 All right. First, I want to thank you guys for coming out to our community meeting. One of the things that is very important to myself, and I think some of our city as well, is to make sure that we're transparent and we're engaged in our community on all the issues that happen in the city of Fort Worth. And so this is one of the offices that was created here shortly, last couple of years, and we have had a new change over in leadership in this role, and so I thought it was very important that we bring Boncia out to the community and some of the conversations I have had with her is that she wants to be accessible, touchable, reachable in our community. And so first I want to just kind of... I am Councilman Chris Nellis for those of you that may not know or haven't seen me on the news or almost getting arrested at the courthouse. I'm the Councilman for District 8 here in the city of Fort Worth. And I think we have one of our ACMs that's here, Valerie Washington. We have our police department that is here as well. What other department is here with the police department? The NPO is here. Anybody else? Community engagement, okay. Community safety partnership is here. I saw our commander. And so we have a lot of people who are in the building today. And meetings like this allow us to get a more understanding of what's happening. Sometimes we say behind the scenes, but really it's just information that we can share. And so we want to do that today so we introduce our departments. And I want to kind of give a history, a brief history and anybody can correct me to add to the brief history of how this office was initially created. So those of you that remember back in 2016, December, one of our dear sisters who is no longer with us, God was praying for her soul and her family, Jackie Craig, had an altercation or engagement with a police officer and the community came unravel. During that in August 1st of 2017, six months later, the city council adopted a resolution appointed a task force of race and culture to kind of deal with some of the unrest that the city of Fort Worth was having. November the 12th, 2018, a final recommendation was approved about the recommendations that this task force came together. And the things that we could do, and it just wasn't crime. It was health related. It was health disparities. It was housing. It was childcare. And a number of things came under that recommendation. But tonight we're going to kind of focus on the criminal or officer engagement. And so February of 2020, the OPOM office was first established and it was established, I just lost it. Kim Neal. Kim Neal, thank you. Kim Neal came and helped establish the office. Do you have something you want to jump in and say? Okay. And so tonight we really want to have a discussion with Boncea. Also I want to take the opportunity before we get too far in is to thank Texas Westland. Texas Westland has been a great partner as it relates to the district and the surrounding communities. I see board members, staff here as well. And so thank you Texas Westland for allowing us to use this space to have this community discussion. And so we're going to kind of open up discussion. Boncea also has a PowerPoint that she's kind of kind of go through where we want to get through things as quick as possible as well as take questions from the community. We don't want you to come in here and just listen to us. It's not no so proper show, but we want to answer your questions. So first, thank you for being here with us tonight. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to have this conversation. And so for the community, who is Boncea? What are you looking to bring to forward and what have you already started a little bit ago? So for who is Boncea, I'm going to give this spiel because people are still figuring out who I am. I come from Louisiana, New Orleans, Louisiana is where I started my professional career as an attorney. I've been a prosecutor for several years handling everything from low level misdemeanors to multiple homicides, rapes, you name it. I tell this story and if you've heard it before, I apologize, but I tell it because it's true. And I think it helps center why I believe in police oversight and why I'm involved in this world. The very first case I tried as a prosecutor was almost overturned. It wasn't almost overturned because I was a young prosecutor and I didn't know what I was doing. It was almost overturned because two of the officers that were involved in the prosecution of that case were then involved in illegal behavior. It was unrelated to my case. I tried a distribution of heroin case. There was a flip witness, all the antics. It's a great thing. We convict them. It's unanimous jury. And then the first assistant calls me in and says, hey Boncea, you have to go meet with appeals because insert officer names here had just been served with an indictment. For me, it's just like I don't understand. What did they do? They were accused and then ultimately found guilty of stealing money from confidential informants. I was confused because my case didn't involve a confidential informant, but as a lot of people will tell you, your integrity matters everywhere. So because those officers couldn't be transcended, there are a case where there is a confidential informant, that threatened the conviction for the drug dealer in the neighborhood that impacted other people. And so that was my first introduction to police misconduct matters for everyone. This is going to hurt a community and I'll go further to say then I had the opportunity to also prosecute officers for sexual misconduct and I'm just blunt for raping young boys and raping young girls and watching what that did to the community. That's how I first got introduced into the world and realizing how you can lose convictions, how you can lose safety in communities when you have bad officers, but how when you have good officers doing the work, so the people who were doing the investigations on the sexual misconduct, then I could ensure that those officers were looking at convictions on 50 years for molesting young boys. So that was my first introduction. Eventually I went into police oversight and I started doing community engagement. I was a little burnt out. You can only try so many rapes and murders before you don't want to do that work anymore. And so I went into community engagement and I had the opportunity to swiftly transition into handling use of force because I'd handled so many murders. So that meant that I was out on the crime scenes looking at the bodies when there was an officer involved shooting, following every use of force that happened throughout New Orleans. I was promoted to the deputy chief there and then eventually I made my way here. I went through the strenuous interview process for Fort Worth and I was selected as deputy and started here September of 2023 and it has been absolutely fantastic. One of the reasons I wanted to come Fort Worth because oversight is popular now. We all know after 2020 there's oversight offices popping up everywhere is that it appeared to me that Fort Worth was committed to doing oversight. They were committed to improving the police department and they wanted to hear from the community and the department wanted to make sure that they were doing things properly. I didn't want to go somewhere where we can look at some of our other states where I was going to be here for six months and it was going to have to disappear. So I wanted to be somewhere where yes there's going to be a fight and it might be