 this meeting to order as the co-chair. Governor Baker's extension of the March 12 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law allows us to hold this virtual meeting of the working group. Given that we have a quorum present, I'm calling today's meeting on October 14, 2021, to order at 5.34 p.m. I will call upon each member of the working group by name. At that time, they should unmute their mic and say present. This will indicate that they can hear me and we can hear them. Please remember to mute your mic after saying present. Ms. Ferrera. Present. Mr. Vernon Jones. Present. Ms. Pat. Yeah. Our first order of business is the public comment section of the agenda. If any member of the public would like to make a statement, please raise your hand. I will recognize you and ask Ms. Moyston to turn on your microphone. I ask that comments be limited to no more than three minutes. The working group will not be responding to your comments, but listening carefully. So we have no hands. So I'm just going to quickly go over the agenda and then we can go right into the lead presentation. So tonight on the agenda, we have the lead presentation. We will hopefully approve and go over the report for part B of our charge. Pages 15 through 29 have been updated. We'll talk about Cress implementation. We will review the resident oversight board follow-up. And lastly, we'll talk about the community safety and social justice committee. Ms. Ferrera. Sorry. I just wanted to kind of do a quick kind of report, just acknowledgement in terms of, you know, the CSWG member report. I just wanted to say quickly in terms of, obviously, we've heard in the news in regards to the police, I'm forgetting the place, but, you know, that pulled out another, you know, a black man from the police car by the hair, who was paraplegic, you know, again, highlighting the seriousness of the work that we're doing and why it is that we're doing the work that we're doing, why it is that we need to make sure that this part B, along with part A, continues to be imperative in terms of the work. And then also, I know we haven't met in a while, the other one, too, that was really striking and needs to be stated. And of course, this was border patrol on our borders in terms of the Haitian community and how they were treated with police on border patrol, police on horses going around whipping people and, you know, running down women and children and men, of course, but, you know, it's just, I mean, disgraceful, horrific. So, you know, continue to just be befuddled and know that the work that we're doing is critically important. I know it's national images, but these are the images that then, you know, stay within people's minds and especially within the police minds and then feel that they can treat people of color in that same way. So it's increasingly impactful. So I just want to make sure that that continues to be, you know, center and focus in terms of the work that we're doing. Thank you, Ms. Ferreira. And I apologize. I skipped writeover members' reports. Was there anybody else that had anything that they would like to share? Okay. So we can move right into the lead presentation. Oh, Ms. Pat, I'm sorry. I just wanted to mention very briefly that a couple weeks ago, the coach here and I attended the town council meeting regarding the new standing committee. And although the meeting was productive, however, Mindy Jo was very divisive in some of her comments and she tried to divide BIPOC community trying to put Black residents against Asian residents. And we didn't allow that to happen. We have to respond it back immediately. So I'm encouraging CSWG members and the public who are watching our meeting to check the YouTube regarding the particular meeting. It was two weeks ago. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Pat. And for other group members wondering about that meeting, I'm hoping that we can talk about that later this evening and talk about final communications as the group dispans in November. Yeah. So was there anybody else that had something they wanted to share for members' report? Okay. So we can move right into the lead presentation. Amos, I don't know how you would like to kind of format this. Since we don't know each other, it would be great if we could introduce each other and maybe I can introduce each member of the CSWG and you guys can hear a little bit about why this work is so important to us and then we'd like to meet your team before you present. So I guess I can go first. I'm really passionate about community safety and this work in general because I've been living in Amos for the last 10 years. I have experienced different systems and I feel like you can work within systems for change by speaking out and advocating and I'm excited to be a part of this with all of these leaders from the community. Who would like to go next? I will. So my name is Pat Anani Bakur. I'm a mother of five children and grandchildren too. I have lived in this town for more than 35 years and I'm very passionate about social justice issues. I've been advocating for issues of equity for a long, long time both in our school system and in our community. Welcome to our invitees tonight. Yes, I'll go next. Hello everyone. Thank you all for coming out and helping us out with this important project. So my name is Deborah Forera, originally from West Africa, Cape Bird Islands, immigrant to this country. I have two children, two black males who obviously is one of the main reasons why I do this work because I feel that I need to make sure I do this work to safeguard their safety and all other children's safety but especially children who are BIPOC within the Amherst community. I've been an Amherst resident for over 23 years and an attorney by day connected to UMass. I work at UMass and so this is very, very important to me and we need to make changes and the changes need to happen now. Well, they needed to happen yesterday but especially need to happen now and obviously this is something I'm committed to, a lifelong journey of mine. That's your muted. I'm Russ Fernan Jones, former elementary school principal, now retired. I think of myself as a racial justice and climate justice activist and in my years in the school system I got to hear an awful lot about how various communities of color experience life in Amherst and it's so clear that there need to be big changes and this opportunity to in a sense start with the police department. I think it's been a really, it's been quite an experience to sort of dig into what the community is experiencing and figure out what can make a difference and I'll just say it's been a real honor for me to work with this group and you know so much appreciate the input that the the LEAP is providing now. Thank you, Russ. Alicia, I'm not sure if you're there and want to introduce yourself. Oh, I hope you all can hear me. I apologize as I cannot be in attendance for this entire meeting and I'm driving but I'm happy that I can join you all for at least the first portion of this meeting and I really appreciate the work that has been done by LEAP and I'm excited to hear the presentation although I was able to read through the report so my name is Alicia Walker. I have lived in Amherst for my entire life. I have three children who I am also raising here in this town and I do this work because I have realized the the impacts that policing has had and community safety in general has had on our community and that if we were able to create things with the intention to serve portions of our community that have been underserved and underrepresented the the different changes that we can make and and strives toward equity and towards making Amherst an actually inclusive and safe place for all community members and so I I'm really grateful to have been able to be a part of this work and to have been able to build these connections with the community and sort of work on building trust and so I'm really looking forward to presenting our final report and sort of looking um holding the town accountable towards following through so that we can really make this an equitable town for everybody. Thank you Alicia. Amos, do you want to introduce your team? There you go. Okay yeah. Okay hopefully you can hear me now. Getting static again. Okay how about how about now? Okay sorry about that. So I'm Amos Irwin and I will briefly introduce myself and the organization and then turn it over to Lisa and Tom who are doing the hard work and will be doing the presentation. I'm Amos Irwin. I'm the program director for the law enforcement action partnership and you know in brief we work with police judges prosecutors around the country who really want to transform our country's approach to criminal justice in in support of you know really trying to put communities on the forefront of making decisions trying to uh support restorative justice trying to figure out how to roll back our you know our knee jerk our society's knee jerk efforts to just punish try to punish our way out of problems so um we have been very excited to work with the town of Amos and I personally have been especially excited I was a student at Amos college way back in the day and and actually Ms. Freyra I was um when when you introduce yourself I just suddenly remembered that you know back in 2005 I was working with a man from Cape Verde in the Amherst public library and I had forgotten about it until until you introduced yourself and just came back to me so it's been great to kind of reconnect in some ways with with the town of Amherst and you know I hope that yeah what we're presenting here can really be helpful because it's so it's it's been wonderful to see what you all have been able to do just as as volunteers it's really impressive see the work that that you've been able to do to come together so with that I will turn this over to to Lisa and to Tom to introduce themselves. Thanks Amos um I'm Lisa Tenenbaum I joined LEAP recently I actually came on board to help with this project with my first introduction to working with LEAP. My previous experience is I was a municipal attorney in California with both a county council's office and an assistant city attorney in California so I come at this from understanding how municipalities work how the quote unquote sausage gets made at the town or city level and I also I joined LEAP because both of my parents were police officers so this has been a lifelong discussion about how to make policing better. I was actually introduced to LEAP my dad's one of LEAP speakers so he's very aware of what they do and we we always consider that we could be doing things better so I'm very excited to work on this project on your behalf and look forward to giving you some information that we pulled together for you. Tom. Before I pass it back to Lisa first of all I want to say I really applaud you guys for what you're doing and I applaud your persistence. I am a entire police chief from the Dayton Ohio area and Debra that is where they pulled the young man out of the car by his hair the paraplegic young man out of the car by his hair embarrassing and but I think that what we talk about today and what we'll talk about down the road with what some of the things we've looked in and Amos policies for the police department are going to be directly relevant to situations just like that. I now speak for LEAP I have for over a year I believe and I also run a non-profit working with at-risk immigrants in the Dayton Ohio area most are from the continent of Africa but there are some from others and I'm very very happy that one of my one of my guys is getting ready to graduate police academy. He's a genocide survivor actually from Rwanda and he's getting ready to be a police officer here in our area which is which is wonderful. I'm the father of a man from the Central African Republic and so my police career has had a much different experience than most guys like me and I get to experience things as a father and as a grandfather that are very concerning and this is why in my community amongst my peers I'm probably known as a advocate or someone who I think they call me progressive. I push the envelope with my peers a little bit and it's usually well received but again for my experiences you guys are on the right track I've been inside policing I know how it works and you guys are doing the right thing and I appreciate every single one of you guys for standing up and doing what we're doing. Lisa. Thank you. So just to give you a quick idea I'm going to do just a quick overview of what's in the report and then really open it up to your questions and let you drive this discussion. So I'll start with the first part of the report was about the Massachusetts police reform bill and what it does. To start with it creates a police officer standard and training office which is mostly led by civilians and will oversee the certification and decertification of police officers and investigate into police misconduct. It also then went into a use of force requiring that an officer may only use deadly force if de-escalation tactics have been unsuccessful. It prohibited the use of chokeholds and it restricts officers from firing at or into fleeing motor vehicles unless there's some serious exigent circumstances that require that. It also created a duty to intervene that means that any officer witnessing a fellow officer use excessive force is required to step in and stop that excessive force and is also required to report it at the first opportunity to his superiors that he saw excessive force used. The bill continues and has a ban on racial profiling. This one is sort of interesting in the fact that it doesn't do a very good job of saying what that ban will entail and how that will be effectuated. It does just say that the state attorney general can bring a civil action for injunctive or equitable relief to enforce if there is allegations that can be substantiated regarding racial bias. So it seems like there's some opportunity in that area in particular for agencies to get out ahead of however they de-necessary to begin making sure that they're not racially profiling. It also requires publicly reported data for the state especially around police violence and any injuries and or deaths caused by the police department and that that will be made publicly available. And it did make some personnel records subject to the Your Public Records Act although some items will still be shielded from public availability. So that's sort of just like a quick and dirty overview of that that bill. It contained a lot of stuff that's very sort of interesting. It created a lot of I'm sure you noticed it created a lot of commissions and task force and special organizations to look further into policing. I imagine in the future all those all those different entities are required to report back to the state. So I imagine in the future you'll see more legislation come out of that those particular bodies. So I would really just recommend keeping an eye on what they're doing at the state level with this. It didn't create a whole ton of action items right now at the local level. But it seems just reading the tea leaves. It's going to create new laws at the state level going forward. So keep an eye on it. There is a post website already up. The post commissioners have already been chosen. So that will start to move forward and create those bodies which will then have oversight into police departments. And the next piece I'll just go into quickly was we looked at your the policies of the Amherst police department. Specifically looked at use of force consent searches and low level pretextual stops. Your use of force policy in particular needs some immediate concerns addressed. I'll Tom will talk a little bit later about what those concerns are that he had very immediately reading that. Our recommendation is that entire policy needs to be wholesale rewritten. It needs to be put into plain understandable language. And it also needs to make use of force a last resort and not justify and use of force as a resort. On consent searches, a warrant is always a better way to effectuate a consent search. There is vast racial disparity with consent searches through many studies and research which we referenced in the report. Our recommendation is banning consent searches when a person stops solely for a traffic violation. More consent searches of a place are deemed necessary. We would recommend and I believe this was in your report as well of using a form to document consent so that it's very clear from the former municipal attorney and we also recognize that because it will help with limiting liability and it will receive much more credit in the eyes of the judiciary if they have a form like that. A lot consent searches are not looked along favorably. People want judges want to see a warrant. So if you have a form that documents it and said this was allowed, that'll go a lot further. On the low level pretextual stops like the consent searches that also has a wide racial disparity in use, we recommend discontinuing those unless it's related to an issue that's an investigative issue and there's an example out of Oakland of creating a check box is this intelligent led stop which helps limit those and create a more cognizable reason for those occurring as opposed to just your tail lights out. And then the last thing we looked at was your police union contract. It currently has a sunset provision that allows any discipline that occurred a year prior from not being considered in future discipline. We'd recommend removing that and then we also offered a recommendation to have the decision of an arbitrator appealable town council that comes with its own risks. It should be thought about very carefully. We'd be happy to discuss that more with you. And it probably is prohibited in implementation until you get a new CBA in 2022. But there is some thought that that could be arbitrators are not often, they're quote unquote impartial. So if they make a decision that is against what the values of the town are, if it's appealable to the town and the town holds your values, you may have a better chance of seeing the sort of discipline you'd like to see. And then lastly, we just had a couple general recommendations. All of the policies included what we would call gendered language. Still, they said she, her, he, him, we would just recommend modernizing that just using officer or police. And then policies are only as good as their implementation. And if we recommend suggesting to the police department that there be a regular committee within the police department to review policies, make sure that they're modern, make sure that they're actually being implemented, make sure that they're of the best quality that they can be. If a policy is just sitting in a binder and nobody knows what it says, it's going to cause a lot of headaches when it needs to be invoked. And the last thing is I recognize is probably I emailed with Russ, but it is I recognize a little touchy for your group in particular. But one of the things we wanted to recommend is that there's no police voices in any of the committees or processes that you were recommending. And we just, I understand the concern and the hesitancy around that. But because of the nature of this sort of discussion and the things that are happening, a two-way street that includes some of their perspective and allows them to hear your perspective may be helpful going forward to get your policies implemented. And that's sort of the my seven-minute overview of everything. And I, of course, very welcome to question. And maybe Tom, did you want to jump in on the use of force thing now? You know, I can. I don't know if you guys have any questions for if you would, we have quite a few more, you know, at the end of the day, I think one of the things we want to ask you is would you like us to give a little bit more deep dive recommendation and what we think their use of force policy should look like? And we're willing to do that. And if you would like me to, I can just bring up a couple of concerns that could relate directly to an incident that just happened and date that Ms. Ferrara, you spoke about, or you guys can ask questions. It's up to you. Yeah, I'd like to hear the information. Okay. So I'm going to pull up some notes I have here, which means I'm not going to be looking at the screen. So hopefully I don't do anything embarrassing like pick my nose because I won't be watching myself here. So, you know, one of the things up front is something that Lisa touched on. But the purpose and policy statements alone really set the tone for the entire use of force policy. And it prioritizes control and not humanity and de-escalation. Although it mentions de-escalation, the tone of it is prioritizing control for the officers. So we do have some examples. I know Camden, New Jersey have maybe had a better set the culture for the officers before they even get into the use of force policy, what their expectations are. I would say a couple of the things that I thought were very problematic that these are things we'll be discussing, I think, eventually with the police is they have a continuum of force. And here I'm assuming that you guys have seen their use of force policy. If you haven't, it'd probably be a good idea to look at it. A few of my concerns are using contact controls when a subject is offering passive resistance. So basically, this offers officers the ability to go hands-on when there's no physical resistance or urgency. And not only have I worked in the streets, but I've worked in the hospital world. So I have seen where this can go horribly wrong and where it can go wonderfully right. And putting hands on people too early usually doesn't go well. So escort holds, which they actually use as an example, a lot of times can lead to fights or physical confrontations. So really, the