actress the other day, I said, get a million of them and show up at the courthouse. And I'll bet you somebody would say, look, I did something. Because we couldn't do anything with them. But if we figured out a way to compromise it to where we got them some type of, I don't know. I don't know the name of it. You know, a work visa or whatever it is that we can get them out of the shadows and say, here you go. Now go work on your citizenship. That unless you commit some kind of crime, because I don't think we need any more criminals in our group. I think they do need a leave. But if we are able to do something in that realm of common sense and decency, we might be able to resolve it. But I think we've got to secure the border first. There are 11 million people, but you can't incarcerate 11 million people. Absolutely not. I might ask you one other question. The people that have been detained by ICE in the Tarrant County Jail, are they, do you know what their country of origin is? I do not know all of them. I know they're from, we haven't followed them before. And let me ask you this one last question. The majority of people who are in this country undocumented, do you know how they got them? I don't. I think that the stats that show that the South border was established and I know our airports are equally. Yeah, the stats are wrong if you're reading that. They're not from the border. They came by boat and they came by plane and their student visas overstayed. Well, there's, I agree. Corey, that's the same. Thank you very much. You have another one? Yeah, if I do, don't cut me off. No, I'm going to cut you off because I wanted to go over here. You said you had one more. Go ahead. You have another question? No. Okay. Good. Yeah, we're good. Thank you. So if I'm hearing you, we're asked to, we're tasked to make recommendations. So I think I just heard you say that you'd be in favor of something like the Bracero Program that was in place many, many years ago where people would get a work permit and work and get a visa that would let them work here and then eventually be working towards citizenship. Is that what I heard you say? You heard something very similar to that. I don't agree with the program that you mentioned, but we've got to do something to bring them out of the shadows. You and George got to be bushless in favor of agreeing that, agree. It's not an embassy still. I still think they ought to get the line, if you will, to get that citizenship where that line is. That makes sense. All right. Then let me, the next thing I think I heard you say was that we need faith-based programs to where mosques and synagogues and temples and churches stepped up to adopt children. Is that what I heard you say? Absolutely. You did. Well, you kept using the word church, so I wanted to make sure you're not just talking about a Christian program. You're talking about all religions. I am talking about all religions. I come from Christian faith and where I feel like I can speak into that group a little bit better than the rest of that group, because I don't know if one hoops and jumps, they need to go through. But I do know my own faith and I'm personally calling out my own church and I need everybody else to call out their things. Do you see any issues there with separation of church and state? No, I don't. I see some things that if the government got out of the way and the faith-based groups and the 501C's were able to do something like that, things would be better. Now, the other issue you brought up was you kept talking about your outdated technology. Can you be more specific about what you would need to, say, be able to track the incoming prisoners by national origin, race, all of those things that we've asked about that you haven't been able to answer? We have all of those information, except the race is a little bit, that density is there and Confucian origin are there, but it's all paper. It's a paper-based group because we had never had an entire county jail management system that is electronic, where we can track you and I mean, it is two years. We're working on it. In two years, we're going to have bracelets for somebody who had all that information of bracelets when they come into the jail and it's the time that they leave the jail and we'll be able to track them all through the jail. We'll be able to spit out a report and say, this is how many people got in jail, this is where the film... Do you have budget numbers on that? Yes, ma'am. We've already started the program in January and we're doing it through what is called the CUC and it is... What is the CUC? I'm sorry. Council of Urban Counties and it's probably going to be about $12 million in our program and it's taken two years to develop this program. So is this going to be... I mean, I know you've asked around the nation for programs on commissary things those kinds of things. Is this going to be a state-of-the-art jail management data program that would be comparable with things across the nation? Please keep in mind, I am not a tech person but yes, that's the plan. It is going to be 2018 or 2019 technology that we're dealing with. Something else but I'm blanking on it right now. Oh, you talked about 25% under MHMR care. What diagnostician is there at the jail when people are brought in that could spot the need for that care? We have several folks from MHMR in the building process that review and ask questions and do what you just said. They look at it and they talk to them and then if they get a hint that there's something there that we have psychiatrists and psychologists go for. Thank you very much. I know you had a question. Is it okay that I came out here because I came here? Does that work? I'd kind of like to know what have your disappointments been since you came out here? Where has the community missed an opportunity and as it relates to this task force and what you know about this community now what would you recommend to us? So two questions. I think that one is getting together and having a discussion is the first part of the solution. But