difficult but I know that we can move the needle in the right direction. Thank you for that and I will tell you that there is certain council members that will fight to keep to make sure we have the O pump office and you kind of mentioned there are other cities who and states who are trying to dismantle this office when it comes to equity when it comes to equality around the world these offices are being underfunded or defunded or whatever word you want to say are not funded for the lack of transparency and so I am grateful that the city forward has taken a bold stand to create this office and make sure it runs as smooth as possible and so what is the O pump office doing as it relates today what is the everyday operations of the office and you can give that and then we can jump into your PowerPoint and I can ask some more questions. So this is who thank you Taylor this is who our office is and how we're set up we are currently set up independent and that means that we're not under city council a lot of departments report directly to city council we do not report to city council in our structure and I don't have an ACM we are supported by the city manager's office but I report directly to the city manager the separation is also important to note that while we work with the Fort Worth police department we're not together so our mail often times gets sit debaubolim but we are a separate entity we just have a working relationship this highlights we've already gone over the background but what we do the number one thing we do is receive and refer complaints we're unique in this situation that you can come being a community member can come to OPOM and file a complaint you can go on our website you can place a phone call you can go through our social media and let us know of any misconduct or positive policing that you've encountered and we take that we take that information we digest it and then when we refer that to internal affairs I want to highlight we refer it to internal affairs because while we can do a lot of things we cannot investigate we are monitoring body we are reviewing body we are not an investigatory body so we refer a lot of our cases to internal affairs we also then review those investigations every single internal affairs case gets reviewed by our office so let's say hypothetically that the Fort Worth police department gets somewhere between and correct me if I'm wrong Aaron 538 misconduct complaints 538 and 2023 a small portion of those around 40 of them come to OPOM but 538 of them are reviewed by OPOM so it doesn't matter how it went in we're going to set our eyes on it to ensure the integrity of that investigation and I'll talk about what we're looking for in a little bit we're also going to monitor all use of force incidents so we're going to do a review on all of them and then we're going to give more attention of course to our critical police incidents that includes going to the use of force review board the critical police incident review board and things of that nature we're collecting data we're making policy recommendations we're attending community engagement events and we're trying to be more transparent and putting out the information and what's occurring within the police department some of you know through some of the struggles that have happened that there's a lot of things that are restricted from being made public through legislation we're looking at creative and innovative ways to make sure the public is informed on what is happening with the police department so that you can feel comfortable with the department that you have do we do the presentation I'm going to stand up because the sitting thing is a little bit awkward so I've already gone through who we are and then let's go to next slide Taylor so our misconduct work I tend to do a little bit of talking back and forth that's just who I am but our misconduct work that looks like any misconduct that happens within the police department now what I like to say is sometimes people don't know what that actually looks like like I don't know if that amounts to misconduct guess what let me figure that out I don't care do your gut check if it made you uncomfortable then that's fine send it my way because nothing bad is going to happen so I don't want anyone getting nervous that well if I said it if I said that the officer was rude and it actually isn't rudeness then what's going to happen that means that it's not going to be a complaint that just means that we looked into it and we made sure that the officer acted in the ways that the general orders requires for them to act misconduct complaints I'm going to explain the complaint process the misconduct complaint process is we receive your complaint or your commendation and then we send a receipt back to you we're trying to increase the amount of communication that happens between our office and the community did anyone possibly know what happened prior to opom arriving anyone know what happened with internal affairs because that's kind of what happened so you could file a complaint and there wasn't a number you couldn't call and say hey what's going on with my complaint anything of that nature but now if you file with opom we say hey thank you Miss Johnson we'll contact we let you know what your complaint number is and we send it back out to you then you can also call us for updates said what's going on with my complaint I need to actually update on what's happening then we monitor that investigation we're going to monitor that investigation after it's been sent to IA to see what's happening the goal right now this is the goal where we're headed is to monitor in real time we want to monitor in real time because I want a working relationship with the police department it's not beneficial for me to wait to the end of the investigation to say hey I think you missed something because then we don't have accountability in that way then we're not actually improving investigations in that way I want to monitor as we go along then at the end of it at the end of the investigation they're going to send that completed investigation to us now the timeline I want to highlight is 180 days that's by state law their internal policy is 120 days but there's 120 days from the date of incident I want to highlight for the public because that means if something happened to you on Saturday reach out to us on Saturday don't wait and think about it for a month and go ask your church family and your daughter and your cousin and go to the barbershop and say what do you think about it well I heard the officer was really nice maybe I shouldn't file a complaint because now we've lost 30 days to do an investigation now we've lost 30 days to see if there's additional evidence time is ticking it doesn't matter when you disclose it unlike a lot of other things the date it happens there are six months six months to conduct an investigation there are few exceptions for a criminal investigation to be conducted so we can get an extension from the attorney general for what but for the general population we're talking about six months so as soon as we're involved in that you can go to the Fort Worth app and you can go and file a complaint with us after that investigation is conducted we get the final investigation so along the way we want to give feedback along the way we want to say to the internal affairs hey I was watching the body cam and I noticed this are you looking at this allegation before you send it to the chain to come in this was just a little bit concerning to us or I don't it seems