officers are authorized to sort of the way you look at it, initiate the fight. And I'll say a great example of this is the incident that just happened to date. A paraplegic man refused to get out of the car. He even asked for a supervisor. There was no exigency. But the officer backed by a policy. The union even came out, Dayton said, the officer acted within policy. So the officer backed by policy, technically, pulled him out by his hair and onto the ground. Now it's national news. So if this is something they don't re-approach, their whole continuum of force idea, they really need to be more specific and in the approach and not so general. So also, they don't really discuss what is enhanced physical or mechanical device or mechanical defiance in their active resistance section in this. Very broad. So essentially, officers are authorized to use joint manipulations, batons, OC spray at this level, all of which could cause physical harm and quite possibly an altercation without any provocation. So the Dayton incident, for example, just use that, could have also been categorized here. Essentially, there needs to be a lot more description of the officer's duty not to hastily engage in a much better definition of what enhanced physical or mechanical defiance is. A lot of times that is, they refuse to get out of the car. Well, it's enhanced for them. So the duty to intervene, one of the things and Lisa's recommendation about just doing with the state, what the state has rolled out, their duty to intervene allows officers, if they witness someone using excessive force or acting inappropriately, they allow that officer through the end of their shift before they report it. So that in itself is a little bit problematic because you can have an officer who was either not a good guy at all, committed assault earlier than the shift and you let him continue to work the whole shift and report at the end of the shift. So to me, if you have an officer that is acting, that is behaving in such a way that he shouldn't be on the street, he should be taken off duty immediately, not given the opportunity to work the rest of the shift for the possibility of that. Something else that I think you may be interested in. There's a couple of things that probably won't mean anything to you, but impact munitions, which is usually the bean bag, shooting somebody with a bean bag, which still is very painful, and pepper ball system. Both of them could potentially cause serious harm or death to somebody if not properly deployed. They hit somebody in the eye, somebody in the throat, even unintentionally. So they tell you not to aim at the head and throat, but it can happen. So their guidelines for when they can use these systems are very, very loose, to say the least. For an example, one of them is for riotous or violent behavior, but they don't really talk about what riotous or violent behavior is. Could officers consider a passionate protest as riotous behavior? Possibly. Or would you shoot somebody with a bean bag just because they were assaulted during an arrest? And what does assault of even mean? Trying to push the officer away or trying to hit the officer with a hand? I mean, there's a big, big difference here. So this really needs to be better defined and because there could be a wide range of unacceptable officer actions taken that would literally still be within policy. The officers would be within policy doing it. And I think, and there are others, and I'll just say another one, one of the things that they talk about, and I hope that there's more to it than this, but they review the officer in charge of defensive tactics, reviews their uses of force every year with the defensive tactics instructors to find out, you know, is there policies or training issues? And I would recommend that each use of force, when I worked in the hospital, anytime there was an incident of violence, and on the street when I worked in Mimesburg, Ohio, everyone was a big deal and we completely broke it down at that time and sent it through several levels of examination to find out, was it right? Was it not? Do we need to look at policy? What do we need to do with the officer? Do we need to look at our training? So not waiting until the end of the year to kind of take an overview of what you've done, use of force, but yet look at each one individually and take each of them very, very serious and make adjustments when you need to. And they don't use, if people don't claim to be injuries, they don't fill out use of force type forms, which they call a subject management form. It doesn't appear that they do it if someone doesn't claim injury if it was just hands-on. And I think that's problematic as well. For them, just accountability for themselves. Someone comes back later and says the officer twisted my arm and now I've had some tendons ripped, but the officer didn't write a report annotating anything happened because it was just hands-on and there was no reports of injury at the scene. So I think transparency-wise that's a big deal to make sure you're recording all of that and you're investigating all of that. And I think, if I were running the police department, I'd want to know that myself because I'd want to know litigiously if we're getting ourselves in bad areas and we need to retrain some officers. So that is just a few things. Thank you, Tom. I've talked too long. I'll let you guys ask more if you want to. Well, did you say that you have some model policies you would provide for use of force? I believe we do. I believe I'll double check, of course, but I'm pretty sure that we had some model use of force policies we can provide you with. So I have a question. I have a question for Ms. Lisa. So thank you both of you for the presentation and you stated that recommending rewriting the APD policy policies. However, the union contract expires 2022. So in terms of timing, because when we would like the policies we're written, but because they're currently on contract, do we have to wait? No, I don't want to speak specifically to what your town's requirements are. But generally speaking, a policy and a union contract are two separate things. And policies can be updated regularly. These policies are currently dated July 2020. So they were updated after the last bargaining agreement was put into effect. So those are usually separate paths. They're not generally related. So you can update the policies at any point, assuming there's not some specific quirk to Amherst that I don't want to speak to. Thank you. Mr. Vernon Jones. I had two questions about the report. One was under consent searches. You recommend discontinuing consent searches. But then the model language says no operator should be requested to consent to a search unless there exists reasonable position, suspicion, or probable cause of criminal activity. That feels to me like an exception the whole you could drive a truck through. I can see why it feels that way. And I think obviously with any policy, there's room for abuse. But I think when you see language for consent policies, they're much more specific. That's a general recommendation. But the specific language that you would use when updating that policy would create a list of what those exceptions are, not just a broad exception, such as like criminal activity, it would say specifically under what circumstances that excuse can be used. So I can see the concern with it being too broad. But I think with the proper language, it would be limited to very narrow circumstances. Can you help us access that proper language now? I don't mean tonight. Right. Yes. Yes. I mean, of course, we're happy to follow up on and making notes on what those issues are. Yes. Okay. And I'm aimless to jump in if I'm getting anything wrong, obviously. Yeah. No, no, that's a great question. We found the example policy on terms of consent searches, which I believe is from Providence, Rhode Island last minute. So there may be some things that we need to provide additional context to like with the use of force policy. There was like something we wanted to add. So we say, oh, here's Camden County, New Jersey, it's a good policy, but should add in this other piece. So we may have to do that with the Providence piece. And I'm glad you're looking at it carefully. I will say, you know, when it comes to probable cause, well, if you have probable cause, then you don't need someone's consent. So that's not an exception. We'll have to we'll have to look at the reasonable suspicion. Okay. And then my other question was under data collection. You include collecting data about religion, ethnicity, national origin, disability. How how could a police officer collect such data appropriately? I'm sorry. I think we removed that. We caught that later on and and removed it. I think it's not in the latest draft. I know I removed that in some place. But we should definitely remove it if it's not if it hasn't been removed, because you're exactly right. You know, you wouldn't want to be asking somebody about those things in a traffic stop. Okay. All right. Well, if you'll work on some way to write this that around reasonable suspicion that, you know, makes it clear that a police officer who is, you know, thinks he thinks he's reasonable and is by nature suspicious could. I mean, it may have some technical meaning, but I I worry about how it could be interpreted. So I have a question and any of you can answer it. So in in the work you guys are doing, has there been any community or communities that have started doing in on police police stop traffic stop, like non police traffic stop that we're thinking not in the US. And so there are examples in there are some jurisdictions that are starting to they're they're trying to look at this like I think Berkeley, California, but none that we know of that have actually launched this. And while there are examples in other countries, there are lots of examples in Europe, but people have a lot of concerns due to the prevalence of weapons in the US, for example, that would make it more difficult to just directly apply those models. But that said, there's a I think of a distinction between moving traffic enforcement and stationary traffic enforcement. And a lot of the situations, I mean, first of all, a lot of the stops that officers are making simply don't need to be made at all. It's not that you need you would want a civilian to make those stops, you just don't need to make the stops at all. And then a lot of the encounters between a law enforcement and a motorist are someone who is, you know, there's an accident or an abandoned vehicle or something it's stationary and someone has called in. And that's a situation where you either don't need an officer to respond or it could be a civilian responding. And that type of thing has been done. It's just the the issue of, you know, civilians driving around and pulling people over that we don't know of any models of in the US. Okay, the reason why I thank you, the reason why I ask the question is most of the encounter that viper and marginalized groups encounter in our town has to do with racial profiling when we're driving. And that's what motivated me actually to join CSWG. I'm very concerned that in couple weeks we'll be done with our charge. And it looks like business as usual, if we don't have unarmed personnel to deal with traffic issues, just to have the police continue what they're doing and to tell them that you don't need to stop motorists randomly, it's not going to it's not going to work. I'm very fearful of people who look like me. I'm fearful of my kids, my friends, my neighbors who look like me that not much is going to change. The traffic stop I'm hoping is one of the key areas I hope that CSWG will accomplish. And I'm feeling very frustrated and discouraged. I just want to verbalize my feelings more than anything else. I'm scared driving anywhere in this country. It's not unique to Amherst. And then the thought of being pulled over is very traumatic for people who look like me. Thank you so much Ms. Pat. And it is very difficult to change a practice that has been going on for many years very quickly for that, for the type of traffic stops that I think you are referring to. It depends on the reason but often when it's a thing like oh the tail light is broken or really they just want to, they're just fishing for oh I think this is suspicious. That is the type of thing where we just want to stop that entirely. We don't need a civilian to pull the person over. We don't need anyone to pull the person over. And so we are, our recommendations would prevent the police from being able to pull the person over and saying oh yes this was allowed under Amherst policy. But your concerns are very important, very important. Mr. Brent Jones. And then Mr. Say to the lead folks, I appreciate in your use of the word prohibit. Prohibit the police from making, you know, that that's been very useful. We are within the next few days producing a final report in which we want to, we will copy from the leap report and attach a copy of the leap report in the appendix. It would be very helpful if you could notify us each time you make a change or give us access to the change history in some way in Google. I'm not sure how that works but from here on out we're, you know, we've got to create a PDF even though you're operating with a Google doc. Understood. We'll be sure to document that and alert you when we've made any substantial changes or pertinent changes. Even insubstantial ones. Thank you. Ms. Ferrara. All right. So, I mean, the report I liked it a lot. Of course, I liked a lot of what you all included here in terms of, you know, a lot of the recommendations, you know, like the sunset kind of the cause or whatever it is called. It's very important. I didn't even, you know, when because their policy sometimes is so cumbersome to really pinpoint some of those things it was really important to pinpoint that because how can you kind of really hold someone accountable if you're sunsetting what they've done within a year? You know, I mean, that that doesn't even make any real sense to me. But I think maybe something that might be a little bit helpful when I was looking at the report might be almost kind of like a summary in the beginning to kind of lay out some of the important portions of what you all are talking about because I hear what Ms. Pat is saying and I'm in agreement with it, right? Which is, you know, we really want to know some cutting edge kind of information in terms of how to transform, you know, how the police are doing things. Because, you know, eventually we want to diminish the police and hopefully in the future not need the police in their totality, especially this version of the police that we have, right? So for me, it's kind of like if there was like an executive summary in the beginning like, okay, these are kind of the summary of recommendations that we're making and this is why that might give us some context or some information right off the bat that will really kind of say what it is that, you know, that you're recommending and that will be useful in terms of us utilizing in our report and also communicating it to, you know, the town. Because there's going to be a lot of resistance around this. And for us, you know, in terms of what we're talking about with, you know, BIPOC communities and BIPOC communities feeling safe, we really want to roadmap for making those changes. You see what I'm saying? And it's critical for that. And that's why it's kind of like, you know, how do we make sure that when a vehicle is moving that BIPOC people are not going to get stopped by someone who is armed, right? Because a lot of times when they're being stopped, they're being stopped because of racial profiling. And then what happens is that the communication from when they're stopped and when it goes awry happens very quickly. And here is this person with their gun on the side that makes, you know, BIPOC us, me, right, my children, my son who's 17 and driving now, you know, totally afraid that something's going to happen to us. You know, it's not something that we feel safe. Like I, like I, you know, like I've told to my colleagues, when I call the police, it's really under, I mean, it has to be like, I have no other choice, you know, that because for me, I don't see myself as, as getting help from the police. I feel it as, Oh my God, what did I did going to actually think I did something wrong? You know what I'm saying? That's how I always kind of interpret the interaction. So, so that's why it's critical for us to really kind of get some type of executive summary in the in the beginning to really kind of showcase the step by step roadmap in terms of how it is that we can make our recommendations so that the town can actually hear it. And so that we can make some of these changes. And then, and then, so I want you all to respond to that. But the second important part, which was Lisa, you had brought it up and I know that Russ had shared it with myself and Brianna, who were the ones that are working on the report is that, I mean, I get it that it would be important to get the police, you know, their feedback in terms of some of the things that were, were, were putting in this report. And we actually did some of that with the part a portion. But with this part B, it's been very, you know, that we have, we haven't had time, you know, it's been really quick, we've had to do things. And for us, it's critically important for us to just get this information out. You see what I'm saying? And we have to get this out as opposed to kind of waiting or not do it just because we didn't get the feedback from the police. But I want to just kind of put it out there that it's just, we're at its critical juncture, and we do want transformation, as opposed to things staying status quo, which was obviously not anything that we wanted to have happen. And that's why we gave so much of our time to this. But, but yeah, in terms of my first question, is that something? Oh, sorry, and I have one more. In terms of the data collection portion to that you all did put in, like, you know, which was very good about sharing information, another thing that would be important would be one, how do they collect that information, right? Because we had, we had debates about that, you know, they just obviously self identify like, like identifying eyeballing it type of thing. Because in terms of asking someone, what's your race, what's your ethnicity, blah, blah, blah, that can be interpreted as discriminatory. You know, so why do you guys have any experience with that? And then two, how they should be providing that information to, you know, should it be a dashboard, should it be, what's the way to really provide it to the community? Because transparency is not just collecting it, but how, how do you share it? You know, so if you guys can include some information on that, that would be also important. Sorry, I know I asked you all a bunch of questions, but I just wanted to make sure. No, I think I got it. So let me, I'll sort of go in reverse order or jump around a little bit. I totally appreciate the feedback that this was a time sensitive thing, and you didn't have a time to include other voices and totally understand. It's again, it's my recommendation, our recommendation, whatever you can implement, great, if not, totally fair. As to the executive summary, can you sort of give me an example of how you're thinking that works or an example of where we could do that? And if you don't have an answer right now, I'm happy to have you email me sort of how you're envisioning that. I think I'm just not quite getting it. Yeah, what I'm thinking is like just to some, you know how you, you, you had everything set up separately and stuff like that, right? And there's each, just kind of like a couple of paragraphs in the beginning where you just kind of, you know, summarize, okay, we, you know, this is the recommendation that we make of consent. This would recommendation to kind of put it like in the beginning, you know what I'm saying? But with that, like when you're doing it, to kind of put it as a almost kind of like if you do this, then this is the change that you can expect, you know what I'm saying? Almost kind of like what you were saying, like, have it be very simple, very easy to read and you know, because with this even we're getting into, like us obviously we're going to do it, but let's say someone who's really just trying to get that information right up front, right? And get what you're trying to say right off the bat. I'm talking for anyone, you know, off the street that's trying to read this and get okay, what are they really saying and don't want to read, you know, 15 pages, you know, couple of, you know, right in the beginning portion, you're okay, you're going to find the detail below. But this is what I'm, this is my summary over here in simple terms, right? It would be very helpful. Sounds good, yeah. And then to the data piece, I'm going to look at Amos and see if he had any thoughts on that. Sure. And I will say on the executive summary, I think that's a very, thank you very much for bringing that up. It's a very good point. We, there were a lot of things just because we were trying to finish this at the last minute that we could have done. One, one thing that comes to my mind, I think we were thinking of the report in terms of the formatting, as far as if the police are looking at this, what is going to avoid their alarm bells? I guess, and you know, if that makes sense, it's how do, what is the best way to explain things so that they understand, oh, maybe there is a problem here with how we're currently doing things. And so, you know, if you start with an executive summary that says, ban this, prohibit that, rewrite this, right from the beginning, they're saying, oh my God, this is, they're trying to