two is that fear gets out ahead of the truth. I've seen that in a few issues and trying to catch up with it's been very, very difficult and that has been frustrating to figure out we're not doing so these things or we're not going out to construction sites or going out to this site or this business to round up some of that but I'll tell you a few things and I appreciate that the real frustration has been the impound bureaucracy in Tarrant County just to get something done and I found out very quickly that I had the largest budget in Tarrant County and I couldn't buy chocolate chip cookies for promotion ceremony but that's a whole other story but it is that I think the frustration of there is trying to communicate and I can do that screen and it's all made that we have done as well as we should have and we're just trying to figure it out. Thank you the whole thing about changes within the system that you're responsible for and have authority over is the heart for people who a lot of them may have had these repair. I think maybe just better communication and changes made with epidemiology. And I think that we have done a good job of getting that done. Any other questions? I'm not sure if you've addressed this before I stepped into the meeting but can you talk to us about the cost structure or whether it's a cost or a revenue opportunity before we see what you said in the program? Revenant? Through advice or any things or any pass through money you said I don't know. I'm just trying to understand in some ways some of the additional benefit for the county to participate in the program. The participation was from a community standpoint from a county standpoint is that if you had somebody in jail that was in there for murder and he was illegally in the country is that there would be an extra layer of accountability for that opportunity to get out of the community and what we found across the nation where ICE the 2017 program was is we saw primary trauma because they effectively did it and we were able to take people such as that and was able to report them or throw them over to us. Do you have statistics? We'll take one at a time please. Do you have statistics from before the 2017 program was implemented or after as well as before as before or after that we did you can share with us whether it's today or following. We might be able to follow on some of the statistics of what was before but we don't know what we don't know in regards to it. It wasn't the same. The policing agency, you're only allowed to have 12 correct? No I could we could have more. We had to go with covering 247 inbooking more people to process the policy. Any other questions? I've got one. I've got here a little bit late but if you want to know you're dealing with ICE and you're working with how many retainies do you have? We probably have horrible stats because of the technology but we average between 250 and 200. Are any of those children? Not all of those. Since the number of people coming across the border illegally has dropped precipitously have you seen any follow through in the numbers? No we've averaged about those numbers each month. And a lot of times by the way is that following up with ICE because these people once they go through the system and they go to ICE a lot of times there are issues that will sum them and then go back into the community and depending on what they've done. Yes. I know you deal with individuals. Yes sir. Could you let me know if you've got the numbers how many individuals are you holding individuals and how many are you holding that have families that are here too? I don't know those things but I do know this is that one of the things that I asked I saw was what happens what's taining is going to be the court they're going through the portion process they're about to be the court the court is at the court but they will give them an opportunity to notify their family and the whole family can be given the same to go back home to get it give that to you sir. Back home? Back home. What if your home is here? I understand that. We'll talk about where their legal home is. If they were born here their legal home is here. Oh there's no question about that. It's voluntary done. Absolutely. Anyone else? Sheriff thank you very much for coming this evening I really appreciate it. We now have a briefing on by Russell Wilson the second is Special Prosecutor for Carrot County District's Office Attorney's Office about the development of a police officer from Romer. We also Yes sir. We also know that there are certain boundaries and limits of what you can and cannot say and we appreciate whatever you information you could give us without jeopardizing in any one way or the other the case. So thank you very much. I think also Actually we have a real chance So let me thank you chief as well we have you here at different point as well but let me thank you very much as well for coming today and we want to thank you for your relationship with the committee and the community so thank you very much. So I was invited here to speak in general I'll give you a little bit of background on the indictments of John Romer As you mentioned there's a limit on what you can say as a prosecutor really regarding the case so what I'm going to do is give you a little bit about my background and kind of repeat to you some information that I think has been out there in the public arena so and then maybe I'll be able to answer questions that you may have just in general terms so just a little bit about my background an attorney practices in private practice in Dallas practice I think this is going into my 22nd year I'm board certified in front of a law formally in the Dallas County District Attorney's Office where I was a special field bureau chief and I was in that capacity probably the most prominent thing that I was involved in was the conviction integrity unit which dealt with exonerations of individuals who were wrongfully convicted but also under my purview was the public integrity unit in Dallas we had a number of issues with officer