 All right so this meeting is now being recorded. Welcome everybody to the Amherst Community Chat for Thursday March 18th. Today we have Amherst Police Captain Ting, Captain Gabe Ting, sorry, and Officer Bill Laramie joining us. Welcome to you both. Thank you. Again I'm Brianna Sunrid, Communications Manager, and we have your town manager Paul Walkaman. So before we ask our guests to introduce themselves and start asking questions I will ask Paul to give any general town updates. Thanks Brianna. So it's all about the pandemic and the vaccine and moving forward out of this the governor yesterday announced that a schedule for everyone who will be eligible for vaccinate receiving vaccines which is really exciting. We stand ready to help deliver those vaccines if we're given supply right now. We have very limited supply. We are a regional site in conjunction with the City of Northampton. We get a couple hundred doses a week. We're capable of doing five or six times that many even many more than that if we need to. But it's all about supply. As supply increases we will increase our ability to deliver a vaccine but people can go on the town's website. It can go on the Vax Finder website. The best place to go I think is our Amherst COVID website that Brianna can reference because all the links are right there. So it's really easy to find everything you need and UMass their website is available as well because they have a separate sort of standalone system as well. So getting vaccines, having a schedule moving forward, having the schools moving towards opening in April. We're on the track of getting back to normal. It will still take many months but I think we're going to be going we're moving in the right direction and we're sort of excited about it. The one thing we worry about is what we're going to talk about today is if there's an increase or an outbreak of cases in Amherst which we've already experienced with the university students primarily and so that's what our mission is over the next few weeks is how do we not let that happen again? Great thank you Paul. I'm sure many of our viewers already are familiar with Captain Ting and Officer Laramie but I'd love for them to just give a quick intro for those who aren't. Gabe you're in my top left square. Captain Ting if you could introduce yourself. Hi everyone my name is Gabe Ting and I am the operational captain for the Amherst Police Department. I've been here for 24 years and I grew up in Amherst while I'm a local and went to the University of Massachusetts as well and I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Thank you Gabe and I think you grew up up in my neighborhood so North Amherst. Yes it's the best all the best people live up there in my opinion. Sorry Paul. Officer Laramie could you introduce yourself please. Sure hi everyone Bill Laramie. I am officer with the Amherst Police currently assigned in community outreach. I've been here wrapping up 25 years so my experience here has been diverse you know I've worked kind of all the chefs so I was up in the detective bureau a little bit so I would say my assignment now has been the most enjoyable yet most challenging but yeah particularly now it's a lot of excitement going on so thanks for having me. Thank you Bill. So I just want to remind those who are joining us live feel free to use Q&A to ask your question or just raise your hand in Zoom so we can hear from you live. We do have some questions prepared so we'll start with that but at any point feel free to chime in. So we all know yesterday typically a big event or a week long type of event St. Patrick's Day and the weeks leading up to it and after it how how did it go yesterday was there a lot of activities were there a lot of parties what was the impact on your team. So you know this year has been interesting because there are a lot of changes with the university certainly with a decreased amount of their population from just having about 4,500 freshmen on campus and the majority off campus so that changed that changed the dynamics a little bit and another portion was that certainly COVID plays a big part of it and the fact that they didn't have a spring break and St. Patrick's Day fell on the 17th so relative to yesterday it was quiet in regards to parties and celebrations we didn't receive any noise or disturbance complaints related to this day. As you know or may not know in the past year St. Patrick's Day is celebrated among the college community primarily UMass during the first Saturday of March. This unsanctioned celebration was coined as the Blarney blow out and it really started in 2013 where the bars and Amherst began a bar promotion and that was to celebrate St. Patrick's Day before the students left for spring break so that's why it was kind of designated as that weekend but unfortunately the bars could only accommodate so many patrons so the students kind of began to create their own house parties to augment this promotion and in the following years it grew and it became a tradition it grew to thousands of party goers creating disturbances fights destruction of property underage drinking and a general sense of chaos throughout the town for that day so as a result you know the police department in collaboration with the university police department as well in the town we we started to implement many strategies to eradicate this event and a lot of those strategies are still used today some of those strategies include Bill's position as the neighborhood liaison officer we also have a community outreach officer we constantly monitor social media for this particular event we have a strong collaboration with the university and Amherst college and we also use our mutual aid assistance um because we only have so many officers here so really due to COVID regulations uh university code of conduct and visitor regulations and with the bars closed down and a diminished number of students on campus um a couple with our outreach and enforcement efforts this year has really been uneventful which has been which has been nice yeah that's that's really good to hear and I wouldn't wonder you know with the weather warming up and not necessarily hinged to the to this specific date or week how have you are you seeing any parties or gatherings that aren't associated with St. Patrick's Day holiday you know it's funny our definition of parties or large parties has really changed uh since COVID had hit um a party of 50 or more was generally considered as a large party uh before COVID but in today's climate I would say a party of 10 or