burn down the whole building, right? As opposed to, you know, these kind of explanation of the problem and then hopefully by the end of that section, then they see, oh yeah, okay, maybe that does need to be changed. That said, if, you know, I wanted to explain that, but we are happy to, you know, to do an executive summary because if you're talking, as you said, if you're talking about people in the town reading it, yeah, they don't want to, you know, have to come through a 15-page report for what are the top five recommendations here. And I think it could be, it'll be an and both, you know what I'm saying? Can you hear me? Yeah, yeah, yeah, great because it was just showing on my screen that I was muted, too. But no, I'm just saying it can be an and both. And for me, you know, for me, still, my audience is, is the people, you know what I'm saying? I want them to be, to know what we've done throughout this process. So that's why I think kind of starting with that in the beginning and then with the police, you know, yeah, there might be alarm, but then they're going to be like, oh, wait, wait, let me read more about it, right? And it's below. So it's not like we're hiding the ball because information is there, you know? So if they try to say like, hey, wait a minute, why are you, where are you coming from this? Well, on page blah, blah, blah, there's an explanation, you know? So, yeah. No, thank you. And on the on the data collection and transparency piece, you're exactly right. Those are two very different things, you know, collecting it and then actually sharing it. And we did not. So one of the problems is we didn't receive documents that showed, you know, we received the policies, but not here's the form that they currently fill out in X and Y situation. So we don't have a way to say, here's what's, you know, here's what needs to change because we don't know what they're doing now. And the same goes with transparency. We're not familiar with what is currently being done. So, you know, just based on lack of time and not having those specific things, we didn't make recommendations in that area. I think that, you know, we tried to put in some points about what other jurisdictions do as far as data collection. And you're right, it is just based on site because you don't want to be asking people sensitive questions. And so I was glad that Russ brought that up, but we'll make sure it's not, you know, that those more detailed things are not included in the, in the report. The question about transparency. I'm not sure if there's an easy way to borrow best practices from another jurisdiction. I'll have to, I'll, we'll think about that because, you know, it may depend on the computer systems that people are using or how does Amherst share other documents as far as can, you know, can it share the information from the police the same way? It's just an area I'm not quite as familiar with to be able to say, oh, these are best practices and can be borrowed from this other place. But it is a really good point. So we can definitely try to come up with something. And I know that you're really under time pressure. So, you know, it, I know you mentioned that, you know, deadlines coming up in the next few days, I think that was you Russ. So if you want to tell us kind of a specific time by which you need things, whether it's tomorrow or Monday, that will help us really focus on getting you as much as possible by the deadline. All right. So let's let me check with Brianna. What's your sense of when do you really want to have this to the resident? Can I just interject quickly? I mean, the town council has, I know that they usually need to have things a week beforehand. But the other part is that they haven't given us a lot of time and we've been working feverishly to get everything done. So my thing would be to push them back. I mean, I know they need to get it, they usually get it a week before, but maybe this time they need to get it, you know, three days before. You know what I'm saying? Because it's just not fair to us, you know, for us to be able to have everything. Yeah, it is going to be a 40 page report and we do want them to read it before the meeting. Yeah, I get it. But Russ, I'm sorry, work over the weekend. Work over the weekend, just like we've had to do to get work done. You know, do what you got to do. Read it. You better be ready. Better be prepared. But do what you need to do. But my thing is we need to be complete, though. We can't also rush it at the end, make mistakes or not have a leap do what they need to do in terms of information because we need to get it to them a week before. I'm sorry, you know, they get it three days before. They need to read it. But go ahead, Brianna. I would say giving it to them by maybe Wednesday of Thursday of next week to give them a whole weekend to read it would be good. I do agree with Deborah. We still have to do the graphics and the picture part of it, which is probably a bunch of formatting to do after we finish. Yeah, so I think that if we could have it by maybe Monday or Tuesday and we can plan to get everything to win by Wednesday or Thursday. And also just because the ADMHA still hasn't sent us their report. So that's kind of up in the air. So I think that will give us time to. Yeah, if we had things by the end of the day on Monday, I think we could we could turn it around. Okay. And if you have time to ask some municipalities about their dashboards before then, I would, I'm not looking for it in the report, but I'd love to know, you know, what did it cost them to have it programmed? And was there some canned software that they started with? One of the things we're up against is apparently in the next year or two, the police department is going to have to change their basic data system. Something about changes in state law and they're part of a collaborative with other, you know, whatever. And, you know, but my assumption is that any good data system, any new data system should be able to export data to an Excel spreadsheet. So if we had a dashboard that could draw data from an Excel spreadsheet, maybe that would, you know, make it workable even if they if they have to change their data system. But let me ask one other question. Are you aware of any places that have tried having police officers take their best guess about somebody's race and then offer drivers the opportunity to correct it if they want to? I thought I had read this somewhere and I can't find it. I will say that in my experience with officers that I've worked with in my region and across the country, I've never heard of that. I'm not saying it's a bad idea or it couldn't be done. I'm just saying that I have a direct answer as I have not heard of that. And Russ, I wanted to make a comment about the data collection because different data is only as good as two things. One, what the officer inputs and and two, what officer or dispatcher inputs and two is the type of system you have and what its capabilities are. So if I were going to make a recommendation to you guys that if they are going to build out a new system in the future or they do need to remodify some of the things they are doing now, I would say it might be a good idea if you guys gave them an example of this is the type of information that we would like to see on an Excel spreadsheet to be available for the community to look at. And they may not have ever adjusted their current database to be able to do that, but they may be able to. So or at least into the future when they're looking for new, they know what they need to be compliant with what the community would like. So I would probably come up with something on your own and say these things are important to us. We think they should be transparent and immediately available upon request. Ms. Pat. If I may, I think, Leap, you guys have done tremendous work in a very short period. I truly truly appreciate the effort you got put in here. As a black woman, I do not trust that APD will ever change because that is a pattern. In 2004, the select board then created a committee, racial profile committee to come up with one page that police officers could use when they stop motorists. I attended some of those meetings. It didn't go anywhere. There were police officers, there were personnel from APD who attended the meetings. It was very intimidating just to have BIPOC and white allies and police be in the same room. It wasn't very productive. There were two meetings that went on. After the meeting, you will say BIPOC folks, marginalized folks discussing what we're supposed to discuss at the meeting. The short story was a form was produced. APD never implemented it. It was never used. The parent who championed the racial profiling form jacked hazard through the town meeting at the time. It was never done. I do not have faith that anything will change. It's a good exercise that we're doing here. The fact that the police will still be in charge of traffic really worries me. I won't lie to you. On that note, what are your thoughts about camera? Because I know surveillance is controversial in my communities. I want you guys to weigh on that. I wasn't sure if you guys plan to weigh on Crest Program. The fact that it's not going to be 24-7 programming will just lose credibility. If we're not going to have a 24-7 Crest Program, it is set up to fail. It's not going to work. The data that is used to come up with part-time Crest scheduling did not account for bifurc folks and marginalized folks who do not call the police. For me to call police, it would be extreme. I almost never, never do. Because I don't trust the police. And I come from a family of police. My uncle is a police officer. I have a lot of cousins who are police officers. And still, it's the blue code. I do not trust. This is not about race. To me, police is scary for me. Thank you. Amos, do you mind if I take part of that and then I'll let you answer? I want to take the camera part. Sure. And then I'll let you answer the last part of that. Now I forgot because I wasn't going to address it. So the cameras, Pat, I'm assuming you're talking about surveillance cameras, not body-worn cameras, but surveillance cameras that police put out in the community. All of them. Is that what you're talking about? Everything. Is that what you're talking about? Yeah. Okay. So in Dayton, Ohio, the police, in order to, they ran the data for the city and wanted to find out where are the most stolen cars, where's the most violent crime happening, and they put cameras up in specific areas without partnering with the community and getting the communities buy in or blessing for. And what happened was it was a huge pushback and now the cameras are gone because they put them up in communities where we had people that are undocumented. A lot of people that I work with were very, very concerned and or they put it up in African American communities. And they thought of all the communities in the Dayton area, why are you putting these cameras up? The optics were horrible. And they didn't consult with the public. And I actually called the chief myself and said, are you getting this feedback? Because this looks really bad. And they realized they had not consulted the community. They took the cameras down. So I think cameras is a broad term. And typically I would say I'm not for them unless the community says, you know, for example, we know that we've had children, somebody's trying to take children from this bus stop. And we want cameras on this bus stop to see who's driving around who's trying to prey on our children. And it's a community buy in effort. Then I say, you know, there's always exceptions where maybe that could be appropriate, but not without the community's buy in and blessing. So just typically setting up cameras to read people's license plates or catch people walking around, though popular, and though they can justify, you can justify it depending on what angle you're you're pushing. If you're not living and working in those areas, it's not justifiable without people that live in those areas are buying. So that's my take on campus. And and one other thing that I wanted to tell you that you're right, change is going to be tough. And change is not going to happen without you and the rest of the individuals on this group who are taking a stand that is above and beyond what most communities are doing. And so I wish that, you know, you could you know that there's not a rosy picture where there's going to be very little effort. It's just going to happen tomorrow. It's going to be tough. But I appreciate you guys taking the time and we will do our due diligence for best practices around the country to spell out the things to the police that we've talked about here tonight. We're going to advocate for the very things that we talked to you guys about. So we will have your back in those areas. So Amos, I'll turn it over to you. I hope you remember what the third question is. Can I just interject real quick on body worn cameras because you said you were concerned about all cameras of the state of Massachusetts police reform bill section 104 of that bill addresses body worn cameras. There's supposed to be a task force created to analyze and do an overview of what best practices on that would be going forward. So I just advise you to keep an eye on the state legislation and what comes out of that task force. Thank you. And I would advocate for body worn cameras because I think those those change I have seen personally when we had cameras on the car, it changed officers behavior because they knew they were on camera. And like the incident they know have gone back to that a few times with Deborah you brought it up. So that incident was caught on a body worn camera. And so I think those things are important. Can I just interject before Amos comes in in terms of what you were saying that that's exactly what I was going to talk about is the fact that you know in that incident in Dayton, Ohio, I mean they were using body worn cameras but yet and still they still did that. You know what I'm saying. So imagine if they weren't using it what else they would have done right? Maybe that man would have lost his life if they weren't using the body worn cameras but so yeah it's a good thing and I think you know obviously they should have it but in terms of what Ms. Pat and others on this committee has been talking about this working group has been talking about it's just like it has to be all of these things that you all are recommending plus the things that we're recommending for there to be change but it's the how right? How is that going to happen because you know we've had things for years you know where we've tried to have the APD and you know other other agencies within town that are you know just kind of you know white focused and not dealing with all inclusivity of all other groups. So it's that part of how does that happen right? We can make I mean we know that right? You all are making all these great recommendations. We're making a lot of recommendations but are they going to take it seriously? So for me the other part that would be good you know when you all are thinking about the fact that you've worked with a bunch of other departments you know nationally is maybe citing you know one that has been successful and the how. That's why I keep on talking about the roadmap right because the thing is is that you know most often all of these recommendations all of the great ideas that that we have and you all have don't come to pass you know what I'm saying? Because there's that resistance it's entrenched because of the history right because of the history of why the how the police were created which was to bring back fugitives from African fugitives back into slavery down south you know I mean when you have that kind of history it is very difficult to change it even today in this day and age when 2021 soon to be in 2022 we're still dealing with a lot of the same things from the inception of when the police were created you know which were the the patty patrols and all of those things. So I want to pose that to you all. Culture that's how that's that's how it ultimately has to change is you have to have a leader which you may have now and a leader supported by a town and community that will be able to influence and develop other leaders and spread that influence through his troops and to not only accept these type of recommendations that are based on what the community's desires which police do work for the community I mean they're pros professionals that are supposed to serve the community so that's what it's supposed to be about and who a culture that will embrace that and so if you don't have that culture that runs through the department you're exactly right a lot of the things that you're talking about right now are going to be very very difficult to see realized. I'm sorry to that's that's quickly Tom I I have to go in like three minutes so I just want to try to quickly address Ms. Pat's question about the crest stuff and you know I I think that I'm glad that you brought this up because we definitely don't want a part of our recommendations to undermine the the program and you're right that you know this issue around 24 seven this is a major it's an important issue to to raise we since we submitted the this preliminary report we receive some more information that will be helpful in estimating how much calls will increase it's a very rough estimate because it really depends on how much faith people have on the program and things like that but that will enable us to add in a factor for how many more calls would come in through basically a direct line like oh okay I don't have to call up the regular dispatch center I can call the responders directly and so I have you know a trust that that will you know that that's okay and so so we have a way of adding that in we will be adding it in this was just the preliminary report um and we even with the you know even with the current scenario if there's nobody responding between you know three and seven a.m. um we there there would be somebody uh available on the phone so that there is at least that level of you know can around the clock care of some type even if it's not available in person at five a.m. that there's a person available on the phone at five a.m. who can then say you know here is the time at which someone can come out there it'll be a few hours um so we can we can certainly talk about that further um and I'm so sorry that I have to jump off um but that I'm glad that you brought that up because that's a really important point thank you nice to meet you I have a bunch of follow-up questions thank you so much for believing oh yes Lisa and Tom I believe can can stick Lisa and I will stick around yeah okay okay yeah I'm so sorry thank you okay so um where do I begin I would just name the elephants in the room our town historically is known for putting issues that impact BIPOC and marginalize people on the back burner it's never a priority they find that we're not going to have 24 seven alternative community policing is the north uh startup for me the fact that we're not going to have a separate dispatch center for the alternative program it's not going to work I can tell you right now people who look like me will not be calling 911 even though it's the way the report is written um communication center no matter what we call it people call it 911 it's not going to work it's about what we're putting priority in this town MS is well resourced we have the resources to fully implement the recommendation that we made for Crest Program another issue as I was reading the excellent work you guys did like changing the title of the Crest Director to Crest Coordinator what the heck is excuse me what on earth is that why are we changing the title from Program Director to Program Coordinator to reduce the salary I think the Crest Director should have same level of salary like the APDG the chief the the head of a department I did not read anywhere in that report that says Crest is going to have a different department what is that this is something that affects BIPOC folks okay this is about reparation work as well so I am really um feeling that I've wasted so many months doing this work and it's almost like not much is going to change and people who know me know that I'm a very optimistic positive person but the more I try to be positive the more it's like no don't kid yourself man to have a part-time Crest Program to change the title to Program Coordinator doesn't make any sense to me except to say to put little resources for the most marginalizing in our town I'm not happy at all I'm not I will not be calling 911 for help if that's what we're going to be getting I will not be calling that so Pat I will try to address oh I'm sorry go ahead miss Pat I agree there's plenty to talk about about the the coverage and what happens during the wee hours of the morning and all but I'm not clear what you're referring to about changing the title because I got an email from from Jennifer I think today that describes that has the posting for a director of community responders safety and service and we got the salary up to one step on the scale so I read something in in the document about Crest Program Coordinator was that updated I read that last week so and some type of report that we received for Amos at some point it said that he had never that we had given the program it's in the job description one right and he had said he hadn't heard of any communities that had them as program directors as opposed to program coordinators that it wasn't part of the recommendation page I don't think I don't think it was part of the recommendation page it was when I saw that it was on the job description itself he had sent an email about his thoughts about the job description okay for the Crest Director and all he said was he hadn't