involved shooting, excessive force cases and a lot of prosecutorial background came up in this particular case the notes say the Tarrant County District Attorney's Office but I actually function independently of the Tarrant County District Attorney's Office the District Attorney's Office refused themselves in this case and the reason that they refused themselves was because they were potential witnesses in this particular case so you may recall that generally the District Attorney's Office had jurisdiction over all crimes that occurred within the county there's really only a very limited number of circumstances where they will refuse themselves and that's what happened in this case after the refusal of the District Attorney's Office I was appointed as a special prosecutor in this case a special prosecutor to enact the title of attorney but in general I function as the District Attorney's Office but in a much more limited scope in this case it was a limited scope regarding investigation of the police incident that can reduce it at the point of time when I was appointed as a special prosecutor Officer Romer had not been formally charged with any criminal charges when initiated or initiated a grand jury investigation into the facts and circumstances surrounding what got me appointed as a special prosecutor grand jury investigation gives the authorities penal records interview folks and that's kind of what what happened in general terms I will say you know that the Fort Worth Police Department was integral in the investigation going forward when I was initially appointed on the case the case had come back to the County District Attorney's Office through a person special investigation unit of the Fort Worth Police Department and so that officer had brought the charges the issues to the attention of the District Attorney's Office the District Attorney's Office had reviewed the matter and determined they needed to refuse themselves I then picked up the case I conducted an oversaw grand jury investigation then at the end of the investigation in the past month Officer Romer was indicted on the charges of aggravated perjury which is a a third degree felony carries a random punishment from two to ten years imprisonment up to a $10,000 fine was indicted on the offense of official oppression which is a class A misdemeanor random punishment is zero to a hundred zero to begin in 25 days in jail up to a $4,000 fine he was indicted for making false statements to law enforcement personnel specifically people in the District Attorney's Office that offense is a class B misdemeanor a random punishment from zero to a hundred and eight days up to a $2,000 fine so after the cases were indicted there was other news stories that came out and kind of seen some of the news footage of a video of the incident but that was not released by me and I believe the city of Fort Worth and perhaps the police department released some other information related to it that were pending and they will proceed in the same fashion the felony cases are pending in the 200th time assessment judicial district court they'll proceed in the same fashion as any other felony case so I'm anticipating that those cases will likely go to trial and a trial would be just what you seem to know of other police officers are often involved you know officer Romer will have an opportunity to present his defense and I'll be the person representing the state I'll have the opportunity to present our evidence that we seek to prosecute him on and then a jury of 12 folks who will make a decision regarding that case so that's kind of a general overview of the case involving officer Romer and I'm sure there's I'm anticipating maybe some general questions regarding the case that I can answer that were not included in my overview so I'm happy to entertain those or I can refer to the committee. Why don't we go with first questions for you and then the chief so are there any questions? I have a question. Can you understand the timeline here? The incident happened in November of 2016 Yes ma'am. The case was dropped in March of 2017. That's correct. A special prosecutor was finally appointed in January of 2018 is that correct? Yes ma'am. And that's when Romer was suspended. Is that correct? You know I don't know the specific case but I believe his he would have been suspended if he kept on writing this with my wife that is special prosecutor Romer was under investigation was taken off the street was not suspended at that time was taken off the street with limited capacity wasn't about to take part in any of the restrictions restricted to community capacity. So from November of 2016 to January of 2017 was taken off the street functioning as a police officer. Not until January. It was taken off the street in December of 2017. Of 2017. That's correct. But guess he was performing in the city as a police officer during that time. And assume that the police department had reviewed that tape of the arrest information that is not coming from my love until December of 2017. However please Chief if you made I apologize to interrupt. But I think what may help everyone out understand that you can explain the 180 day process investigation how that came about and I think that may help guide a little bit of the timeline. For this case and any typical complaint against the police case not understanding that use of force or any other potential infraction and officer that has the burden of proof on the organization of agencies to complete that investigation within 180 days and less investigation is or turned out to be criminal in nature. So I don't want to confuse you but I'll say in looking at 180 days of what the department has to complete that investigation. In this instance the use of force is brought to the attention of the supervisor. The duty of the supervisor is to then process the use of force paperwork to bring to the attention of people higher than the chain of command and to make recommendations of whether they are for disciplinary action or correctly counseling or to just identify