like you've raised a lot of allegations on that officer because people think that like we're just out to be a gotcha know we are quite neutral and we want to make sure that what they're doing is in accordance with the general orders so if I see something that looks retaliatory where an officer's been rude but on this officer we've raised six different allegations and I want to raise that to internal affairs and go this seems a little odd to me why are we raising so many allegations the same way when I want to say hey why didn't we raise an allegation for rudeness in this one so then we get the final investigation and I'll talk in a little bit more detail about this investigation review process we get the final investigation and my team who I want to highlight OPOM team can you stand wave your hand because we're a small team we're a small but mighty team so I think the last number I got from chief notes was over 1,800 police officers there's six of us now that are reviewing everything that's happening within the police department they review those investigations and provide all of our feedback and recommendations to internal affairs those recommendations are added to the final report so when it goes out to chain of command our recommendations are listed on there for consideration hold on one back so this is what it looks like internally what does it actually mean to review or to monitor investigation because we say these words all the time we receive it I assign it to a policy analyst we currently have three people who review and we're currently hiring for additional personnel they review the initial complaint what did the complainant actually say that happened and did the actual investigation address those allegations and then they start reviewing all relevant footage that's body worn camera footage, that surveillance footage anything of that nature and then we're going to review the interviews officers are often interviewed if it's a personnel complaint and we don't have to go through all those details officers are interviewed review that for consistency and see did the officer say something that was of concern I'll give you one example sometimes officers say something that's not actually a policy violation but it's just concerning as an employee that maybe somebody should check on them because I'm a little bit concerned about their mental health they have the wellness unit now and all these things but maybe a supervisor just needs to tap in and make sure that they're okay because what they said during that interview is a little bit bothersome it's not a violation I just want to make sure everybody's healthy here once we do that then we identify any additional policy violations one of the number one ones we see is body worn camera if you didn't turn your camera on or if it was muted we're going to highlight that because it's important to protect the officers it helps protect the citizens and then we'll draft a report they draft a report they send it back to me we go back and forth until we agree upon it and then it's discussed with IA before we send over anything finally we discuss it with IA to let them know our findings and then we provide it in writing these are our numbers starting in 2023 these are the formal allegations that were received by OPOM the number one allegation that we receive is failure to investigate thoroughly that comes most often from traffic accidents but any investigation that's what's coming through the door most often is the officer didn't thoroughly investigate my case they didn't collect surveillance they didn't conduct collect surveillance or they didn't interview witness something of that nature then that's followed by conduct for OPOM recommendations this is what I said at the end of the report we attach in our complaints we've provided over 93 recommendations for complaints 77 use of force recommendations 20 for policy and 11 other for 2023 and I just kind of want to highlight these I know we'll talk on it later but in 2023 we had a total of eight accommodations year to date as of today right now we've already had four accommodations sent over for Fort Worth Police Department because people are utilizing the office more and then I want to compare I've already said that last year we had 40 complaints that came through OPOM but year to date 2023 March 26 there were eight complaints that came through so far this year we're at 15 for OPOM so we're tracking to do almost double what we did in the previous year and then this number this is what I'm most proud of I started in September and I want you to look of where we are this is the days to review an investigation this is what we're charged with doing we're charged with looking at every investigation that comes to the internal affairs but I told you there's a 180 day deadline now I can't tell internal affairs when they get it to me we hope they give it to us in time but that top number was in excess of 150 days so that's right before I start we are now down to a lot of our cases being sent out in five to four days after review of investigation that means that we're going to have real tangible results or at least a chance at it looking at the last seven months our average days of review to investigation is 29 days and we're getting closer and closer to getting under the two week mark our next charge is community outreach doing things like this in the spring and in the summer you're going to hear a lot more from us doing community conversations making sure that we're having public conversations about the work that we do dispelling the myths about the organization we'll be having coffees with the OPOM which is simply small intimate conversations where you can discuss with me your community concerns and then we're also going to do the police facing because I know there's a lot of myths about who we are what I'm here to do making sure that the police department is educated on the operations of our office as well and next is our community police mediation program joined with me right here is Ms. Taylor Davis she runs the community police mediation program and my mediators can you please wave to your hand these are people who volunteered they are here on their own time but they have sacrificed a lot of time I'm going to explain what our community police mediation program is community police mediation is an opportunity to have an open candid conversation so normally what happens is you come in and you file a police complaint their internal affairs are through our office and then it goes to investigation if it rises to that level what we have changed is if it rises to the level of investigation but we're talking about a low level misconduct allegation like rudeness or professionalism then we say hi fellow officer we have a mediation program where you have the opportunity to discuss this incident with a community member for about two hours with two trained community police mediators is that something you're interested in they can say yes or no if they say yes we reach out to the community member and say the same thing if they say yes from there then we're going to send it off to mediation and what that mediation looks like it's not a legal process this isn't a situation where we go who's right who's wrong it's identifying topics, values and feelings to make sure that we get some type of understanding of what occurred I have told this story but I'll tell it again I had a mediation before where the most frustrated community member who cursed me like a dog when he came in for mediation who I had to remind was it