seen it and listed as a director before he'd only seen it as a coordinator it has to be director it has to be well it is it is it has to be because we're hoping that a BIPOC candidates will get that job or marginalized candidates will get that job it has to be program director thank you for clarifying miss moisten Mr. Verne Jones is it okay if I just ask a quick question about the the reform bill and the record sunsetting oh sure I know that you had your hand up Lisa I was wondering so in under the contract part where it talks about record sunsetting it's kind of unclear it says this language should be removed in order to ensure appropriate accountability based on patterns of behavior I was wondering if it would be possible to talk about how we would go about doing that would that be something for our resident oversight board to do is that something that the town manager has to advocate for like just action steps so that we can have a plan to make sure we can follow that so that language actually comes from the cba so the collective bargaining agreement so that I think you're correct that the town manager is the best path to go forward to have that particular thing changed and that that's then tied to that collective bargaining agreement and won't be able to be amended until the 2022 and the new agreement but the path forward is whoever's on your bargaining team at the bargaining table with the police union okay so that I I think if we could just add that in the report that would be really helpful just so we know who to like go to to follow that through and then I just had one quick question about the post in regards to the training that they're working on right now were they tasked with creating new training or are they adding to the existing training so it's complicated a little bit of both it's it post is like post is new for the state of massachusetts you didn't previously have post they're tasked with overhauling how all of police everything is done so I imagine they'll be borrowing a little bit from what's existing to not reinvent the wheel that seems like a really big scope but they are going to be the final stop on what certification and defore certification for police throughout the entire state of massachusetts looks like wow and in regards to the process of doing that are they going to include the community and other police agencies like how are they going to go about making that change through meetings or so um they have a broad they have broad authority they've really brought authority first of all the post commission for the state of massachusetts is not made up mostly of police officers is made up mostly of the public um and it's it's different appointees either from the governor's office the state ledge the ag's office so these are these are civilians tasked with oversight some of them can have past police experience um so that they know what they're talking about and then their purview is is pretty much all of policing so they're tasked with um they were given finances to do this they were given subpoena powers they were given investigatory powers um so they can do whatever they would like as far as the legislation that's enabling them is written so um again keep an eye on them if you have questions they don't have a website open so if you want to say hey we'd like to be involved in your process we'd like the public records on what's going on that should all be available to you i think if possible it'd be really helpful if you could talk about um who the post is compromised of in our report just because i do think we do get a little bit of kick back from our resident oversight board in regards to membership not including police or former law enforcement so it would be good for that to be included sure i have a question for miss lisa and that is if you do um big further regarding the racial bias is that a law now in terms of prosecution if somebody were to fight lawsuit against police in terms of the state state the new state bill yeah so um so in the state bill it's saying racial bias i it doesn't really explicitly say how that's going to operate so i would imagine somebody would go to the state ag whether a citizen whether a fellow officer um and and ask for the state ag to investigate but it's it's seriously like two sentences in the entire bill and it doesn't explain what's going to happen so um if i see anything else i'll of course let you know but it was really really light on that area and then i would um also suggest following up with the state ag if that's something you're concerned about happening or how it's going to be effectuated because it didn't it wasn't any more clear than than that thank you so the reason why i ask that question i think it would be very important for this you know the um standing committee that will replace swg or even in our report for us to highlight this and for us to do some public education to let people know because i i didn't know about this if if if people who look like me and marginalize people feel that they have another recourse because i can tell you right now if i didn't complain locally has not worked it doesn't get investigated it's not transparent but if people know that they are being targeted racially and they can you know go to ag you know it will give power back to people i think so i think it will be up to us in amers to make sure that people are aware of this especially my community thank you sure i'll i'll make sure um to include that specific language and i'll look and see if there's any further explanation of that but it really it can help guide you in the future but it really was light at the moment guys if we could step back to the union uh talk here just for a second i wanted to give you guys some insider information that may be able to help you when the union contract comes up i've been a part of contracts as a patrolman and i've also been part of contracts as assistant city manager so i've been at the extremes at both ends and never have i heard of or anybody i've spoken to this dealt con dealt with contracts while they're discussing the union contract what's the impact on our community what's our community think about this really in your case you have the town and you have a police union and they have bargaining chips on the table the police union wants a raise they want these benefits they want these clauses put in like you've got to drop all of our uh all of our uh discipline after a year you can't use it again and then the city has we don't want to give a raise we want to make sure we have management rights and and so there's a give and take of these bargaining chips without ever thinking about how does this give and take of these bargaining chips um how is that going to benefit our community so probably this you uh you don't uh you can't use our discipline against us after one year i would guess with a bargaining chip at one time that okay we'll give you that but we're gonna have to give you a one percent versus a three percent and so the community i never heard nor have i ever it ever crossed anybody's mind wow how's this affecting the community what would they think about this switcheroo in the bargaining so that's what happens typically um lisa's been in contracts before before two and so i would encourage you to again what lisa talked about your influence with the town manager and making sure that community had a uh a voice when these matters that do directly affect the community we're laying on the table so if that helps thank you yeah and i just want to echo what tom said because um the bargaining concept is so powerful and so few people pay attention to it because when it comes on a town agenda it's not a big red flag of we're going to the bargaining table about these things and what that means so i'm always encouraging people in my sort of no no zealot like a convert world of um read your town's agenda i mean obviously you're all very active but tell your friends read the town's agenda pay attention to what's going on and it is unfortunate that a lot of the bargaining at least in california i don't want to speak to massachusetts laws but in california there's a lot of um it's a closed session exemption that a lot of the discussions regarding contracts don't have to be made public until the contract is effectuated um but just keep an eye on it and the other way that you can get ahead of bargaining and what's in the bargaining agreement is to look at the town's budget and where the money is going that'll often give you a big idea of how that money is being spent and a lot of the way that that money's being spent is baked into those collective bargaining agreements so it's kind of a complicated process if you have questions about it i i did this for a long time i'm happy to answer them about that but it it can be really powerful to tell your community what's important for you them to not give away at that bargaining table and tom is exactly right that we do this back and forth horse trading to get to a middle ground to get to a consensus and usually it is money versus you know certain fringe benefits and and so if you tell your community hey this sunset clause is a problem and here's why and your town manager buys in it'll make him easier to go to the bargaining table and say the community is not behind this thank you so there's a difference between a town manager arguing and having the town's best interest in mind uh financially you know oh i don't want to give up too much because we have only have this much in our budget financially thinking that way and giving up towns the town's interest in mind when it comes to uh human uh everyday everyday life quality which sometimes things can be given a way that will affect your life quality but not maybe affect the town's budget so maybe they're not really seeing it and so if you have if you have some influence in there then you might be able to help direct that um mr bernie jones i just wanted to say thanks to things that uh lisa probably you wrote in the report we will certainly have that in our report to the town and we got a lot of people reading our last report and we also have written in that the new resident oversight board that we're pushing to be created must be consulted prior to and during police contract negotiations so we've got a we've got a shot at it anyway good luck it's all good implementation is where the challenge is did anybody have any more questions for um the members of leap well lisa and tom thank and amos i know he's not here thank you guys so much for your work um the report was great and we really appreciate you guys working on such a tight timeline to help us put together this report and go about making some change in amos thank you so much for having us yeah we're honored to be able to even be part of this discussion with you so thank you and sorry just before you all go just saying so monday by the end of the day just together let's check lisa tom where are you in the country i'm in new orleans oh wow today i'm in southeast ohio but in the last couple weeks i've been in malay and houston texas and date in ohio so i've been if you could see me i'm very tan right now i just didn't want to end of the day in malay you know i mean that's right end of the day in norlands is fine yeah it's been an honor thank you guys very very much thank you guys so thank you thank you take care okay i thought that was good yeah it's not easy for them to be able to post something for us i'm such a short timeline yeah i think it's amazing what they produced in a short time yeah and i don't know thank you of you for working so hard you know to produce something that will be presented to tan council so i know it's been very busy for you guys thank yeah well a lot of it goes to ross i mean yes he's been doing a lot of the kind of and then sending it to brian and i and then we had it and put in comments and changes and all this other stuff so it's it's a team effort for sure that's off the rough rough stuff and just so you all know this this group has this committee has moved me to get microsoft word not google docs so okay um i'm revisiting our agenda now and i'm also looking at the time so it's 709 and we still we still need to look over um the report for part b and look at the updated pages 15 through 29 um bruce would you be able to pull up that now or maybe i can let me sure i can i will be back momentarily uh let's see do i have a screen sharing yes i do okay so let's so again what what are we thinking about brianna like in terms of once we get the information from leap let's say on monday as long as we can get things to you which obviously is the three of us kind of working mostly like um by wednesday then that'll be good yeah i think wednesday will be good but what about in terms of the um graphics and the color and all that so i'm thinking if we can get everything if you guys can get everything to me by noon on wednesday i can probably have the report done by five p.m wednesday and two council members by then um i don't know what the group had in mind for like pictures and graphics or if i should just use some of the content from before if there's anything new you all want to send me yeah it'd be good to have some pictures but i don't know if we have anything new i could reach out to um art keen maybe from the indy he had provided pictures before yeah that would be good if you could if you could reach out to yeah to our and see if there's new pictures that we could use it'd be great to have other graphics i mean other pictures are we going to see the the report before it gets sent to the pan council i'll show it if we want to give feedback so the subcommittee because i'm not you know i don't think i've read the updated draft yeah i'll try to read it well what what i would propose is that we let's see this is thursday can we set noon saturday as the deadline for yeah if that if we had stuff from the community safety working group by noon saturday then we could incorporate that and i think what's what we also need is i don't know if it's a voter just a decision by consensus that you're going to authorize our the three of us to make revisions based on input from this group and from leap um and in other words we'll sort of approve tentatively approve it tonight or something and then but you'll authorize us to make changes and and then not see it again before it actually goes out is that is that going to be working yeah i like to say it before it goes out not that i would add any additional but i think i think it's in it's in pretty it's in good shape right now i mean it's actually yeah right as of this afternoon it's it's a report that that could go out except that we don't have the admha stuff on the any uh creating an anti-racism culture on the police force are they supposed to come tonight yeah so they were supposed to come tonight but um the person presenting got covid and his two children got covid um we yeah we responded and requested the report but have not heard back yet we're hoping to get it by tomorrow so we can work it into the report okay but so you know the reason why um and you guys have done tremendous work and time and energy and everything is around the traffic control if lip is saying that it's never been tried they're just recommending for the police to stop trap you know like traffic stop period i mean what are people thinking because it's shocking to me tonight you know i assume that some you know some communities have started doing doing that well what i i what we did so far is we took the prohibiting consent searches prohibiting low-level pretextual stops we took those out of the traffic section and put them in the police department policies section so that they could be implemented uh immediately and what that does is leave the traffic control and enforcement section basically the creation of the unarmed um group and i i don't know you know how how we feel about that but that's that's the way it's currently set up and the report so what what i don't want to see happen you know given the history of town council okay if lip is saying that there is no such community that have you know have alternative you know traffic control personnel i would like to see a language that state that a pd that you know should not do any traffic stop because with that a strong language like that and if you know the town manager or the town council or you know apd refuses what we're proposing what is the point of proposing it in the first place i don't want to recommend something that is not going to get implemented is it realistic if we still want to push the idea we could do it is ultimately what i would like because i help um you know craft some of the language there well i mean i think that's where i was trying to get at i'm hoping that when they do the revision and they put the kind of like summary of their recommendations in the beginning it'll be clear that that's what they're communicating right that know you know that the police not do pretextual stops and and and those types of things right off the bat i think that would be helpful i mean in terms of the fact that no municipality is seemingly no municipality has had kind of unarmed traffic folks do that work even though we do know that like Berkeley and others have had you know a version of it right like they go they they do a bunch of stuff without kind of falling short of doing this unarmed group even though they've been recommendations but they haven't put it in place you know Berkeley actually Berkeley actually voted it yeah voted it exactly haven't been able to implement it because state law doesn't permit it okay so that so that's the thing so the thing is it's been voted and and that's what i'm saying it's been short of like implementation so i i don't think it it it's a bad thing for us though to recommend it you know what i'm saying and then still still put it out there even though others haven't been able to you know make it happen right because the thing is is that all of what we've been trying to do has been out of the box for for Amherst anyway you know what i'm saying i know that obviously for Crest has been other versions of community respondents but we have a version that's different from other versions and other municipalities right but we still move forward with it because other municipalities did contracted folks they did this and they did that whereas we wanted you know this this department to be created that would be the Crest program so so my thing my opinion would be yes you know let's take a lot of what Leap is recommending right as and then hopefully that will have that backing but still let's go further and recommend what we need to recommend based on everything that we've researched and what's specific to Amherst and what we think would would be helpful for communities especially BIPOC communities here in Amherst so thank you um for saying that what i'm trying to get at is and i'm imagining what people who look like may will feel after CSWG N it would be nice to share with people who look like me i said guess what one of the accomplishments with CSWG hopefully is that we're recommending no more traffic stopped by the police period i mean is that practical is what i'm you know i will i would like that language in our document no more traffic you know traffic stopped by APD Ms. Pat there are i can see you know my people feeling relieved but they will not be driving and be careful that somebody will pull pull them over for you know stupid excuses thank you Mr. Vernon Jones then Ms. Ferrara yeah i what we are recommending and i'm it's not actually in here yet but i have a proposal to add it is that the police part the police be prohibited from making stops for a whole list of things broken lights turn signals storming you know it said a whole lot of things and that if the police department won't make that as a policy change that the town council voted as a bylaw yeah i mean i don't know whether we can get that but i think that we we can't just leave it up to the police department helpful i think we got to have have some teeth behind it i can't see saying no traffic stops ever there are there are people who drive 25 miles an hour over the speed limit there are drunken drivers there are people who hit somebody and then flee the scene of an accident i think we we need the police to be able to stop those folks yeah and police have stopped people of color who are not speeding just because of their race that's what we have to say that's what majority of the stopping is when you get pulled over you are told you are speeding even in neighborhood roads how can you be speeding in neighborhood roads i mean we need to use very strong language at least to to make our time worthwhile with this group it has to be you know making a list APD will find other loopholes to stop people i mean of course i would like i will actually like to put it the other way around no traffic stop except for drunk driving situation accident situation you know speeding is very arbitrary and it's subjective i worry about putting in the language of speeding because that's how we get stopped people of color we get stopped many many times for the claim of speeding yeah i mean so you know just to kind of follow that i mean i guess we do need to find a way to to to communicate that because you know i do see what russ is saying in terms of like just saying no stops at all there are going to be those times especially right now right because it's not like the police are going away tomorrow you know we've we've recommended reduction of the police and so on so forth you know starting now and and to continue on but for a time being especially for situations where there is violence or you know egregious criminal conduct like drunk driving or a hit and run or a egregious accident or something like that you know for now the police need they'll need to make a stop right or or control that situation