what happened within the course of whatever police action led to a potential violation of the code of conduct. In this instance it never came to our attention within that 180 days. The police supervisor that was involved was negligent in completing that process and that itself was going to be received disciplinary action for not doing so. So in this instance police stopped the rumors, actions and came to the attention in particular me who was admitted to be reassigned to a non-street assignment while we conducted so conduct our investigation we did conduct an investigation that is how we found also that the supervisor was negligent and he was not at that point because the 180 days had passed between the time of the infraction that we were working in some kind of disciplinary action or potential disciplinary action or disciplinary action again from since that time had passed. Again we still conducted an investigation and still saw it as a very problematic choice. That's what why we did that. We had a police complaint that has a potential to be both criminal and administrative. The administrative case is now about 180 days. However the criminal case is not. The criminal case is presented by any of the criminal cases that he presented through our special investigation unit and as our attorney, our special prosecutor mentioned it was safe to go for a grand jury and process that. But we were in essence in a chain of command recommendations and processes that we were going to do. The law was not a process of process and it was a process of process. What is he charged with? I wanted to add one other thing that I think perhaps contributed while it wasn't a prerequisite to the finding there was no internal affairs complaint regarding this incident. So the Fort Worth Police Department's new support review is a different process than an initiation of an internal affairs complaint. I'm not going to go into those extensively but I think it is a pretty big factor in that regarding the time on the events. There was no and that's not again the place of all of internal affairs complaint regarding this incident. I think the support review is one way that matters to the attention of the Fort Worth Police Department. Another way that they come to the attention of the Fort Worth Police Department is to the internal affairs complaint. I think the final way is probably just general citizen complaints. Who initiates an internal affairs complaint? It's an organization initiative by least Oxford, by the citizen. So, in this case, administrative awareness that we still have a complaint here between the best hand and the spirit of transparency that's what we do. But no matter whether it is the 108k window or not I still have this duty to make sure that all complaints are processed properly and whether or not... This point, both outside of that 180-day renew that he didn't have the power to discipline for that particular complaint, but again, that didn't mean that it didn't fall into a realm that he'd be identified and prosecuted and answered anything. Cory, I believe you were asking, what is he charged with Officer Romney? He is charged with aggravated murder, which is a third-degree felony. He's charged with official oppression, which is a class-admissive unit, and he's charged with making false statements of law enforcement personnel, which is a class demission. Chief, you've made some changes to ensure that something like this happens again, that it will not pass that 180-day. Could you tell us about what you mean? Sure, at the time. I'll tell you, we made a term that this is not a change. Initially, a police supervisor had to be notified on their piece of course. In this case, again, a police supervisor was notified, but it did not be the necessary follow-up. It needed to bring the attention of the change in the act, but what was done is a set of three-day time limit that a police supervisor was pushed that information up and it would go to the internal fairings for all use of course cases that did not exist in the past, that was left at the level of whatever place in the organization that that person worked. So, and what broke into the system in my opinion was that there wasn't a change in balance in the place at that time to ensure that within a finite period of time that that paperwork was done, that it was put into the system and it was brought to the level of even executive staff members knowing that the complaint existed. What's also changed is that we formed a very finite period of time with each branch, a system of each command level within the organization that a complaint would sit. We want to ensure that we don't run up against a 180-day time limit. When I first became chief in the city of Fort Worth, I reduced that time line to 180s. Clearly some things expand well beyond the 180 ones. When there's a criminal investigation, and I don't want to get off into the weeds too much, we can apply to the Attorney General's office to place that 180-day time line in advance until the criminal trial is set, or until the criminal trial is disposed of. In this instance, I'll bring you back to the case we're talking about. Since there are criminal allocations, there are another set of complaints administratively that we look at that depending upon refining these within the criminal year, we can say we can now apply other discipline next. There was a new 180-day clock that starts ticking in that month. So we've opened another set of internal investigations for the district of Fort Worth. But there have been several things. I mean, I can go over... I brought a flow chart to describe some of the things that were going on, and I can make sure that you remember the panel together. But we've looked at time lines and said that there's a reason for a normally supports complaint that doesn't involve any type of criminal activity. And that's the key caveat there, criminal activity. If there is no criminal activity alleged in any use of force or no criminal activity that you've seen, and you go between 35 and 40 days, you can get that