more uh inside or a party of 25 or more is considered too much as we're trying to follow the governor's guidelines to public gatherings um we're responding to our noise complaints we've been seeing smaller gatherings in general in general usually about 15 to 20 people or so so it appears that the students by and large are trying to uh comply um but there have been a few instances of larger gatherings um two weekends ago we had a large gathering about 300 college kids partnering in uh one of the quads at townhouse um and I think that's part of it is is the weather was really compliant in that day um and I know that uh some of the students are getting kind of stir crazy and it's part of their culture too to want to go out and socialize and certainly understand that um so with that being said we try to be as reasonable as possible we try to see the viewpoint from every angle from the student population to the university administrators view to our our town's view as well as the uh our town's permanent populations view um so as a police agency really it's a balancing act to ensure public safety and not to create any resentment from any of the groups that are involved um so in order for us to educate there it's necessary to involve a component to hold violators accountable as well so our strategy has been to provide outreach first and then to issue fines rather than arrest when there are violations and then we will refer the students back to their university or the college that they're affiliated with so so far this process has worked really well it's been a really good deterrent and how have things changed pre and you know during covid is your response to these types of large gatherings have you had to approach them differently when when officers um go to go on scene or what's different this year versus last year or actually maybe two years ago at this point um how would I say different it changed quite a bit because we have to keep in mind that uh we want to keep our officers safe as well as the community in terms of of catching covid because if if we can't help ourselves then it makes it difficult to help others um so covid covid has really impacted us causing us to change some of the ways that we do things um you know all of our officers have worked through this pandemic so nobody has has uh been working remotely so we've been here the whole time which means that we have to take special precautions to make sure that that we're all safe um because essentially an outbreak would have really crippled us for quite some time and um and honestly I think we've done a really good job in preventing that from happening yeah I think that was our our biggest fear was I think our biggest fear gave Bill was if the fire department or police department or dispatch um they had a had a contagion in their in the building because you're in those buildings you can't help but be in those buildings and um and we worried about that with tpw2 because it's water wastewater these are all essential activities that the town performs and has our biggest fear and we've we survived it so far and we're really and it's due diligence by our staff and the and the employees of the town I agree yeah thank you for recognizing that you know we I think that all of our departments have done a phenomenal job um so some of the changes first and foremost we want to make sure that all of our officers are following the rules you know we can't really expect the public to comply it if we're not doing it as well so some of the changes internally were operational changes so we had to limit groups um group sizes sharing spaces donning masks and cleaning routines um externally we would employ methods to meet with people with a phone uh or electronically such as right now or outside as much as possible so we also try to avoid physical casualties if possible and we chose issue fines or criminal summons if that was necessary so you know again we try to really um try to educate versus uh enforcement enforcement was really used as a last resort so you know I I guess people would probably ask about car stops to initially when COVID first hit we again in our efforts to try and limit any contact we tried to curtail our motor vehicle stops um that was kind of tough because we recognized that or one of our fears was that if we stop stopping cars that there'd be an uptick in in traffic crashes and whatnot so fortunately we haven't really seen that in town I think there was an uptick nationally with uh car crashes and whatnot but certainly in Amherst I think there were other factors other variables certainly uh the population was smaller um and uh you know there just wasn't the the bars were closed and there just weren't as many activities so that kind of uh helped us out in that sense uh for large gatherings in town um again we've only really seen them with uh with the college student population so we've worked closely with our university partners and our and certainly with Bill Laramy the position that he's in these have been tremendous in helping that effort um and I want to talk about a little bit about our ambassadors they've been a big help as well they're trying to educate this population as much as possible Bill's going to speak to that a little bit more um however you know again we try to be real about things we are going up against a college culture that's ingrained with this age group in this setting so there's always going to be some kind of resistance um so when education fails we must still hold violators accountable so thank you Gabe I wonder if Bill you could talk a little bit how your position fits in with all this work and how the ambassadors and on and others on your team what's going on in your world right now what's going on in my world where do I start at the beginning once upon a time uh yeah so I would say my work is extremely busy right now there's a lot of moving parts in terms of my connections at the university working with property managers so in terms of like how I look at data and stuff so on Mondays you know I'll kind of pull all of our previous weeks reports and then disseminate that as appropriate to property managers to the university we meet weekly with the university as well as other officials in town whether it be our building inspectors fire department can you talk a little bit about those meetings Bill that's I think that's interesting people don't know that that every Monday you have your what do you call it no I'm on call on call yeah who's there and what what do you talk about so we most of the focus at this