was absolutely voluntary sir if you do not want to participate you don't have to and an officer who came in and said this is dumb I don't want to do this I have talked to this guy until I was blue in the face I don't know why we're here again sir you don't have to do this it can go to investigation they came to a meeting of the minds in there because we were separated from the incident time had passed the officer could finally hear what the person was asking pulls out post-its and starts going oh this is what you need contact this person it's not my job but I'm in contact this is who you need to reach out to sir this is why I was a little frustrated that day it doesn't make it right but you weren't listening to me this was going on and the community member was able to say do you know what I was feeling I've been living in the city for how long this is what's happened to me and then you're disrespecting me and that's how I felt they literally cried when they walked out of that room cried now I don't expect that out of every mediation that's not my goal is to have a bunch of people weeping and doing kumbaya that's not it but if we can just change the perspective of a few officers and we can change the perspective of a few community members which the data supports will happen then we're moving forward to a better fort worth over 90% of the time officers say that if they had that same interaction again they would change their behavior that is significant I'm talking about 538 misconduct complaints that came through Fort Worth police department if we could just change a few of those imagine restoring trust in this community so our mediators went through a 45 hour training program they were not paid they volunteered their time they were selected because they could hold space because they can be neutral because they are brave and they want to give back to their community so we're moving forward they want to give back to their community they have gone we met today during work hours they have to take off work in order to do these things and so they're prepared to go through these mediations in the whole space it is launching April 1st I heard from the chief today he is completely on board and we're going forward so April 1st will be the first time that we send a case through mediation I want to ask a couple of questions about that I think it's important in time as well the mediators that we have that were selected they went through an application process kind of give us were they selected from council members or they just applied online how did that work so they applied online so we did a call through media, social media through council members and sending it out every which way we can to get mediators to apply we had a total of 27 mediators apply and then they were interviewed by myself and Taylor we were looking for neutrality number one that is the number one thing that we're looking for you could have the background that you have but do you understand the importance of being neutral we weren't looking for a certain education level we wanted to make sure we had variety in that because being able to communicate that doesn't require a college degree being able to hear that doesn't require a college degree and then it was very important to us that it reflected the community as a whole and that's the numbers that are up here so they applied online we interviewed and then it was a scoring system so everybody was ranked but we also looked at our demographics we looked at our demographics because social science has proven that when you're able to match up demographics of the mediators with the people in the room a lot of times it's more successful I know they sound uncomfortable to talk about but that's just the truth of the matter so we looked at it and I had a lot of black women who wanted to be mediators and I had to cut some of them because my number one complainant that's what these numbers are was a white male so we had to increase the number and manipulate from there you had to be qualified to be a mediator but when I had to look at demographics of what area town do you live in what is your background social economics all of that plays a part into how comfortable we are in this space and so our goal when selecting mediators for mediation is to match it up as much as possible if we can't they're trained they're ready to go to hold space for anyone but we know it's most successful when we create it in that way in addition to the mediators we also had police ambassadors so we sent it out to the police department they're allowed to apply to be ambassadors police officers cannot be mediators they're ambassadors for the program what they help do is one they come out and support right now but they also help spread the word to the fellow officers because I need buy-in from the officers to participate but they also had to be able to show that they could be neutral and understood the importance of the program let's kind of talk about if they select to go to mediation yes that actually eliminates the investigation process yes so they can normally file a complaint and then there will be an investigation process if the officer was ruled if he was found whatever it is and maybe maybe not discipline or whatever if they choose this mediation process that actually eliminates that investigation and discipline yes so if you choose to go to mediation there is no longer the option for an investigation and by choosing to do a mediation I mean we've made it you're going to be a good faith effort so if you say I'm going to go to mediation and two weeks before the mediation schedule you change your mind then it's going to go back to a traditional investigation but if we've selected to go to mediation the officers prepared and the community members prepared the effort in that room then it's considered mediated and no longer be investigated but that's because what has been shown number one I want you to just let's play hypothetical with me how often do you think you have a sustained investigation for rudeness do you think it happens 50% of the time anyone so what is our loss there because the number one complaint we're talking about going into an investigation is rudeness chances are it's not going to be sustained that's the chance that's the reality so what we do know is most people actually want to be heard most people want to actually use their voice and explain this is how I felt in this situation it's cute that your commander is going to come by and tell you and give you a coaching session and tell you you shouldn't do this again and then y'all going to kiki about this is what people are saying I'm not saying that's what happens with the department but what I'd rather tell you is how I felt and for the officer sometimes we need an opportunity not to think that you know you're being punished and look at that as a real-life situation because you remember what happened before the call you're frustrated, I heard it on your body-worn camera that you're mad about it and the person was being utterly ridiculous but then you got to look face-to-face with Miss Johnson I wasn't going to listen to my commander tell me not to be rude because heck he's rude but now what I got to deal with this civilian maybe I'm actually going to change my behavior and so I know for some people it's a pause of why are they not being investigated we're not losing anything by not going to investigation research has shown time and time again having these guided and protected conversations produces way better results it's the same way that they