process through every portion of the chain of command. Those levels within the chain of command require write-ups, and those write-ups are about what each person in the chain saw and their recommendations on what they saw as far as discipline or education-based discipline or anything that happens as a result of the support or complaint period. So it doesn't matter whether it's a support complaint or a complaint about rudeness or anything else, every complaint goes through the chain of command against recommendations, and those recommendations tighten the timeline to ensure, again, we don't run up against 180 days. And it certainly impressed members of the internal affairs staff and impressed members of the patrol staff that obviously patrols the largest portion of the department, so that's where we get the greatest number of complaints that we deal with. But I felt that we really needed to take a good, hard look at how we were processing things that we could do in a more efficient manner. And based upon just my work with the internal affairs investigators, I think we've done an incredibly job reducing that timeline and ensuring that not only would not necessarily go beyond 180 days with checks and balances now, but we'll get these investigations done in a timely manner. Okay, that was a softball. Here's the fastball. You sure that was a softball? If you had this been brought to your attention within those 180 days, and you could expand on this regardless of the outcome of the potential of the trial, you still have the ability to make an administrative decision regardless of the outcome of the trial, guilty or not guilty. He still will face you. That's correct. 180 days have gone by, and everything you know now, would you have terminated in then? That's, I can't say, because I have to take into account, again, what we've seen is what we've seen, and we know what it really looks like. So, I also haven't heard, or haven't had the opportunity to hear the doctor test by. I haven't had the opportunity to hear the young person that was on the video as well, that was struck. There's testimony to be heard, and some of that information is going to be very germane to what happens with this investigation. So, I'd like to say, we give everything a new process. In this case, the new process is still in our face, because we had a kink in the new process. Something should never happen. We can't apologize enough for the new process not working in the manner in which it was supposed to, but what you can expect out of making, what you can expect out of this department, are tighter timelines, making sure that we don't run past that 180 days, and that, you know, we get the opportunity to take a good, hard look at the actions and activities of police officers before, you know, perhaps, and when we lose our opportunities, it's correct, take it correct, Dash. Thank you. Well, Chief, I appreciate you saying it a couple of times. You're taking a good, hard look. You operate now on the Civil Service Commission, is that true? We do. Do you think it's how I live this set from establishing Fort Worth in 1940? And so, the things that we're talking about today and the difficulties you're having is because of those guidelines. Other major cities have gone away from that. So, I just wondered if you'll have to give any thought at all. We thought that there are things that we can do. We can sit down with our police officer association and have open and honest communications about what we're expecting to see, and in the case of police officers from our peers, in the case of many of my relatives, what our expectations are from the officers that we meet with them. There is a level of expectation that we have to have. And the level of expectation has been higher over the last few years. I've needed about 2.8 years, and I'll say that the level of expectation is 3.3, and it should. This is a different time. This is a different time in the world where people have expectations that are elevated to our department. And should it be, yes, we have to behave and we have to do it a lot better than we've done in the past. It goes a long way to what we've thought of. There's an important procedure of justice and our implicit bias training and others that dictate that we don't hand the situation forward and try to avoid as much as we can the encounters that lead to these types of actions. And that is a part of getting responsible as the chief of police, but a part of taking on that responsibility from the police officer level. And we know that our actions may in a long way go to dictate how police officers are seeing not only the city forward but throughout the country. And I have no doubt that some of the things that we've seen throughout the country have had a really, you know, polarizing effect upon the DCM forward. So every officer has to do it better. And that expectation can be level and I think fairly upon our department. So, yes, we're tightening up the shift. Yes, the expectation level is much higher for our officers and is that right? Yes it is because we have to do a better job. And we have to be transparent. We have to make sure we put our money where our mouth is and go out and be sure citizens that the level of trust that we work towards is something that we did when we were moving towards it. We can talk about it or we can damage it. And I think this department has done a great job in the last few years of dealing with terrible, terrible situations of taking some accountability for what we've done wrong and making sure that we corrected some of these things quickly. Some things have been preempted before they were ever needed to be corrected and made the ground open. We made corrections and changes to the way we do business that you'll probably never see unless you pick up some of our general orders and take a look at the changes that have happened since 2016 and now. But I want to reassure that they have every confidence in the world that our department will take a good, hard look at itself every time something happens and people, not