point is around COVID shockingly and around student behavior so again when we when we analyze this information we're disseminating it to the university to our property managers we discuss what has gone on at EPD so and you know say there's deviant examples say there was a noise disturbance at a fraternity house or something we became aware of that we took some enforcement action we would share that information with the university additionally we have code enforcement at the table so I would talk with them you know I think it's necessary that we perform an inspection in there so we'll pull them in and then through an inspection the fire department becomes involved so you know they're looking at life safety type equipment and then you know the Dean of Students someone isn't within their division of of conduct so they're taking they're doing intake on these cases and meeting out appropriate discipline folks may or may not be aware that the level of discipline was ratcheted up quite a bit a few weeks ago the Vice Chancellor sent out an email to the students basically saying if you were involved in this townhouse incident that you were considered under interim suspension that I believe is going to be kind of their standard of going forward through this semester so that was kind of a huge piece of this for us because I feel like as a police department and town collectively you know we were giving them information and you know looking for them what is going to be your contribution to this so by just the language alone I think was a big step and something we were we were grateful for and I think since then we've seen because we had and we continue to have some concerns about what the semester is going to look like you know what's going to happen on that first 70 degrees Saturday what is that going to look like are there going to be some people choose to take risks and see how serious the dean of students is because the reality is and most people know it is the punishment we hand out is not as severe as what the university can hand out so the courts often you know can hand out fines but really the the university can impact somebody's livelihood and their education not that we want to see people thrown out but you know I feel like the the tone of her email and the seriousness of it will help us going forward so that is one part of my job and then the other part is you know is really how all this intersects help public safety intersects with public health so Kat Newman if any of you have not had the opportunity to meet her either in person or through some type of zoom meeting she was hired last fall as our COVID ambassador coordinator so she reports to me and then I report to Gabe and so you know she is real dynamic I've kind of she comes in high energy I kind of just give her the guard reels to stay with them you know the you know I say to her often I have a 24 year head start on you have to trust me like you can communicate with me and we can make a decision based upon what you're telling me so she's the program I think in its infancy was was one around simply mass compliant so we hired some ambassadors we wanted them visible in the downtown because that's where we had adopted a mass compliant zone and we were out there just educating people handing out masks and then you know it's really evolved into much much more than that as I knew she wanted to take it in the direction and we do weekly outreach we're going to do it every Friday we do a three to five last Saturday we were out from noon to six we'll be out from noon to six this Saturday and who's out with you when you go out on those visits really it brought me kind of invite everybody you know in previous outreaches we've had property managers come with us we've had folks like Sally Linawski from the off-campus student center she is with us most Fridays she was out with us last Saturday and admittedly last Saturday was was really quiet but I mean it's such a it's such a terrific group of people so we you know we made our own yeah so you drive by right yeah we saw you there's there's somebody in green pants but they're lying they're involved that person's got a green tarp on their roof are they having a party you know stuff like that it was didn't go out with you on these so yeah yeah so if you look at Winston's Instagram he's he had a terrific day he likes that we've got to use the AFD van and it's got really big windshield so he kind of sits up there and is like king of the world for for the afternoon so and he's been very well received you know I think that's and we can talk a little bit about him but I don't want to occupy too much time but I mean he's been as we would expect a really nice connection piece we're going to whomever it may be you know he's participated in a lot of the vaccination clinics and I've heard a lot of positive feedback from attendees as well as people staffing it like he just kind of lowers the temperature there because I mean there's people that walk into these clinics and it was evident to me the first one I went to and I I was looking at this as a healthy 50 year old male and then I went to this and saw people that you know this was a big big deal for them to have this vaccination so for him to be there and do his thing and he's doing really well so you can follow him on instagram if you're not already um what's the handle bill uh it's Winston at APD MA Winston APD MA he just type in Winston I don't know what it is yeah he'll be your first hit and he's got a great narrative he's up to lots of good things if you weren't really want to keep keep up to date with Winston yeah so I'm his I'm his driver his leash holder and his I'm also his editor on his instagram so we our daily activity so that is I mean that kind of summarizes what we do I feel like we have a really good team in place I was actually just deputy chief vn seer from un pd shared a an article from boulder colorado they had a major incident a couple weekends ago with some student conduct and you know there was a summary of like what they're doing and what they should be doing and a lot of both what they were doing and what they should be doing we are doing everything so you know I feel like there's no in students you know I have a lot of meetings with students and leadership positions and they I think they're I don't know if they're pleasantly surprised but they're surprised how much I know you know and I bring to the table so it's good and for me it's really about transparency and building trust the problem we have is that in these leadership positions