in one way or another so it's the how to kind of communicate it and you know it might be what you're saying like no stop however you know these would be some of the circumstances where it would be allowed maybe that's the way because if we do the list the other way it could be it could mean that they'll they'll say well well it doesn't fall under this list so therefore i can do it you know i'm saying so but we have to you know like you were saying miss pat it's not like we want to make recommendations too that just fall flat that no one's going to get behind also you know and especially right now so that's the thing that we need to make sure we communicate it in a way that it makes sense i mean thank you i mean i you know i appreciate mr ross you know wanting to come up with language and i get that the problem with you know listing you know what they cannot stop us from we might forget something and then they'll say aha but if we do it the other way around then i'm okay with that i'll be all right with that uh mr Vernon jones yeah i don't think we should try to come up with language i think we state the principle and then leap has provided for us a model act produced by lawyers from a center focused on equity uh at the national level uh that goes into goes into great detail uh and i don't think we should be trying to come up with the language either positive or negative when there are people who this is their specialty equity is what they're all about and leap recommends them i think we ought to use their language and if we if there's i i yeah i'll just stop there did i miss something was it in their report because i i read the report uh it was linked in their report i didn't i have already been linked okay okay i have i have now it's but i in the in either draft of our report i cop i i copied it out and pasted it in the appendix okay i'll i'll take a look okay you know anything that ordinary people going about their business driving getting pulled over you know your 10 you know miles more faster whatever anything that will relieve biker books driving will be very very helpful i think oh all this stuff let's see i'm not sure what you're seeing now oh um data collection can you go up i i'm sorry down down i saw the list go down i apologize keep um is it this one oh there are a whole bunch of lists here yeah okay i don't think it makes sense for us to try to analyze the language together tonight yeah okay um i'll take a look yeah one thing that i did not do after i've finished putting this together today i went for a walk and i got to thinking about you know there's so much stuff in our report i think at the end of the report we should add a summary of recommendations they kind of becomes a checklist of all the things we want them to implement um and i think you know that it'll make it easier for for town council the town manager but also for community activists to keep the pressure on about each of those things oh do we want to do what um Debra suggested to do an executive summary well we have a we have a table of contents that sort of talks about the issues to be covered um but i you know again some of these things i think we want to give the reason so we don't get people closing their minds before they understand why i also um bruce i've read this version uh i think today and i thought it was really good i do think that we should add before the conclusion a page on the stuff that we said we're going to get to in the last report but couldn't because we weren't given the time and resources to do more example so add i can i can add that and send it to you great so this is both again most of those things be referred to the resident oversight board now um let me pull it up let's see so yeah so i haven't seen this version you know while you're looking at yeah i haven't looked at this version so obviously you know we need to kind of look through it in terms of a summary of of the recommendations yeah again i think that that's a good thing but we do need to think about it whether we want to do it in the beginning we want to do it again i hear you russ it's almost kind of like what leap was saying in terms of their report while we don't want to kind of put it out there because then the police will get upset and then you know they won't you know i get that though but also you know who are we writing this to to if this is a 40 page you know document you know what i'm saying it's like if we bury everything at the end then people might not get to that maybe if they do see those recommendations right off the bat and they get upset guess what they read it because they're going to be like oh wait a minute what they put this over here uh why you know as opposed to you know kind of like just the ramble on ramble on ramble on for 40 pages and then at the end here we go here we go with the recommendations you see what i'm saying i just worry about that i i know there's this thing of like not pissing people off but it's for me it's not about not pissing people off it's about we i want the town council to vote most of this and i want to open their minds to the need before they get to oh here's what i really have to do i don't want them to go oh i don't think that because then their mind is closed when they read the reasons but i but it's this is not wait till the end for the recommendations this is right you know recommendation just you know description recommendations they they're sprinkled all they they're summarized yeah i mean there's a list of the areas at the beginning there the details are in the report and then at the end it there's a there'll be a checklist so that everybody could say did you do this did you do that that miss pat so i think we need to be consistent if we're accidentally to do executive summary i think we need to be consistent with with the entire report i think for people people don't read anymore you know people just want to get the headline what you know this group has been meeting for almost a year so what is their second part recommendation boom boom boom in executive summary well maybe i do not care if town council apd you know will get um upset you know of what we're recommending at the beginning as executive we're writing this for the marginalized people for bible folks who are also very anxious and waiting to read our report as well so if we're going to do it we have to be persistent if we decide to do it at the end then we need to let leap now for them to do it at the end yeah i i don't agree i think leaps report can have a very different format than ours but it sounds to me like what you're talking about is we need a press release sort of for the bi-pop community we need like a two or three page summary of the whole thing or maybe or maybe a one page summary you know what whatever length you think people will read i think this report is this report is what's that sorry finish up i'm sorry i think this report is written for the town council and the town manager it's written for the people who have the power to implement the policies i don't say it that way i see it the reason why we've got together is because of racism of police brutality whether it's psychological emotional physical that's why cswg existed and i can't speak for everybody i'm hoping that our report is will actually be speaking to the people who are most impacted more than anything else is the way i say it and for me i mean i do have to say that too i mean that's why i said that to leap and and that's what i think too you know it would be important to kind of make sure that even though yeah we want town council and town manager to ultimately put these things vote these things into into existence but we want to make sure that we're communicating to the bi-pop community you know which at the end of the day you know who's going to have the time to read a 40 page report even though of course that information is there and the ones that want to sit down and read the 40 pages hey it's there you know but the ones that just want the quick you know summary hey i have 15 minutes and that's all i have because i need to go to my next shift right and to go to work they have that 15 minutes and they feel like okay now i can i can take part in whatever discussion because i have that 15 minute summary um and it didn't get lost in in something else um so and and i think we could use that for a press release i think it'll be important to do a press release still to us i think it would be important to do that put it out there but also included in our report that let me put it in a different way assuming that i'm not part of cswg and that's why i'm reading all this in details to make sure that you know i feel comfortable with what we're putting out assuming that i'm not part of cswg and you know my life is impacted by police action and a group come up with this type of report i don't want to read everything because first of all i don't trust i'm as police so what i want to read is what is it that this group has come up with i want to say it like boom boom boom boom when i have time maybe i can come back and read it that's the reaction you're going to get you know from people so i think it's very critical that we have that executive summary of what we're proposing and is the is the responsibility of the town council so do that i do delegate and read the entire report if they're going to make informed decision to vote on whatever recommendation that we make i feel that we should be focusing more on the most impacted people this is what this document is for and i don't want to be part of something that in the future somebody will say oh your grandmother great grandmother participating in this and this is the way it came out i don't want to be part of that we're not writing this for time council i'm sorry because yeah you know most of them did you know what i'm what i'm going through is not what they go through miss pat thank you so much for saying that i think what you said about people having time to read it really resonated with me because i just speaking for myself i only got involved with town politics when i had the time and i think a lot of people have engaged with us through forums or surveys i think it would be kind of nice to have just a cover page with an executive summary with the recommendations that we have numbered out and maybe that can also be a way to encourage community members to join us for our presentation yeah okay i'll work on an executive summary thank you i know it's my work thank you thank you so what are we saying about traffic control again we're taking out the one we recommended the subcommittee right i think we should take it out because oh there's no subcommittee recommended that that's out okay good okay we made that decision last time okay let's still in let's see we're here oh we're still in the appendix here what is currently in is this section i'll read it later i think i read it yeah well you wrote most of it yeah yeah you know which goes through some of the data about you know review some of the data out of our 4-day report actually it's Brianna she did some of this we're writing jordan um seven gen you know it says places like berkeley and brooklyn center have voted to move traffic control even new york has done some been recommended for some we find this recommendation fits our community best and it's critical to move on to ensure the safety of bipoc community members and then here are the bullet point recommendations got it so i so what are we keeping this everyone that's not going to get implemented i think we should still keep it okay yeah me too okay well for me i i guess i just need like what what's going to saturday everyone get gets feedback can you all hear me yes okay because it's saying it my internet okay just asking again for a minute yeah yeah yeah why don't you go ahead then i'll stop going try again debor i said i'll come back and talk to you all that okay okay so are we are we waiting for bip i'm looking right now at um just pages 15 through 29 so the traffic control was like three four three pages and then it looks like from let me just from 15 on is really just incorporating leaps recommendations which i'm okay with no leaps said these things so well i decided it was no reason to try to rewrite it and say it differently i i thought them um including the examples of different places was really good too yeah i mean i kept in the place where we had what we had written about some of the reasons why it's so important to reduce stops and what other places had done that that is ours but the rest of it is the stuff that's in the different typeface is all from leap and now of course they may change some of it and we'll have to cut it based it all over again but that'll be fine i would like to suggest that we move on and you know we because i haven't read this we cannot give feedback by saturday noon send it to miss moisten uh why don't you just send it right to me so can we do that everybody can write to me as long as i don't write back to everybody okay and then i can and brianna and okay and i can share i have a quick question before we move on to the next item in regards to this rough draft is everybody okay with adding in a section in regards to our last report on page 20 we had a list of stuff that we did not address is it okay to write a section on us not being able to address it because of time and resources resources okay because i'm looking at it right now and we did a lot of it but it's just i'm looking at for example the scale of police response police over time and workload um racial diversity and the apd and hiring practices stuff like that were not addressed resources and the fact that they didn't you know because of the lack of resources we weren't able to get all of it done you know so it does play into the time aspect too yeah to hire consultant yes exactly resources it's not yeah it's not because of our time it's because we need we needed help exactly all the effort we needed i'm in complete agreement i don't know if we should but i think it might be a good idea to keep in the appendix is the the different drafts of our ifb because when we started asking for it and we slowly had to shake it down yeah i think it should i i know i it's not petty but i think that it should be documented because we asked for the resources to finish the job the right way and i think people reading this later yeah i think and we need to amplify it when you guys do presentation uh to the town council yeah thank you for raising that Brianna and so my question beforehand can you all hear me now yes yes it's just in terms of like the deadlines for everything so just to go over it so saturday at noon um so should i also provide a feedback to you uh Russ like yes Brianna and i so everyone should right yeah saturday at noon and then you kind of look at the edits and then will you wait for the leap information on monday before you kind of send it back out to Brianna and i i'm thinking or how would that go and that's what i just want some clarity around that i i will just have to see how my time goes i will try to deal with folks stuff from our group first because i don't think the leap input will then will change that um i mean leap input will change the report but i don't think it'll change i don't think it'll mess with things that we say i mean if there are things that i think leap is going to comment on i may leave them till later but as soon as i get something done about putting it together i'll send it to you and brianna okay but i i can't you know i have other obligations i can't promise exactly when it's going to get done thank you we appreciate you very much thank you yeah that's what i was so is so is this in um what document miss moisten you're muted jennifer Russ sent it to me i thought it was a word document okay so we can just make yeah but it's hold on but but people use when you send it to people did you send it as a word dog you sent it in the packet it's a pdf right i sent it in the packet as a pdf but i can send it to the end i think i thought i forwarded it just your email to them but maybe i didn't but i can send it to the group as a word doc that that would be very yeah i'd rather have it as a word doc yeah send it to everybody as a word doc for sure okay thank you okay and then the one one last quick thing for clarity do we want to send out a press release to the community in regards to our recommendations of the presentation and yes oh would the group be okay i can work on the draft for that and i can share with the group would the group be able to edit that or would we be breaking open meeting law oh i think the subcommittee should do it oh okay yeah not to break open meeting law just to remind you we are not officially a subcommittee we are the oh sorry we are the group writing yes the individual is writing the report that's right yeah but i thought that that's why like if if brianna doesn't edit or she put something together can't you just get it out to or she's consented to jennifer jennifer can get it out to us and then we could just get the ad is back to everybody could write back to jennifer and then send it to the three of us even yeah yeah yeah well for our report but i'm seeing even for brianna's like press release yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah okay and what day you're going to do that just so i can look out like if it's on a weekend sometimes i don't i don't look at my email as much as i do during the week so as well you should not you should not you have a life decide working turn off your email notifications i just i don't i yeah like i don't want to you guys send it and then i've not done anything with it because it's the weekend and i know that we're under time constraints so if you can just tell me an idea when you'll be sending it so i can look at like anticipate it that would be better for me okay i could get that done by what's today thursday by monday and if people could send in their recommendation there are not recommendations there were a vision by tuesday and we could have it in we could send it to the gazette and to the indian wednesday i think that's too early but let's let's there's no reason to rush it but if we get it to them on friday even um i think we should get the press release out before the town council presentation yeah that's what i think too the press we need to help this up really amplify this really really good so that we you know people can come out so to watch um cswg presentation yeah i think part of the press release is to get people to turn out yeah okay yeah so for the press release yeah i think we should say it doesn't need it before thursday night and what i don't think the newspaper needs it before thursday night though they're not going to do anything they're not likely to do anything with the press release about a monday meeting if we if you get it out on wednesday perhaps all right well i guess i guess with jennifer maybe you can provide some of that information because i think what we what we're looking for is like a press release blast right it needs to be and whatever else but we need to have it on the website because whatever press release we're also going to be talking about the the actual council meeting and we want people to come out for that so we can have support just like we have a so whatever's the the news blast right to all the different places and and things like that sharing it obviously the the final press release needs to be shared with us so we can get it out to our social media and our networks and things like that we just need to do a blast so that everyone can show up for the 25th so we have a press release blast that includes and so you can send it to me and then we can send it out that way and then i can specifically make sure it gets to scott i just know like if you send it in like the deadline is oh yeah so it just depends on when you want it to be seen in the paper but i think it should also be you know the abc news and and nbs you know channel 22 news should have access to they haven't covered anything that we've done so i went by when jennifer do you think in terms of deadlines we should get well when do you want the blast to be done like do you want the blast to be done on for thursday do you want the blast to be done for friday i'd watch out for the weekend because it's the weekend but i would say thursday because friday people are not paying yeah thursday yeah so then i would have it to me by tuesday okay yeah it would be good if it went out thursday like the blast went out everywhere so it could be in everyone's minds now so brianna you'll have the press release ready for sunday yeah i'll work on it for sunday and then revisions will come monday and then finalize for tuesday yeah uh yeah we should be okay for because if you even if you do it after two o'clock like usually i think there's like a 130 deadline for the day before so if i have it for wednesday to give to them they should be fine okay that sounds good and if that doesn't work then i will reach out to you guys and let you know that we need to change that perfect um are we ready to move on to the next agenda item yes all right so the next thing that we have on the agenda is the crest implementation meeting follow-up so since we last reported to you guys about crest the position was rated at a level six i'm just going to screen share so that you guys can see the salary ranges really quickly can you guys see my screen yes okay so um the last time we had a crest implementation follow-up we were the crest director was rated at a level six i believe right now it's rated at a level seven because um russ myself and alisha went back and made some revision revisions on the job description to really embody the full role of supervision and leadership that this person taking this position will have um i think we advocated for a level eight though this week we went over the preliminary data