talk about diversion programs and probation and things of that nature that's why we've headed in that direction and this mediation allows to gravitate data starting April 1st we'll be able to know how many people went through mediation if change took place and normally I don't know what the percentage is of individual send an officer again on another traffic stop because if I'm traveling the same way every day to work on a neighborhood the same day mediation might be really important because I may see this officer in two weeks or three weeks or a month and that interaction especially with your MPO like we see them against MPOs repeatedly being able to repair that relationship is significant that is extremely important I do want to stress again while I'm saying that there's not investigation we're talking about low level complaints so we're not talking about uses of force we're not talking about discrimination we're not talking about harassment we're talking about rudeness, professionalism low level complaints not things that are going to end up in significant discipline or litigation things of that nature awesome and so moving a little bit from that I want to ask a question every day of OPOM office that you guys are looking at policies and practices of the police department I want to hear a little bit about that and then you mentioned that as of today you have already sent some recommendations to the police chief okay tell us how does that work he has the option to well he's going to look at the police of the recommendation but he has the option to implement it or not implement it but it is noted that we have sent this recommendation it's on file and say for instance five years come down that could have been prevented had this policy been implemented policy recommendations happen on a micro level and a major level and so if we make an observation during a review of an individual incident that we see policy in practice we can make that recommendation if it's dealing with it needs to be clear in the general orders for when an officer is allowed to go on mute for their body worn camera because it seems like there's some misunderstanding then we can make that policy recommendation or it might be a recommendation of there needs to be a roll call or reminder for training because we're seeing this behavior over and over again I didn't mention earlier that we also participate in oral boards for officers excuse me I'm going to highlight that with some confidentiality we participate in oral boards and that's the hiring process for officers so I'm in the room I don't have a vote and that is the case for most things so review board for critical police incidents use a force review board I don't have a vote but I have a voice in the room and I'm kind of there to be like hey this is a concern so without going into details we saw a candidate when I first started that was a little bit concerning I was reaching out directly to the chief to go hey I know we're going through this interview process but I need to highlight this is not only a problem for OPOM this is going to be a problem for the community and that was taken that's put in writing so if anything ever came back it won't come back because that person was not hired not just because of what I said but because they went and they did their due diligence to look at everything that it's been documented on behalf of we raised a flag and that's for every policy we're issuing recommendations for different force policies, tactics, trainings things of that nature but we're also involved in the conversations in real time last week I participated in the critical police incident review board that's separate from like the disciplinary process these are what these incidents are we're past discipline and everything else is there something as a professional that we believe the department could be doing better in order not to end up in this situation or is there something we can pull from this that we actually need to make sure it's implemented through the department to make sure that if it does happen again it happens in this way okay and we'll take about five more minutes and then we want to take some questions from the audience and at least stop at 7 o'clock and if you have cyber or conversational questions we'll be here at least about 20 minutes after 7 o'clock so I want to kind of go a little bit down you really covered a lot of things that we already had no it's okay it's good information and if there's something else that I ask or they ask we can go back to that one of the issues that we have had come up in the city forward is the police chase policy and that's a policy making and you know we know the city council voted to do the the lawsuit or whatever we had the police chase incident that happened on Evans and Rosedale what if what can you say if anything if you can't say anything we understand they released some of the information on the police policy I have some recommendation but what can you say specifically about that issue so unfortunately and I should have given my I meant to it was on my list as well I can't speak about open investigations and so while we are committed being transparent at the conclusion of the investigation I'm happy to hold another town hall and we plan on it for our critical police incidents to make sure that the community is aware of what that investigation look like as long as it's open and pending for the integrity of the investigation I can't comment on it and so yes the pursuit policy was released withholding from some tactical information that the department believed should not be provided to the public and at some point I did have the opportunity to review what was released that was an instance where I made a recommendation for please include this in the part of the policy that's released the department agreed with me that was released and so that's kind of where that stands and I hope to have a further discussion about it in the future no thank you for the information and I know you mentioned it a couple of sides ago about the 180 days and the ability because community members came to me and said what's been 120 days and then we know specifically for this incident there has to be some type of extension because it was broader than so what happened and how the extension happens is generally with a critical police incident it is first investigated by major case not internal affairs it's a criminal investigation that's taking place first I imagine like a lot of people we want that done well and so then until that is done and there's some variance give me some grace in that that's not due absolutes then the administrative investigation doesn't start they're now starting sooner but until everything is completed they will ask for an extension we don't want to rush the investigative investigation to be 180 days at the criminal investigation is not done because then you don't have a thorough investigation to hold an officer accountable if they need to be held accountable so that's how that process works so you're allowed to get extensions which I recommend getting an extension to ensure that you have a thorough investigation lastly and I'll just mention in the recommendation of the racing task force one of the recommend the conversation was sent around do we have anybody else here that was on that task force I don't know and also I want to thank other council women for being here Jeanette Martinez who's also here present was the sense of oversight police board and we know that city council at that time elected to do the