just the police, but people from the bottom up in this organization that we're getting take a really, really good critical look at what other officers are doing. And some of our officers they can be even a harder critic than I can about some of the actions that they've seen. It's been really disappointing but we know that we're human beings and we're going to have access to where we screw up, right? But when we step up and we admit that we screw up and we step up and we make the changes that are necessary and put ourselves in a position to be successful, I think the city and city management can have the kind of response that says you know what our department's on top of this, they know that they need to make changes, that they know they need to address their issues and I want people to say we have every confidence that they'll gain and that's the feeling that that's actually part of it. Chief, in your work, a couple of different departments around the department, do you ever work with a citizens review board to what are your thoughts on that? Have I ever worked with a citizens review board before? The city of Philadelphia where I was close to 18 years had a review board and some cases went before that board. I can't say that in the city or downtown I've had that experience but I do know that there's a lot of research out there of different ways in which review boards have been put in place. I think that we're remiss when we don't say that we have to take a good part of the way we do business I would just ask that one of the things we do as a group here is take a look at how we're handling things and how you do that is not one-off. We see the terrible things that we've seen in the media lately but I want you to take a look at the hearings that we had and the arbitration processes that we had take a look at these investigations that have led to more than one day off and engage how this department has been handling bad behavior. So if you look at one instance of two instances you get a I'll say an artificial idea of how we deal with that but if you look at arbitration cases at a very limited level at least since the time I've been here to present what kind of functions have been handed out for things that really deserved it and how that's handled in the arbitration process is both in process. Anybody here who's like we're having a meeting here can participate, you can see and I think that would lead you to the least I would hope that we are handling things right. But in a bad game or if you're looking at things and you're looking at one or two instances where you've seen some of the things on television and you don't look at the overall macro of it you don't really get a good idea of how well we're functioning as an organization so I want you to really think about it before we move down into a direction like that just give ourselves an opportunity to really evaluate what we've done and how we've been doing and what progress we've made in comparison to other times that we've had over a few years. Tom. I'm just curious to know if you have a position or your thoughts on the citizen for people or the general. I don't have a position on that at this point this is really I've heard nothing official about any type of movement for a game but yeah I think it's a conversation to have and I think that's not for you to get a true gauge on what this department is doing in the realm of how we handle officer discipline how we educate and train officers and try to correct problems and if we get a true gauge and then it's discussed I think that's the discussion that we can have I'm going to tell you that no matter what I'm going to be a chief that listens and is transparent and sits down and has these conversations to help conversations with groups like this that have the best interest of this city at heart we have to practice a pretty team of references to transparency and one of the things that we have to exercise as a community is the ability to read some of the transfers testimony to the things that we've done to try to correct some negative behaviors and then once we add that information of course let's then talk about where we go and what we did back A quick question actually to the prosecutor chief just briefly considering the charges that you brought and considering what you saw on tape yes sir I'm wondering why this officer was not charged and indicted with assault as opposed to official oppression which I think is the least charged you can really come up with with somebody who's going to abuse it what I can tell you sir is that assault in Texas is also a class setting this to mean official oppression is a class setting this to mean the offense of official oppression I believe is broader than just the offense of assault so official oppression can occur when a person subjects a person to mistreatment in their official capacity I guess I should have said felony assault no sir so a felony assault in Texas usually would either be a family violence issue involved in choking type of a boyfriend or girlfriend or the most frequent instances of that and this would have if it was charged as an assault I believe it would be a class pay assault the person the person who was injured didn't suffer serious bodily injury which is significant impairment of bodily function or breaking the bone which is normally what's required in their aggravated assault type charge so there's not a felony simple assault so let's try to deal with the person in the capacity as a law enforcement officer on their certain protections is the penal cause of offers to be in that capacity so those come up whether it's an assault case or an official oppression case but for all intents and purposes the actual most serious offense charge is the aggravated perpetrator charge which is a felony charge but somebody else may have seen it just as an assault official oppression specifically designed to recognize that a person is attacking in their official capacity or under the color of law and I think that's why that statute is on the books for Texas so what's