that you guys had in the packet um and we talked about the shifts and what leap is suggesting off based off of their preliminary data and if it's not if the program is not 24 seven for the program to have somebody to be on call to talk to people and answer people during the night between three and seven a.m as leap suggested that there won't be many calls jen and russ did i miss anything did we decide about working four days on and two days off yes yes we decided that was the the most workable schedule i think i have a comment okay i have a comment thank you guys for pushing from level six to level seven i can tell you right now it will be very hard to hire a crest director at that salary it will be very very difficult with the with the amount of responsibility in my experience in negotiation we need to put in what we would like to see cswg so if the town manager decide to change the amount i don't want us setting for look so that the history will show that this group this is what they recommend that if you guys thought about a level a and i say push back we need to leave it at level eight and let's watch you know what town council and town manager are going to say publicly that level eight is not appropriate so i'm pushing for comparable this is what equity is all about we're hoping that we will hire a biker candidate or somebody who is much alive candidate and then to come on nicole and dine you're not going to get you know quality candidates for that salary i can tell you right now you're not going to get that miss pat i i completely hear you and i think that the thing that was the hardest to negotiate is just that we're working with an assist system that hasn't dealt with a program like this and we talked about why it's so important that this person this person's pay be comparable to the chief of police or the chief of fire but i don't know it's very difficult to negotiate that and i wish the meetings were recorded so everybody could be a part of it because there i do feel like there is a lot of negotiation and systems that we have to work within okay let me restate this this is what implementation team is recommending however when we brought it to cswg this is what we would like to see for the salary to be comparable to what the departmental heads on in this town i mean this is what social justice is all about we can put out that ultimately i know the manager will go for the whatever the implementation team recommended but the story needs to be told so the community like this is what we've agreed upon in cswg i just i think that that's a good idea um and the only thing i want to say about that you show but so first of all i just want to back up and say the implementation team's not recommend recommending the seven that is what we're told after it goes through its process that it is rated at so we've the implementation team at least the two co-chairs and rust have already said that they feel like this should be at the the rate of the police chief so it's not the implementation team recommending this that's that this is what the hr director and the town manager came up with through the rating system the other pieces i do suggest that you say we think it should be compared somewhere in the report or somewhere i don't know where we're gonna put it but comparable to the pd the chief of police but the only thing i'm gonna say about that is the chief of police has over 40 years of service which changes it drastically right so you need to find out whatever that base level for him would be right or mid-level or whatever but he's working under 40 years of service i'm thinking miss moisten miss ferrara i mean i think that's the thing it's just like asking what why is it not hitting that that level eight uh level eight grade right so because usually it depends on you know supervisory level how many people they're supervising a certain level like expertise that that level eight is having that it's not i mean i get what you're saying miss moisten that you know obviously the chief has this number of years however you know what is it that would get this person to that level i'm assuming you all have had this conversation so is there an answer to that as to why it's being leveled at seven as opposed to a eight what's missing in that director position that keeps leveling it at this lower level i mean i would take a look at what is listed at a level eight currently the different positions so brief you want to put this the chart back up and i'm not making any stake i'm just to make that very clear um i'm just saying if you this is where it was originally rated that's where it was originally with the other because it's community safety not public i don't know how to explain how they determined it that it would equal to like where the senior center director is and the town clerk and then you have but but all the other ones the ones that level eight now that you're reading like what meaning is like health and community service director human resources director director of conservation development so crest director why wouldn't it fall into that whereas the other one is assistant ip director assessor assistant the building commissioner the comptroller and the health director and the lsc director of recreation and the planning director so the only thing i can really only one of these positions that i can really speak on more is so each of these positions except for maybe the hr one is overseas and other departments like multiple departments so the health and community service director which we don't have that position for is supposedly overseas all the people that are in health and public safety from the level six and seven and above right so it they would oversee the senior center the veteran service the health department and amherst recreation department i don't know about the hr director why that's the director of conservation and development is also in charge of the inspections department the what's down there planning department which includes the zoning department and planning zoning and hold on let me just look conservation planning and inspections so those people that are on the eight oversee multiple departments and that's the only thing that i can really that was that i was told that makes the difference and i don't know about the library director in there either so except for there's multiple sites i'm sorry but if um this position pays less less than 90k you're not going to get quality because it's a lot you're talking you're talking about dealing with behavioral issues you know clinical notes so many stuff that needs to be done if it's less than 90k forget it you're not going to get quality you're not going to attract oh we could hire them as a lot of work i mean we could hire them as a 90 i don't like at 90 or at 87 i don't know like we we can hire them anywhere and i honestly to god think that the bigger concern is that the social worker is at a level two as opposed to the director being at 11 level seven but that's just the reason why we're talking about it and kind of putting pressure about it jennifer is because in terms of and this is why what i hear obviously right this is what i've done for many years in terms of diversity and trying to be more inclusive right is that to get someone you know quality that's BIPOC to come here to western mass because i hear this all the time jennifer we can't we can't get them because they don't want to come to western mass because one you're coming to a place that is majority white most BIPOC folks don't want to come to a place that's majority white right so one of the biggest carrots to get someone to move from the eastern portion of massachusetts or any other place in the country that has like down south or what have you that has more diversity or california right has more diversity is one is is is the money because people are not going to be attracted and then two obviously perks and benefits three is going to be saying that there's a community of color out here right and that there's some support there's this is that but the first carrot always is going to be money right and i don't i mean i when i'm going to track if we're trying to make sure that we have a diverse pool of candidates with money the adequate experience the first attraction to get them out here is going to be money so i understand that but then my guess would be that you guys need to have them be supervising or responsible for more than one department because that's what is happening with all of these other positions and so that's what do you name uh fp fpd two supervisors a pd um okay i'm not so but we're i'm at level eight because that's what we were just talking about level eight right and again i don't have any stake in this so i fully understand where you're coming from i'm just explaining it to you right all of the positions in level eight except for maybe the hr director which i don't quite a hundred percent understand has but it must be because of you know usually they're i don't really know but but the health and community service director the director of conservation the building commissioner and the library director all oversee more than one department right what different departments would like the library director over so my guess is the library is such a big they have the three branches and then inside of those three branches each of those branches have separate departments but for the crest director they're going to be overseeing the responder doing the clinical carekeeping and doing the ongoing training which feels like three separate things those are three separate things three separate it's a lot yes well thank you guys rewrite the and then send it back to me and then i'll send it back to them because i don't like i'm just anything less than 90k you're not going to attract quality by for candidate it's not going to happen but miss pad and deborah you are preaching to the choir right now we are all agreement i mean i think i've advocated for this advocated this way for a very long time so i'm i'm not the rule maker and i don't i feel like i get stuck in this place all the time where i'm not making the rules i'm trying to explain to where this perspective is coming from and how that works right they're not my rules and so we're appreciated and i understand that you guys are frustrated so i try to put that as put it aside but my goodness um you guys need to so i understand that they have these three things to be responsible but having three things within side of one department is still different than having four or five departments that have to report to you and so the difference there is that there's multiple things that are reporting to them and i fully agree but that's that's that's what what it is okay yep yeah and i mean jennifer i mean i hope you don't i hope you don't like misinterpret it's not nothing to do with you and we're appreciative you're trying to explain it you should i'm saying and i know it's frustrating for you right because you've been on the team on the implement you know part of the implementation team and kind of going back and forth with everything and we understand how the bureaucracy works you know what i'm saying so that part it's not in terms for us is just more so understanding it more on our end and what and i'm and i'm thankful that you're you're giving us you know some of the differences but it's in terms in terms of going back because we don't want this to fail right and what do i mean by that so for me when i say i don't want this to fail is that i don't want it to to kind of go through the rigmarole right the whole the process and then we get again the same old same old candidates right that we're going to end up with which is a non-diverse pool that ends up then getting a candidate there that possibly is not going to do what we we need this person to do right because the the the money's not there it's not going to attract the expertise so i guess the bottom line is because you all have been on there i'm only listening to it you know from the outside because i'm not on those team meetings is there anything that can be done for us to level up a little bit more to this level eight or at least to start at 90k you know and above is there anything else to be done i mean they can start at 90k it's not recommended so let me say that the overall the non-union wage scale moves two percent every year to begin with so like every uh fiscal year it is redone and it and it moves up to percent right and then within that time you get a step an annual step increase on your anniversary and then you get a cola so the the wage scale moves and then like every i don't i don't know five ten years they redo the entire thing to to match more of the cost of living so you can hire them at is at a nine we we try not to hire people over a step five typically but at a step five that's got them at 84 so the step eight is 92 at out of 11 steps so i mean there's no reason when they can't come in at oh wait i was reading the wrong one so that is the right one oh sorry so wait a minute what are you um wait wait can you go up a little bit please um brianna this is f y 21 this is old this is the wrong scale i will i i can go on the web right now and pick up the scale and we can look at it that way if you just give me a second well but the the question that ever asked is what can you now be done right and so you know we we actually met with a we insisted that hr meet with us and we got them to share with us as much as they would of the rubric that they use so we could look at all the criteria that they considered when rating a position and then we went back again to the job description and tried to write in everything we could that looked like it might you know trigger any of those points in their in their rubric to try to get it up to an eight and that got it from a six to a seven at this point i think all that's left to do is to advocate with the town manager either that he push it to an eight i mean hr can't they've got to go by their system but he could push it to an eight or that he you know come to grips right now with the fact that it's going to be important to hire at a very high step on that scale but i i don't see what else can be done and we've got to get this position posted and and i honestly wouldn't suggest having any other departments have to report to them as a new program so jobs jobs too big already yeah so 90 000 is a step four can you see this mm-hmm and then there's a 92 step over here there is no 90 on the seven it's either 89 or 92 and you have 90 here at a step four and it goes up to it you know it's a 10 000 dollar difference at the end so to be honest um some of this pay scale doesn't mean anything to me because you look at finance director on super salary scale it's not an accident that he came up to that are you saying if apd who has achieved who have 40 years of experience goes to apply for a job in another community they will consider that and we're just assuming that candidates who will be applying for the crest program who don't have any experience somebody with phd who wants to apply for crest program director in psychology that has psychology background for example you're going to offer that person 70k good luck finding such candidate we're just assuming that you know well i mean will not have experience if we're pushing for you know apd achieve have 40 years of experience we don't know what other people you know work experience has been before they apply for the crest program so i mean we're not going to come into any final resolution tonight my recommendation is when we do our report we'll say that cswg is really recommending minimum of 90 k forget about the the level or whatever 90 k minimum flat tracks high quality bipolar candidates so that puts it in different terms but what i was going to say is if you think about it um the largest amount of people have quit their jobs in the month of august right for unfair treatment and unfair pay we just had 10 000 people who are on strike from john deere there's another five to 10 000 that are on strike from kellox cereal all because of pay and unfair treatment so right now it is the employer's employees market it's not the employer's market it's the employee's market so if you're going to try and push without adding anything else to the job description i would use that to push because we're not offering any sign-on bonuses like even mcdonalds and burgherking have sign-on bonuses at this moment do we have we don't have any relocation funds going out right now either so if you're going to do something i would suggest that you use the way that the market is running now to try to have it switched to the that's the only thing i can think of because you just can't put anything else on their plate that's not already on that job description or you just say they have to come in at 90 000 which still i mean honestly you and you don't even want to do that because they can put them at the top of the six so we don't want that level i'm actually pushing for level nine actually so that they start from you know so i don't see a pd chief where where does it fall in here because the chief is both the chiefs are contracted oh okay i got the chiefs the town manager all have contracts okay this was helpful i'm surprised that we don't have relocation fees that was my question i don't municipalities don't typically because you know it's not i mean it's probably not best practice but i think at this moment municipalities are trying to are rethinking that because all municipalities are having a hard time hiring right there's a hiring issue for specific jobs we advertised for anthony's job and there weren't many applicants with that skill set or who even wanted to do it and then we advertised for the assessor and it was the same thing like there's just those jobs that have those specific requirements are hard to fill right now uh miss rara so you know just looking at the time when 8 13 i know yesterday was going to be until a i mean i can't stay on much longer obviously you all can continue forward i'm going to have to sign off by 8 30 so i guess my thing is in terms of the with the implementation and questions because i guess like miss pat you you probably had more information than i had you know in terms of obviously being in the in the know in terms of what's going on in the implementation team meeting because i didn't know about this this piece about um that there's not going to be a separate kind of number and also that it's not going to be you know you know there is going to be a number or there is going to be a different that was incorrect nobody said there wasn't going to be an i thought there was i thought miss pat you said something about the communication was that they still have to call in tonight 11 that's better there'll be three ways to call in but not directly but not directly i'm i'm actually i guess can you all explain this to me because i guess i'm confused we have we have not made this a spatch decision so nobody should be announcing that it's one way or the other crest recommended three ways to call in including a direct way but we have not addressed this because we haven't had the dispatch person with us to do it oh okay so that hasn't been decided no okay good and then what about the what about the 24 seven what is going on with that the 24 seven part is there any updates on that can i correct something um i'm not actually part of the implementation team i only attended once because brianna you know was not available but i'm not part of the press implementation program i did that but i'm saying what about the the fact that it's not going to be 24 seven i i guess that so so leap sent in the information and what what are they saying um so the preliminary data that they sent in in short one can you share or no um i can share because it's in the packet right yeah it is yeah just that obviously the packet was super long and i know i missed the the the packet is is super long um because every report is like 10 20 pages which is is definitely something to consider when you're making a report that you want people who this is not their forte to read yeah yeah and that's why that's why we were talking about the executive summary yeah i mean i'll take a stab on this i think perhaps the reason why implementation team is thinking of part time instead of 24 seven is the fact that town council only approved eight responders so they're trying to make it work or maybe that's why leap you know um recommended that would be wrong uh you guys are directing me i think we looked at the calls from 2019 and based off the calls in 2019 they did find that 35 percent of citizen initiated calls would go to crest and i think it was like 17 percent that were um from the cad but i think that they recommended the um two eight-hour shifts or two ten-hour shifts just because from three a.m to seven a.m there was um a very small percentage of calls that would fall under crest just from the data that's what they made the preliminary things off of as i recall the data showed that during those hours there would only be one call every three days so the thought was if you have somebody who's on call that can respond starting but they they call the crest number you know what is missing though is that a chunk of some of the residents may not be calling the police may not feel comfortable calling the police so the data is very unreliable i think i think i think the thing would be right that if the data is showcasing this which is 2019 pre-pandemic right which obviously makes sense right because pre-pandemic it kind of is more evaluative of what was transpiring and what a normal kind of date might look like at night so my thing would be okay if if we were going to go by this type of data like like miss pat said you know once we do have the responders there hopefully the thing is going to be that people are going to feel