opum office instead of maybe not instead but just elected to do that we city council took to the vote in November 2022 with the support of Kim Neal and others we know that in the city of Fort Worth we talked about it earlier about trying to for one make sure we keep funding the opum office and transparency at some point I know that we could get to a yes and that's with other council members who voted against it but real briefly what is your understanding of what an oversight board looks like because some people think it's investigative, some think it's with subpoena power you know, firing an officer what does that look like in your views and then we'll take some questions from the audience so the reality is it looks like all of those the oversight boards vary as much as the names of the cities and as much as my type of office varies, we're completely different from Dallas we're different from Houston, we're different from Austin and so an oversight board or community facing board or community led board I guess I'll say could do all of those things the only thing that I would stress before I even applied I watched all the videos and I heard the discussion and I saw the passion is that if a board is to come to Fort Worth that we make sure it's going to be one that works for Fort Worth I do not mean that in like the tongue and cheek way I mean in there are only certain things that I can put out there are only certain things that I can see there are only staff members that can see certain things and I want to make sure whatever comes to Fort Worth is meant to work and I say that because I'm watching police oversight being gutted left and right across this nation Fort that not Fort Worth excuse me Florida is about to lose all police oversight they're being stripped of their investigatory powers they're being stripped of their boards and I want to make sure whatever we bring here is going to stay and it is going to work so my commitment is to do all that I can within the powers that I have to make sure that we have true oversight and as the community makes clear its demands that we support that as well alright thank you for that we're going to take some questions I do see that we have a representative from Commissioner Brooks office Roger Miles here today so we want to thank Commissioner Brooks office for being here Roger Miles and so we want to take an opportunity to take questions from the community audience if you have a question at this time yes sir and we'll repeat it for the YouTube channel So what happens if there's a complaint it's investigated you review it you schedule a community meeting to discuss the results and your feedback and then the complainant files a lawsuit against the city can you still discuss the complaint results or at that point do you have to wait until the legal proceedings conclude for the most part summarize that for the YouTube channel so if there has been a complaint or misconduct that's been filed fully investigated but at that point the community member has elected to file a civil suit in my bar from discussion my bar from discussion is limited to chapter 143 and that's pertaining to the internal affairs discussion and so no I can still have a conversation about it because at that point that investigation those are the facts at that point so whatever comes from the civil suit investigation that's a separate matter and let me let me just ask a follow-up question because I want to be I don't want to allude to something that may not happen every complaint that's filed there's not going to be a community meeting that's developed it's kind of going to be more of a one-on-one person who filed the complaint they will have they will get information on what their complaint is and then it will really be up to your office I guess and maybe any other council member to follow up with other community meetings with those issues that have happened so we know the large ones that are a community concern and we're aware of that and I communicate with the council members and we'll work on like an orchestrated effort to make sure that everyone's informed on the release whether or not we agree disagree with the outcome but for individual complaints one the individuals notified through a resolution letter and we also try to communicate with the complainant but I'm not committed to saying that what we're going to do is have a discussion every time one of the things that I did and put in place is a monthly report that provides data which is very important to me to give you the understanding of the outcomes of cases and things of that nature so while it might not say and it will never say Officer Jones was sustained on allegations of X, Y, and Z it does provide the data of how many allegations have been sustained against Fort Worth Police Department officers things of that nature because we are prevented by state statute for providing certain levels of detail. Any other questions from the audience? Yes. I have a question regarding you said about a hundred and ten so that's the time frame that the DA got to investigate a case. That's the time frame that Fort Worth Police Department has to investigate if they don't get an extension and that comes from the Attorney General that extension does. Because I was a couple of weeks ago I had just went to court and they had told me that it went from 90 days to 180 days because I held it out on a criminal case that I am that's pending right now and I go to the 13th court again and I try to ask why it was that they got an extension regarding this criminal case that's been nonexistent yet you know and it's just it's just how they work I'm not sure and I can't even remember exactly what it was that they had said why they had got it. Okay so that's separate but I'll give a general answer because I also want to keep my law license. So what you're talking about is if you've been arrested on a criminal matter and while you're in jail if we think about just for my social reason then they have to screen those cases and indict them faster than if someone's free. So once you're free and you're no longer within the confines then they have an automatic extension generally let me speak in general terms to then actually file those charges and so that's unrelated to a misconduct investigation that's a different time frame so that's just and that's pretty much standard across the nation but that's standard for if you're in jail there's a time frame and you're out of jail there's a longer time frame. Okay thank you I appreciate that. I got one more question. You mentioned that Oakland has taken steps to help make changes or ask changes of the forward PD for us community view their identity how they are to us because there is a very a strong line when it comes to when the community asks for some consistent help from the forward PD and when they take the place a lot of times us trying to get through our story or whatever it is that may be going on or not situation and everything that they tend to be a little like many small people skills better understand the situation instead of just coming in thinking they know the situation you know what I mean because I would like to change how I identify how I see the forward PD in our community you know absolutely I don't want to look down upon them you know what I mean I'd rather look up they are probably you know but that would be hopefully these steps that I have taken to help kind of like improve their identity and how we view them and so I just want to summarize it the statement in general was that members have