given more rare in your appointment earlier this year what's the expected timeline for this case I will request to be judged to give us a trial made as soon as possible and I am hopeful that may be late summer early September again I'm on private practice so I do carry a leather docket as well and I have a significant practice but I'm hopeful that September August time frame I don't know what the court's docket is generally the folks that are incarcerated in the jails are the folks whose cases are hurt first so sometimes bond cases take a little bit longer I know this is a matter of public interest I think it's important that society answer these questions and I'll impress that on the court at the end of the day it's the judge's decision as to what day we go to trial I expect you will come to accommodate also the court and have the time to prepare and then use that nature but I believe that will be done by by the end of the summer I have one more question Chief does the police department have something like a public integrity unit if it does I suggest after the trial is over you might want to talk with Mr Wilson there he is one of the I know him for a few years in this country can we run one or inside I appreciate that question we actually do our special investigation unit is an S&T public integrity unit they handle those type of sensitive complaints in terms of the criminal they handle complaints that involve people in city management politicians that type of love so we do have a means I have one thing I just wanted to say one of the things that coming out of this this process with this incident and other incidents that we are at is I want to invite you all especially this group to come and take part in any training session and just put together for some of the incidents we're calling it the CIG scenario training it's one of these waiting scenario based in support training and we were just taking it off and we're going to have our first scenario training for civilians on 519 and 319 at 9am 9-1pm so that's Saturday May 19 the schedule is the same as now Saturday May 19 Saturday June 2nd from 9-1 as well Thursday June 21st and we'll put this all up on the on our website Facebook Thursday June 21st from 5-30 to 9-30pm Saturday July 14th from 9-1pm and Monday August 2nd from 5-30 to 9-30pm and this is designed to to show folks especially our citizens that are involved especially those that are watching that we again in that spirit we want to give you an idea of what we're training our officers in we can come up here and put on a power plan presentation but this will be a little hand on as well so my hope is that we can convey the level of training and providing and reference a good deal to be able to have an educated group that are able to see it for themselves to be able to just engage one another in a different way and this isn't a design to explain away any behaviors or nothing like that what I want you to do is try to make one of these sessions and just open yourselves up to some of the things that officers have to do and some of the responsibilities that we level on as well in the top dance I will be a part of these training classes as well so is this put on by the same group that did the de-escalation training that we were invited to take part in? be some instructors that are a part of the escalation training because the use of force training is one of the steps that we ask officers to do with de-escalation there won't be some of the same instructors but this will be some scenario based thing that I think we can all get a lot out of so I do an inquiry to make some time to look at that schedule to contact us and let us know which one made sense to you and I don't think it happened but I think it's overdue and let them see really what we're teaching and to see the things that we're not because there's no job there about what we permit and I want to debunk that now and be able to bring you in to really get a hands on opportunity to experience some of the things that the other officers want. Would you consider putting that broadcasting that on Facebook live as well? Any other questions? Mr. Wilson we want to thank you very much Chief we want to say we're very thankful that you were back up on your feet I don't know if everyone knew Chief had back surgery we're tremendously happy that you're healing and you should be back to full strength soon and continue that way and before the next presentation a brief briefing on the chapparelle apartments on behalf of the co-chairs just to let you know when the video came out the Chief, the Mayor Mr. Chapa and four of us met to discuss about this and the transparency of what happened with the video that was called Chief in the City deciding to release the full body cam we truly appreciate that transparency coming to tell us what happened and showing us what happened and showing the entire citizens really what happened so we thank you and we applaud you we hope you continue that to be transparent not only here but everywhere so we thank you very much ahead of time for that. Okay we are now at item number six the briefing on the March 31st incident Jay Chapa and I don't know if the Assistant Chief or the Chief is doing this one so Chief is there on the chair can you give me any kind of would you like some water? Well really as we went on the briefing we did have the opportunity after this incident I think the Monday after the incident occurred on the Saturday and then when someone viral and we can on the internet pair with the chairs and we did have the opportunity to meet with you through that meeting and discuss the issues that were out there and part of the overall process and I'm going to turn over to the Chief to talk about where that is but one of the things that really there's a feedback from the co-chairs is take a broader look at the overall occurrence at the end of the day we want to make sure as the Chief mentioned that the citizenry this task force elected officials has great confidence in what the police department is doing and what the city is doing