more comfortable especially if there's different ways for them to call in yeah that they're going to feel more comfortable and then they are going to call more so to the police right to not to the police to the responders to get them to come out so then what's going to happen is it going to be a process to say okay this is happening now we need to to have more responders on or is it going to be let's send this to the police because if we send it to the police and respond then it's going to be what miss pat is saying then then the responders is going to be like you know sabotage towards them but don't you think that's like at risk regardless if even if we have four responders on per shift and there's three calls then that third call has to go to the pd just saying on a on a regular basis i mean just on a specific night like even if we had four responders per shift right two teams of two per shift right one group is out on one call the other one's on another call and then another call comes in that's why you have the supervisor that has been eliminated we we recommended program director and then press um uh responder supervisors or something like that and that is even not been included anymore what i don't think i want miss pat how did you decide that hasn't been included from what i read from uh program yeah but that they're they're recommending stuff to us we're not i mean we the implementation team doesn't have to necessarily just because they recommend it to write it in that manner what the implementation team agreed to today was there has to be an understanding that if the work sort of rolls outside eight hour shifts those we will pay those those workers over time and that many of the calls that come in well we don't know the numbers but some of the calls that come in somebody really needs somebody to talk to but they don't have to have somebody show up right away now sometimes they do uh but my conviction is that with PARPA funds you know being spent over a three-year period if we find that there are you know we start getting a lot of calls that the data is shifts dramatically i i think we've got a strong case to add responders but i think we weaken our case if we hire a lot of responders for a time which currently doesn't show show calls but yeah no i think we get we get this program up and running and you know we have we have both a director and an assistant director or some sort of other leadership position we're still battling over what it's going to be called and what its responsibilities are that person can help out and um i think we i think we'll have enough people that we can handle a reasonable number of calls and if we start getting a lot more then we've got to go back for more money i don't think there's any question about that miss rara and then miss pat yeah and i think in terms of responding to you jennifer i mean you know for us we always wanted this to be a 24-7 program right to have it there 24-7 and to have it be fully stacked obviously for us we were saying four responders for each shift because we were like okay whatever's going to be able to be passable given the fact that the town is always saying we don't have money we don't have money we don't have money you know what i'm saying so you're right maybe four isn't enough you know but at this point what we have what we're going to a we've we've had to submit to right is is to leap analyzing the information looking at at the percentage of calls and then going from there you know and for me you know at this point i do agree with russ in terms of like that's been the resistance throughout this whole time i mean we can state it and keep stating that this is what we recommend this is what we'd like however because the town and and the powers that be come at whomever hasn't wanted you know because of whatever reason to to give us more than this is what we need to work with you see i'm saying so there's what we want but then there's what we're given and what we have to work with right and then there has to be that room for and we have to describe it the fact that if if things change we need to be nimble enough to then hire more people to be able to to add more hopefully as the program gains more trust from the community yeah and this is quite helpful because i think we as you say we need to both have a plan and to articulate that we need to be nimble enough to change and i think the implementation team needs to emphasize that even more than we have so it's really good to to get that input from you all okay so i want to add to what everybody have said so the whole idea of 24-7 when you're dealing with human beings you never know even if in the past from 3 a.m to 7 a.m it's been very quiet but if people know that they have other alternative to call instead of 9-1-1 who knows so fire department is 24-7 and they're always busy overnight now but the town never made a decision based on that like we won't staff fire department overnight because it's not always busy i'm as police it's not always busy at certain time of the of the day i'm sure or even night do we not you know staff 24-7 yes and we should do that same criteria from crest program anything less than 24-7 i'm not convinced we cannot put human life safety and you know in terms of money i get very irritated i think our our committee cswg we should continue to push for 24-7 the town manager and the council council may not implement that but i'm looking at the future when we are no longer on this planet and our you know future generation will read this anything less than 24-7 there's no i'm not buying that we need to put that in our report some council may not you know agree with us but we need to be consistent please fire department is 24-7 apd is 24-7 they're not always busy but i think it should be you know it's a it's a right thing to do to have fire department and apd 24-7 it should be the same exact criteria for 24-7 it should not change because crest program you know will benefit bifurc and marginalized people this is what equity is all about people right but i just what social justice is all about i just want to say that nobody has said that we couldn't do 24-7 i mean it's just the what it's just what they've put in their data based off of the call log i don't trust it i mean yeah i don't trust it the data is not valid as far as i'm concerned i don't buy it i mean if you feel like it needs to stay in line with the other public safety departments then that's what you put for i i don't know that anybody said that it can't be but you know when you look i think that they were looking they're looking at the data data can be manipulated i don't i don't trust it i'm sorry you know it comes with history i don't know you know people can put up whatever data they want in their own favor so i mean i think sleep is pretty good so i i don't know that they're doing it to be on one side or the other but that's just what the data showed uh miss frera yeah i mean i'm just gonna reiterate i think i think we still you know miss pat i think we still say what it is that we you know want you know what i'm saying i don't think we lose that but then we've already been shown i mean the directive's gone out right from town council look at the data that leap is going to provide you know then we're going to do this in this you know so it has to be a one first thing is this is what we recommend which is 24 seven two is what the town council told us what to do so this is what we have to do right now but then three is listen because we you know hopefully right this is going to to be something that's going to work and people are going to be able to have an alternative so what are we going to do to be able to to change very quickly so that we can add more responders right so once the the the position is set for the responders and recruitment is set for the responders the the the once the data continues to grow how can we add more responders and we have the money for that and hopefully diminish the need for more police right while we're adding more responders to diminish the need for more police so that then we can add to the responder list so i think those are the kind of the three things that i say so it doesn't take away from what we recommend i think what we recommend has to stay there okay okay so we can continue to advocate for 24 seven i'm glad that we were able to have this conversation update you all um are we okay to move to the next agenda item or did anybody have any more comments on this i'm good okay so the next agenda item is the resident oversight board follow-up gen would you be able to pull up the notes from the packet i can pull it up actually i know you just close hang on uh because i feel like this is just a lot and i don't want to say anything out of yeah i it's hard to find like in the packet itself because the packet is so big oh yeah here we go can you see yes oh it says here we go so the mr vernon jones took very detailed notes of the um meeting that alisha myself him the chief and the town manager had in regards to the um resident oversight board um so he's he divided each section on what we will do um the things that we said that we would change in the the proposal is i i think very minor i think the only thing that we're really adding is number two which is adding language that the resident oversight board will invite representatives of police unions to at least one meeting of the board per year for the purpose of dialogue building understanding and collaboration moving forward solutions that would work for all um does anybody have any issues with any of this or and these notes were also shared with the town manager and the chief so we're all on the same page about action steps to move this forward well i mean so can i have like a minute to just read it because it's yeah yeah it's a lot i'm sorry yeah i don't can you scroll down a bit yep or is there stuff underneath that it looks like it stops it please no can can you guys see me scrolling right now for some reason it says resume share oh i know it's just no we can't see this fall okay sorry well i i do have a couple of questions with the top part in terms of what changes we're making um so this one over here the first one remove the language about law enforcement personnel not serving on the resident oversight board we trust we trust that a selection committee and the town manager will not appoint law enforcement personnel in the first couple years of the board i don't trust it how how would i trust it that that's not going to happen what does that mean the town manager is sure to see wouldn't do it and the police are sure to see wouldn't ask for it yeah no no i'm not good with that you know i'm sorry town manager the town manager has showed over and over again that you know well the other issues that he changes all over the place he's all over the place so i'm not going to trust any of that but so i don't understand why they don't want that information there i mean we're very clear that we don't want law enforcement and law enforcement people on the on the board and especially since they might end up becoming the majority over the years because remember 10 years from now we're not here what's going to happen to this you see what i'm saying um and so for us they may change it 10 years from now but i want documentation right now that this is what we recommended right because 10 years from now when they do try to change it then we have documentation that this is what we said so if we already give give up that then it's like you all never said it because you know how quickly it is i mean they make up stuff willy-nilly now you know like rock and roll was created by you know white people so i mean come on uh so i mean that's that's something that we need to be careful on i don't get that and then um the cswg represent number five the cswg represented clarified the recommendation is that the board be consulted with regard to negotiations and new and revised policies not that the board be present negotiation sessions nor write new policy for the apd the full authority of the chief and the town manager over negotiation policy is not reduced so what do you mean nor write new policy for the apd um i mean i think i don't know about writing but they they're going to be making recommendations for policies and policy changes and things like that i agree that obviously it's going to have to be a collaborative effort and stuff but them not writing new policy i don't know what that means and then we just heard from tom that basically a lot of things get given up during those negotiations that basically they do all their little you know okay well you know you will give you this which usually is like we'll take away all the equity and inclusion stuff you know and then you don't you know take get the one percent or whatever whatever you know what i'm saying so there's a lot of that going on in those negotiations so i'm a little bit wary about giving a lot of that up to we now those are the two ones that i'm seeing most but i haven't paid attention to two three and four as much yet but uh in my opinion we gave up nothing with number five because we changed no language in our proposal the police chief somehow got the idea that the resident oversight board was going to be able to just write policy and then the department would have to and deal with it regardless of except it regardless of whether it had any police input or not and that was never our intention it was always you know work together consult recommend advocate so we made no language changes this just takes away some of his misimpressions so this is not going to be included anywhere on the no no no this document is not part of it okay and what about the remove the language what about number one remove the language about law enforcement blah blah blah we agreed to do that based on all the things that the town the police chief accepted that he didn't really like i mean this was a negotiation you know we we were not able to dictate to the chief everything but we got him to agree to a whole lot of things he was not that happy with in exchange for removing this language i i think the resident i think BIPOC folks will be very you won't get a you know robust um folks to apply for the committee if after a couple years then the town manager can appoint police officer i agree i agree i agree done that i think we need to let people know so that is very transparent for what we're what we're agreeing on what we're getting ourselves into based on 2004 racial profiling committee that was set up in this town the mayor presence of even one police officer changed the whole dynamic and effectiveness and productivity of a committee if you're talking about police it's not going to work yeah i have a real problem what you guys put into it to negotiate this you know this is really raising red flag to me boom boom boom like flashing people will not will not join the committee after after a couple years they won't do it i yeah and to me and that will make it impossible for him to recruit a committee if he puts yeah police on it so we put a language that even though this is what the chief want you know we negotiated but you know we need to write a sentence we're concerned that BIPOC and life people may not want to apply for this position for this uh committee in the future if it's open to the you know police personnel in regards in regards to number one like i the police don't typically sit on any boards and committees so i mean even flabbergasted that it's an issue yeah i it's they don't even want to there's no way they're gonna want to be on this they're not but i understand why you want the language in there but i'm still just they they don't the town manager doesn't typically appoint any law enforcement into anything like into any board or committee but i understand why you want the language they're just in it's been done before in trust in it right but was that when the charge but was that the charge or did they say they weren't going to put any police on there well i think jennifer i think this is based on like a research and and other municipalities and looking at other oversight boards um you know this is coming from that at least for me that's where this is coming from and that's why it made a lot of sense for us to put that language that's because you never know where at some point right maybe this town manager might not but we don't know how long this is gonna be there you know so the next that's the important piece there yeah the another town manager might think it's totally okay you know to come in and put a whole bunch of police officers on there and we know that if we put you know police officers they're gonna no one's gonna be on the board they're gonna feel intimidated they're gonna feel like they're not able to speak freely or they're gonna get people but they're gonna get people that are going to be yes people to the police that are going to go along with whatever the police say you know so yeah i guess we can have a board of yes people or and or a board of people that are not going to speak right that are going to just be silent while the police make all the decisions so either or we're not going to have a board that's going to to be able to to be functional and efficient and i'm also just flabbergasted how the chief took offense to this i don't even i don't like i don't know yeah i think and and also the fact that it's happened before 2004 it did not work resident and officers in a committee it never worked before dynamic was very apparent it's not going to work no i get that when i interviewed for my position here there was that one of the captains were there at my interview that it just doesn't feel okay right like it doesn't feel okay so i understand that i'm just it's and i understand why you want it in there i was just saying i'm just kind of like thrown away by the whole like typically they don't go on there and then i'm thrown away by the fact that that she felt some kind of way about it like why would it matter to him honestly yeah so i mean so is there room to go back and i don't know talk to him and let him know that obviously we were very concerned about removing that language um you know and and unfortunately i mean we can put it a nice nice way which is you know we're happy that you chief and town manager would would would abide by this wonderful but the thing is is that we're not doing this for you we're doing this for the years to come right when maybe chief you're not there town manager you're not there right we can't go by people we got to go by what the the the idea is in regards to this right and what's the effect we want it to have long term not just short term long term so we can do it in a very nice way thank you we appreciate that you're an ally awesome but what happens when you're not there anymore when the two of you are not there anymore and then the next chief ends up putting a whole bunch of police officers you can't do anything you know so that's what we're trying to avoid and that's why the language was important for us to have in there i think at this point it's not too late to go back if the group is in agreement of that because these seem like action items so we can go back and say that the cswg wasn't willing to negotiate i think one of the things that kind of pushed alisha myself and russ to be okay with it is the fact that there's i think the chief said that there was only like one or two retired police that live in town and that they for the most part or they aren't interested in groups and committees and stuff like that and the town manager did say that he wouldn't appoint anyone to the board but i do hear you guys's concerns and i understand them completely so if we need to circle back so mr bernie jones yeah i don't know whether we can go back on this without having to give up something that we fought to keep but i we do have a section in which says that the resident oversight board can pass its own policies about itself so the board could it put you know could just decide this after we've got a majority but by park board there and the other thing is that we will i mean we have recommended that they implement this board right away and then that we actually write a legal bylaw to institute it and i think at that we would have a better shot at that putting in at that point than upsetting the negotiation that we had here but that that's my view on it but i mean i i guess it's like so why do you feel that if we you know say that no we're gonna keep that why do you feel it's going to upset the negotiations is that because you know again i'm not i wasn't in the meeting so i don't know and i'm assuming you you are under a lot of pressure to fight for the other ones is that the case is that what you're saying and so you have to give up some things but this is a big one to give up though that that's what i'm concerned with and and obviously two three four five we're we're okay with because you know it is what it is right so we're really making some concessions so why is it that you feel if we go back and we say listen you know it's very important and this is why which i think it makes sense why we want to change this why this would just topple everything and we'd have to give something else up in order for them to get this one for us to get this one can i can i say addition in addition to what you just said um debora maybe i'm getting something wrong it's good that we collaborate with apd and the time manager but that's not we were charged to come up with recommendation and that would be areas that would disagree with the apd chief and that's okay we need to write this from the lens of the oppressed group if we want supermajority or majority of bipolar to to serve on this committee putting this language will put people off so we have to be transparent what we're giving up please people need to know what they're getting themselves