interactions with the police department for the police to actually listen and to see them and versus coming in with an already preconceived notion and improving communication skills one of the other things we have the opportunity to do is provide training recommendations and review the training academy which has done like leaps and bounds in comparison to what it's been but a recommendation I've made in New Orleans before and this was at the use of our mediators is for an active listening class because officers are taught how to investigate and so we have a lot of time again and I know this as being a lawyer sometimes we stop listening completely to what people are saying like we're not hearing the feelings we're looking for the facts and teaching officers how to reflect those feelings while still gaining the investigatory knowledge that they need is something that I plan on making a recommendation for in the future as an in-service class so it would have to be optional just because there's so many TECO requirements but those are things that we are definitely concerned of and are there other improvements that can be made to restore trust? Any other questions Pamela? What is the status of the MOU the memorandum of understanding between your office and Fort Worth PD as far as requiring them to respond to the recommendations that you give I understand you said that you give them it's noted that they've been given and received but there was an MOU that Kim Neil was working on before she left that would require them to not just note that they received it but to give a yes or no yes we're going to implement this or no we're not going to implement this in either way yes or no give a reason what's the status of that? So that MOU was signed very quickly before Kim left that is still in place and I believe in the fall since I've been here I did get an update they are providing feedback on whether or not it's been implemented so it's not just simply received they do recognize when they receive it but they do provide feedback if it's like duplicative of something that they're already doing or if it's going to be implemented in some way and so we have an entire spreadsheet with over a hundred and I'm looking at Erin like over 140 recommendations I would say 202 recommendations and they have the outcome of those recommendations on them That's why I was last we are working on our biennial annual report it's just been a change in leadership so we're going to combine those two years and then the previous annual report gave that general information my goal is to be able to provide that in a more detailed way in our annual report No so there's nothing barring from providing the recommendations and the outcome but oftentimes and I'll have to navigate that with legal on if I can say what it's connected to so I can say like there's been a recommendation for X, Y, and Z but I can't necessarily say because it was with officers so and so so it's just towing that line and providing useful information to the community but making sure that you're informed to use it in the future And I just want to highlight that question just for the YouTube channel this will be you can review it again so other people can see it the question was has there been a MOUX status between Open Office and the police chief's is to make sure that once a recommendation is sent to them they are to say they're going to whether or not they're going to actually follow the recommendation and that is happening and I do want to say that we do have a positive working relationship with the department I meet with the chief every two weeks I meet with internal affairs multiple times a month and since being on board they've been very responsive and respectful to the office and understanding of where we're coming from and so there's been one issue that I've brought to them where I've been met with great resistance and I'm hoping that that continues to bear fruit of positive policing relationships between the community and the police department and I can second that because during this whole process they were really completely against a lot of things the Open Office and funding it and not so much I'm not talking about the police department but outsiders as in P.O.A. or other folks that supports the police department but as time has taken place more things are coming in and we'll be able to do more things so I appreciate your leadership in making sure that happens and your office as well is kind of working with our police department we have time for maybe a couple more questions again we want to stop at seven and then you got a question okay we'll come to you next briefly touch on it but can you give us an example of a city that has a civilian oversight board and an office like OPOM so an example of a city that has a civilian oversight board and our office I'm trying to think of the exact name of it but Dallas has it quite frankly Dallas has I don't remember their official name of the person that has my position but it's rain out of the city and then they have civilian oversight board but their board was supposed to have investigatory powers but if you've seen the media recently that's been contested of whether or not they'll be able to do investigations that have not been approved by the department to be investigated but that also has its problems because whether or not they could actually compel officers to provide testimony was an issue whether or not they could subpoena things of those nature Atlanta has one Miami has it there are several cities that do have them that have both yes let's go to her real quick I'm sorry thank you switch walk I'd say thank you thank you so much and welcome to Fort Worth thank you this police oversight monitor program is great much neat for the mediation if there was a complaint if I had a complaint prior to the oversight can I is it too late for mediation because the situation that happened it left me emotional just really hurt by the situation that happened it was a call for an unjust and I thought to myself if I could just have a moment with this officer to get an understanding as to why you did what you did it was unjust and immoral that never happened so because this wasn't here is there a way that I still would like to speak to this officer see what's going on with him see if anything has happened since then in his record but is there a way that I can have a mediation although it was this happened in 2021 so unfortunately the way the program is structured it will start with complaints that come in April 1st but what I will say is I'm never going to just say no I'm happy to have the conversation I'm happy for us to sit down and try to talk to the officer they're never obligated to participate in the mediation program and we don't have the draw of you're not going to be investigated but I'm happy to have the conversation to see if it's something we can facilitate but the focus is on present complaints and investigations and if you reach out to my office I will see what I can do because with this mediation happening I want to make a a man to the community although it might not fall under the mediation but we make and have a conversation that can change the narrative yes Pam anybody else have a question you said that the goal is to monitor complaints in real time but you're not there yet when is that going to happen so I honestly think that we're pretty close to being there if we're not there now in 2020 what started was essentially the backlog of cases and establishing the numbers and so we've been to this point reviewing