they change annually so by the time you built up that that trust and transparency it's time to bring in a new person so we're we're working through that stuff I think it's you know again with the team we have assembled people are committed to this work so I think we can move it in a good direction and we're hiring for more COVID ambassadors right now is that correct we are yes yeah and so can you talk a little bit about you know who should apply I mean we're looking for people with various different age levels experiences yeah exactly I mean I think I think we're really looking for anybody like if you're in high school if you're retiree looking to pick up some extra hours if you're you're an active person you're outgoing I think those are two big things you're you're uh pliable in terms of like the mission changes often you know what you think you might be doing one day you may be thinking you're coming in to do a walking shift and then you're assigned to you know going over to a vaccination station so but they've been the people that cat is has hired they've been terrific you know they're all really good folks some of them are townies some of them are UMass alumni some of them we're frankly looking for a job but you know we've kind of molded them into really high functioning teams so it's been fun to watch yeah I really second that I mean the ambassadors whenever we've you know obviously full-time staff here who've been here for a while and working on COVID response we found as you said the mission changes the information changes from the state and we have to pivot quickly and the ambassadors have been really responsive to us sending them a request for help at the last minute and they're there right and also answering the phones for folks and I think that's a high priority thing as well because a lot of people just call with concerns and we're able to staff the the COVID hotline on weekends with ambassadors which has been a huge help and I'll tell you regarding that and I can tell folks who may be listening so part of the our operational plan at least within my wheelhouse of having ambassadors out on the weekend is we're going to deliver like real-time response so that's kind of our plans of the ambassador answering the hotline we'll get in touch with me and we can actually go and just have a conversation with people are not going there too it's education and outreach it's not about enforcement in the context of my work so we're just going to go there real-time and have conversations with people so that's another important piece because I feel like a lot of our calls again there's this intersecting public health and public safety so I can go down there and evaluate is this where are we at is this public health or is this public safety or is a little bit of both so that's kind of what we're going to do and that I was talking with captain thing this morning about you know what it's going to look like going forward in terms of our operational posture and I think you know I think it's going to be weather dependent I think it's going to be based upon really the students control the students under weather control how our department responds I think am I correct captain yeah I would say so definitely so I know we only have a couple minutes left I do want to touch a different topic if it's okay so we all are aware of the shootings that happened in in Atlanta earlier this week and we live in a very diverse community and with a lot of and I just wondered you know and I know our police department recognizes that and when we do hiring and promotions we talk a lot about that and like what what you need to have to be working in the town of Amherst and is in terms of the police response in reaction to that do you have any comments on that I certainly do you know I'm going to echo that sentiment that the town of Amherst is so unique that we have a segment of population that really represents any ethnicity or culture in the world um when something of this nature happens and it's in the national spotlight we can usually associate it with our own town in some shape or form certainly the Asian population in town is about 11 and that's that's about the same with the university population so in terms of minority groups the Asian population is really the largest in town so in terms of speaking for the police department we certainly denounce any violence and specifically any violence that's racially motivated this is something that we have been monitoring closely we've seen very few instances for fortunately in town thus far and we hope to keep it that way we wish to protect all of our citizens and visitors in Amherst and encourage anyone who has encountered any instances of hate to bring it to our attention we're not going to tolerate it we're certainly going to enforce all laws and that so certainly at the forefront and it's it's really a sad situation and uh you know we're keeping an eye on it great thank you Gabe so as Paul mentioned we are coming up at the end of our time it goes by quickly as we say so Bill Gabe anything that you want to leave the community members with that you didn't get asked directly in the last few minutes go ahead yeah certainly I we appreciate this opportunity to be able to reach out you know a lot of times I feel like there's there's potential lack of opportunities to reach out to the community and this is one great way to to kind of expose ourselves and the opportunity to come in and ask questions and certainly if there's no questions here today you know give me a call anytime I'll be more than happy to speak with anybody great thank you and I guess I would echo that too I mean my job in community outreach is just that being part of the community and as we continue to improve here you know I've I've sat in and many many more zoom meetings than I would like so I've kind of changed my approach a little bit and I call them moving meetings so if there's something you want to discuss I have a dog that needs walking so I'll meet you in your neighborhood and we can we can take a walk and discuss any issues they might have I feel that way is much more productive and that allows me to get Winston some exercise so reach out anytime I'll be calling you after this show all right let's do it all right well we want to say thank you to you both I know you're very busy and we appreciate you making time this session will be is recorded and we'll post it up to our community chat channel if anybody wants to share it later again thank you both and have a great day thanks guys thank you appreciate it