into i'm sure many people will not have time to to to read this we didn't do this for the chief we're doing this for the oppressed people we should you know present our document in that perspective i'm sorry whether or not you know the town council or the town manager will implement it that's a different story but i want to work with my heads up and feel proud for the work being produced by cswg i'm not going you know we should not be kidding too we want to collaborate with apd i get that but this doesn't feel comfortable i'm sorry we need to take it out and we need to get back to the chief and set cswg reviews without you know that's too much of a compromise because of incident because of 2004 when you have officers and resident mostly bife of folks they did not feel comfortable in the meeting not much was accomplished it's not going to work yeah and and i didn't even have that i didn't know that in that that group there was police officers represented so i mean this pat has a conclusive example you know i mean i was just going off of theory and and and obviously the research i had you know we had done um but we have a conclusive example in terms of how it was not successful so nobody nobody including the police chief and the town manager is recommending that police officers be on this committee yeah but again russ we're not doing this again this is the two of them right now but you know i mean unfortunately you know we all know that anything can happen to us tomorrow right so that chief who's there who's again being an ally quote unquote right if he you know he's saying he's an ally quote unquote yes great you're not going to do it but your successor might do it you know i mean i can't go on any of that so generation recommended not to have anyone with police background joining the oversight board i remember that's one of their recommendation as well so it's quarter tonight we need to wrap this up so i think we and i like your suggestion to go back to the your group to go back to APD chief and the town manager and said that pat on on the back and debora refused well i mean that we all we all should be on the same page though i mean if you all so russ and and brianna are you all not you're not comfortable with that because you you were in those discussions you know i guess what i'm not comfortable going back to the language we had before whether there may be some other way to do it i'd be willing to explore um i i'm comfortable with going back but i'm a little bit nervous just because the chief did not anticipate such a powerful resident oversight board and miss pat debora i really hear you like i hear you and i want these to be powerful recommendations but also i want them to be implementable and i want steps and actions so it's this really just delicate balance and i think that's why we are willing to compromise the language um but i'm willing to revisit it and find a way for him maybe for him to meet us halfway i i i think that if we brought up the 2004 instance we might be able to move him and talk about group members and trust and bring it to that but i guess i want to ask i want to ask this other question which is what did you think we were going to propose you know what i'm saying like some weak um oversight board you know what i'm saying i mean i mean we were charged to come forward with recommendations that we felt would actually you know be something that would add to equity inclusivity and be able to have people you know have trust again in terms of some of these things and to in order to do that but people bring forward complaints and and all those things and make some changes in the police right if we're going to have a certain portion of the police be there asked to be police that are going to you know be able to to be held accountable and all of those things so i guess what did he expect you know some some weak type of situation well you have to remember though deborah too and i'm not making a justification by anything but do you remember he said we didn't even know that people had an issue with trusting us so everything is probably like a in an enlightenment to him do you know what i mean but i get it i get it which is the problem right which is right right but so i want to make sure that we get to the dei director position but also my only concern with the constant going back and forth particularly after the cswg is dismantled is that or not dismantled but dissolved is that i don't want you guys to give recommendations and then be like then be like no and then nothing right like so i don't know where that balance is but we definitely do need to find it or where the compromise is we do need to find it because i would be very concerned with us or with you guys putting in these recommendations and then them just being like well you didn't change this and and then not taking it right like i just and then there's no negotiation because there's nobody to negotiate with yeah but the only thing is sorry i'm just going to say a really quick thing and i know alisha has her hand up and rust you do too and everything it's just the only thing is though you know i'm with miss pat in terms of we need to have our head held high though you know what i'm saying and i mean for me you know to sign off on something where it says that you know we're going on trust with with with with the current chief and the town manager where yes you know police will not be on the board i mean that's huge that's a huge kind of you know thing for me because people are going to question me later on like deborah what you you you agree to what you know i mean where what planet are you from so um so i get that but i'm just like you know maybe we need to have more discussion on this you know and i know that time is running out but it's you know so i've said what i have to say i know there's other people wanting to speak thank you miss ferrera alisha um yes thank you sorry you all that i haven't been here this entire time but i pop back in and i did want to say something but first i wanted to ask if somebody might be able to remind me of what the language was that we had before this i i think that the language just said that no no one with who is working in law enforcement or has prior law enforcement could be on the board am i right yeah something like that i don't have that yeah okay and so i think yeah and i think so that was one of the concerns that the chief did have and i think that when he was explaining his concern with that with that it was that he he was more expressing that there may be a possibility that a retired officer might want to participate and might actually have an interest or might want to actually work towards equity and dismantling racist police policies and all of these things and so that we would be preventing them from participating and so that was when we were talking about okay well if there was somebody who had that identity and for me i was thinking specifically in my head about tom who presented to us earlier somebody like that who does that kind of work and wanted to be a part of that then would we not let them be a part of it and that's what his question was to us and so we were thinking of how can we compromise on this area but i think that we can i don't know if everyone would be comfortable with this but i think that there can be other avenues or other suggestions that we can make for them to be able to sort of help or offer ideas or be in conversation with the resident oversight board without giving them membership to the resident oversight board and that that might be something to think about if we're gonna if it is an issue that the chief wants to negotiate in some other way around this topic that that might be a way to think about it like have an opportunity that if there is an ex-officer who wants to chime in that there is an avenue for them to have some type of connection with the resident oversight board and not necessarily for them to be a member on it won't they just go to the meeting and speak on it during public comment uh thank you alisha miss pat so i just have a response to that um alisha thank you for sharing that actually we have human rights commission and we've had people with you know law enforcement background um you know legal background and stuff like that i think if a retired police is interested in equity work that would be an excellent um group to join but when it comes to this oversight board if you really want to recruit bold courageous BIPOC marginalized folks and you're throwing uh somebody with law enforcement background with it you're not going to get unless if you want you know yes people so human right commission will be a good place it's uh it deals with hopefully um you know issue issue of justice social justice so they can they can volunteer over there is what i say thank you miss pat miss rara yeah and i think like you know i think jennifer was bringing up a good point which was more so kind of like you know and i don't know because i haven't looked at the oversight portion of it and in a couple you know probably a couple weeks or whatever right um because i was very content with what we had put together and what russ had put together and all of that so my thing would be i mean maybe a negotiation stick if this is important to you all right to be negotiating with the police so that this can pass is to say well we get you know they can the police can have you know like they're saying with a once a year negotiation or whatever maybe we could put some feedback times where they can go and give feedback to rob or whatever you know what i'm saying um to the to the to the rob folks right that are on the committee so the police give feedback and and and have their say or whatever you know and they listen and then you know they can go from there whether they want to input it or not or whatever whatever you know make changes but maybe we could do something like that as opposed to to saying you know that the police can can can be part of it you know whether they were tired or not it's it's not going to work you know what i'm saying for BIPOC people to be able to feel free to to share and to really move forward courageously because it's going to be already difficult for them to even be on this thing because there could be repercussions for them to be intimidated anyway right by members outside of the you know like police or others so um never mind them having to be intimidated within the group if if there's members there whether they're retired or police officers that are active you know i don't think it's a good idea so maybe we can find other ways for them to give feedback i'd rather go that way than than than having them serve on route okay so i'm looking at the time just to move us forward so are we in agreement that you all want us to go back and to to renegotiate this or try to do or do we want a table and have more discussion on it to come do not have enough time to table it if it's okay for you guys to go back and renegotiate i would just try to think of a creative way to include their input somehow to swap out what was done and rest your shaking your head i wasn't there so i don't i don't mean i don't know what how the conversation went they they weren't asking for input they weren't asking to have police officers on it they just found it insulting and offensive to be to have it excluded that they were excluded you know i'm not i'm not defending what they say oh but it's not i mean i thought that might have not like our inviting them in to share something would take is is what they wanted that's that's that's that wasn't it at all i i don't know how this is all going to happen before next tuesday or wednesday whenever it is we're submitting our report i mean i yeah to be honest it's been really hard to coordinate a meeting for all this to me but i think that we can reach out over email and tell him about this meeting and group members feelings on it and find a club not a clever but find a nice way to say it it isn't that ironic that did you feel that way when historically biker folks you know we've been excluded for generations really it's laughable i'm i'm laughing but it's a constant laughter yeah and and i think that this is an educational moment though i think when you're talking about a clever way it's a way to also educate because again i don't know who brought it up i don't know if it was you jennifer or whomever that said he didn't even think there was a mistrust issue right so i think that this is another educational moment to educate in terms of why we think it's very important you know for him to take offense at the fact that that you know he's not really getting it he's not understanding the history of oppression racism whiteness privilege you know everything that has that biker people have lived under with the police he doesn't understand the history of violence i mean i don't know i mean come on it's okay it's just we're meeting with with an email feeling the same thing over and over again and then wow it's difficult and frustrating yeah i don't really know again it's not in any other border committee or even it's not wasn't part of yours because it doesn't typically happen but that's not to say that it wouldn't so it all just seems a little you know i understand where you guys are coming from so that's not what i'm just trying to say i'm just saying it all just seems kind of i don't even understand why it's such a big deal on on his end necessarily right like they don't participate in boards and committees to begin with so why would it make a difference um can we move on to the DEI director since they're gonna have to go move that and it's almost nine o'clock so Brianna you're going to write a letter for the chief yes i can work on that yeah okay if you need us to look at it or whatever before then just send it to jennifer's you know at some point on the weekend um and then we can uh we can get you some peter bell if you need to be if not just go for it are you okay with that mr ross i can't hope he's frozen oh no you know yeah i'm looking at the composition this board only has one white person on it i don't i don't see any chance that that's ever gonna be a police officer but i mean i i'm fine with Brianna writing the chief but ross it's not even about race though i'm sorry it's it's no no no i know it's the it's the fact of using the blue uniform yeah we might get a tom but a tom is few and far between you know what i'm saying and i'm not going to go by chance all right no no no no and even a even tom right that i heard the argument i'm i'm okay with Brianna writing to the chief okay um so the next agenda item is the community safety and social justice committee follow-up but before that um i think i'm miss moisten i think that before that was the dei director at some point um it was in this evening's packet and if you all could send revisions to miss moisten and not my eight million things on my desktop yeah i mean we're interested in getting this to move to and i think i'm particularly deborah your feedback as well since you've done the the job all right so so this one can you send a word document to us just so oh yeah i can if i have any changes and by when do you want these this feedback by i mean this this one very similar to like the crest one i wanted to advertise like two weeks ago and or three weeks ago and then it got pushed to the end of the month so i'm gonna say as soon as possible right because we want to go ahead and be able to advertise for these but please notice that it's rated at a level seven and um you know i think this one could possibly be like i don't it is a lot of work but with the good supported staff i feel like this position would have a better chance of being the eight if they were the dei director and the health and community service director because all of those programs that fall underneath the health and community service programs are in dire need of doing their things through the lens of dei and they're all very face-fronting to the community but that's just my little pitch to it to get it to the eight so they're not going to get quality yeah i will tell people i'm talking to to to start looking at our places forget it i don't i don't want to insult anyone level seven are you kidding me that's what some college grads are making now it's employee market yeah i will tell people to look at our places yeah or at least well let's let's see if we can try to level it up you know um like what what what jennifer was saying by kind of adding you know but i guess i guess for that though jennifer i mean i don't understand all the different positions or who this dei you know director could oversee right because i'm not part of town you know i don't know what the organizational structures are but what like what miss pat is saying i mean it has to be leveled up to like an eight or nine in order for us to get the qualified candidates especially if we want qualified candidates of color it and a diverse pool you know what qualified candidates of color with the experience and with the the with this one it's going to have to be someone that's also going to have the confidence right to take on structural structural institutions i will i will say that this person whoever takes this he or she or they um this will be challenged because you know i'm a firm believer and i've seen it here too that you know people don't necessarily take well direction well from a person of color and then they also um want to challenge and see if they can pull rank and so i think that um this position is one of those positions that are always be kind of we have to try and find it another solid base because i feel like um someone will get either just feel not feel supported or burnt out from this position in it just the way that it's written right now regardless of what it's paid right because i'm going to say the microaggressions are real here at times and the the challenges that you go through are real here at times and so and again people feel some kind of way particularly black or bipoc women have a harder time taking it from bipoc women than they do bipoc men at times um it's also very challenging so the only thing i'm just trying to give it substance and then they just need to have good staff underneath them to help support with the other things right and then the folks from the health and community service the folks from the health department and the senior center and the veterans affairs and amherst recreation program would report to this one director yeah that makes sense to me and all of those programs right there are in dire need of everything that they do is being done through the lens of dei that makes sense right so the senior center we already know we read that health report we already know that there's a desperate need there and so i'm going to say i think when it when they put it through it came in as a high six low seven so as is i don't know that you're going to get it to an eight i can't say yay or name that's really up the poll at the end of the day but my thought is to give them something else of substance and to give them the support underneath for staff wise that they need to make it successful because just this dei director the first few years is going to be very challenging yeah so and then that no i totally agree i'm gonna have to sign off so folks sorry it's like nine oh seven i gotta go i can't wait double my kids to bed so wait before you sign before you sign off just really quickly can we all agree to meet next week next week um the 21st from 5 30 to 7 p.m to discuss communications i think that we should put out an article after our presentation to town council alisha and i have been working on something we will send it to the group and have more dialogue on it during this meeting so we can add to it i'm good we're talking the 21st the 21st yes yeah and we might have to also talk about just prep for it right i know you know prep for the presentation and stuff like that make sure can we make it six to seven thirty that works for me does that work for everyone else six to seven thirty first okay is that enough time well you know it's going to end up ending at 8 30 that way people okay so we're saying six to eight yeah okay okay okay folks okay thank you hi so we still have alisha right okay yeah we still have four okay oh yeah you still have a quorum so i mean i don't know about that option about moving it to the eight and having it i mean that is a lot to ask for a new position right to have four other departments reporting to them but i was just really trying to find something of substance to anchor the position down and include the higher pay people i've been talking to will not accept anything less than 90 k it's like that minimal i mean well again the director it's all over all you just need to you know look online you know a lot of communities a lot of companies companies are hiring the director and they're paying six people salary actually that's what they're paying so i mean those are the top earners or over a hundred thousand yeah say listen i don't want to leave us without a quorum but i really need to go in a couple of minutes oh okay i mean there's only one agenda item left and i can be very brief and i don't know what you guys want to do about that so just revisions okay um so the last the last agenda item is the community safety and social justice committee follow-up um can we move up can we table that the next week i'm okay with that russ and alisha are you okay with that in this voice then yes i'm in agreement yeah yes okay okay so um does anybody have any upcoming events that they want to share nope nope okay so um the next meeting date will be October 21st from 6 to 8 p.m. are there other topics anticipated not anticipated within 24 hours okay so with all of our business complete i'm calling this meeting adjourned yay all next week thank you everyone thank you bye everyone