all of the old cases that came through internal affairs and making sure they're up to par and so now I think with reducing the time frame we're able to get closer to real time also internal affairs has improved their investigations and their investigation time before they were getting cases and we're still getting some at day 179 so I can't monitor that in real time but I also don't have the time within the team to monitor a case in real time because they were so backlog but I believe that we're very close to being out of the backlog and I have the staff in order to be able to monitor there in real time we got a complaint in today at probably 12 and we've already reviewed the BWC and actually the complaint hasn't even been filed yet but we're monitoring real time we've notified the department that they're following that investigation and so that's what we're attempting to do now I love this question I ask this question to every department do we need more staff in this department to make sure that we can get that backlog down pack we need more staff to ensure that we're providing realistic oversight and to continue to do meaningful work I have visions for the office on what we continue to do and that requires growing the team and I don't want to just be in office that reviews misconduct complaints and so I want to grow from there and that will require more staffing in the future so community when they have the budget meetings around the city and David Cook comes out with your council member you want to highlight that there's more staff that's needed in the old pump office so that they not only hear from Jeanette and myself arguing these points but actually from the community and I'm being totally serious about these budget meetings but we're here now understanding we want to see this be successful and to get into real time as you say let's ask those hard questions the city of Fort Worth is the 13th largest city in the United States of America we can make this happen last and final question Ms. Tina James my question was as we are investigating the officers and the situations at hand let's just say for instance this officer has had several complaints but he shows up on time he puts in extra work comes in early at least late but he has a a repetitious problem with doing the same thing and just going to slap on the wrist what will be the following actions if it keeps happening and or in his file that it has shown that he has done this several times is there so not to go into too much detail and to do it quickly and one that's something that PD should be following but that's also why we're here so if you have an officer that's doing the same behavior let's just say it's rudeness that's technically small on the disciplinary scale but we see this time and time again then that's also going to be reflected in the discipline but also what I'm going to flag is hey chain of command we need to look at this because we actually need to see if this officer is fit for duty and maybe it's that they don't need to be on the street they need to be somewhere else doing something else absolutely one of the things I didn't include on there is when we look at the complaint we also look at personnel history and not just for sustained allegations is this officer getting a pattern of rudeness complaints that have been exonerated or unfounded but do we need to stop and pause and look at something else thank you thank you so much for coming into the community and having this conversation yep that's good thank you I'll be here we can talk well we only had room for an hour we was going to do offline conversation do we have enough I feel you I understand I think Jeanette has something if you really do want to give your input on the budget do it now before it gets built out because at these presentations we presented what's going into the budget but nothing really changes so I would do it now if you're going to push to recommend more positions for that department understood did you have an additional question I did we'll take your last question then we'll close out I have several so let me pick thank you alright question about the complaint process I notice in Austin if you go to the PD website there for internal affairs so two ways that y'all do it here you can go through IA or you can go directly to OPOM in Austin when you go to IA or to the police website it redirects you to the OPOM website and I noticed that you said only 40 of those complaints came to your office and several 100 went to IA because that's all we have had here up until recently and a lot of people still don't know that you exist this office my question is what are your thoughts on moving in that direction so that everything is funneled through you not going to IA but coming to OPOM first because that is your passion so the I want to make sure the complaint is received and so I don't necessarily have a preference of where it originates from as long as it's received and I can monitor it but I did just have a conversation with internal affairs on Friday about being able to provide additional information like status of complaints being able to file and whatever is linked on their website actually shoots straight back to my website and so that there is more it's more community facing and people know I'm working really really hard to make sure people know that this office exists and I think it's proven in the numbers I don't want to say that I only wanted it to come through OPOM because I want it however I'm going to get the complaint one of the additional things that I've committed to doing is also trying to train other community organizations to be able to help us with the referral process so for example I gave a speech last week at the LGBTQ police and fire chief luncheon and my call for action for them was if you hear something when you're interacting with someone there I want to make sure that you're equipped to be able to refer that complaint to me because I don't want someone that's been harmed to have to go through you're going to go meet with LGBTQ saves because that's where you're comfortable and then want to tell you to come meet with us I don't want to create those additional steps so wherever anyone's comfortable going that's where I want them to go I'm going to give this real quick plug New City Hall is happening and it is beautiful and it is spacious and it has a gym and a cafeteria and I would love to be there but we are committed to the community and so OPOM will be leaving Old City Hall we will not be going to New City Hall but we are going to go to the Old Gwynne School on Rosedale we're going there to be more community facing and more accessible and to limit those barriers so we do want to be the first place that people go but I don't want to ever restrict their ability to come to go to the police department as well Thank you I think that's a good place to stop Again I want to thank Angela also for helping us secure this room so we appreciate you with Texas Westland and Allen and all of you, thank you officers for being here as well we are committed to working with our police officers because they do make sure our city is safe and so thank you again for being here and so this information will be uploaded on our city youtube channel the OPOM office was live on instagram we were live on our council page councilman nettles page facebook so thank you again we'll do this again another opportunity we want to just come out to the community so with that we're going to end our conversation so thank you guys for coming have a good evening