 haste in the wake of George Floyd's murder to pass legislation ostensibly designed at reducing deaths of black people at the hands of law enforcement. I do not believe that this committee has engaged in the deep reflection, the careful thought, and the broad public engagement that effective legislation in this domain requires. The disproportionate rate of deaths of black people at the hands of law enforcement or a knee are rooted in white supremacy, structural racism, explicit and implicit bias, and deep-seated prejudice against people with perceived mental illnesses. It will require more than a hodgepodge collection of statutory measures from data collection, mandatory body-worn cameras, and a knee-baked use of force policy crib from the state of California to overcome the structural racism and implicit biases that have allowed police officers to escape prosecution, conviction, and punishment for excessive use of force. Judges, prosecutors, appellate courts, indeed the law itself are all implicated and work in reinforcing ways to perpetuate these disproportionate killings. This committee needs to understand how investigations of excessive force are carried out by fellow law enforcement officers, how Supreme Court precedent and principles of statutory construction, how prosecutorial discretion, the rules of evidence, the selection of juries, all conspire to perpetuate the disproportionate use of excessive force against black people without holding people to account. When I read S219, I do not have confidence that this committee appreciates the enormity of the problem and the massive undertaking that a solution will require. The work of this committee should be to identify, and through legislation, dismantle the policies, the institutional practices, and the cultural norms that have historically failed to deter excessive use of force against black people and to hold police officers to account for such excessive use of force. I also think the statute as currently written really needs to include and make explicit legislative findings. If this committee truly wishes to introduce a new use of force standard, the committee should include findings to make transparent the committee's intent, analysis, and thought process. Legislative findings serve as a rationale, explicit rationale for legislative action, and they give courts act, they give courts a roadmap to what you were thinking and how the law should be enforced should issues of interpretation come to bear. It also signals to the public that this, that you have engaged in a deliberative process rather than a knee-jerk reaction to current events. I have written previously about the necessity for this statute to actually include a definition of necessity, and I've heard other people talk about that, so I won't answer that, but I will address Senator Sear's question to Ms. Moore about why this statute needs a necessary definition. First of all, the definition of necessary was completely removed out of the the statute in California, it wasn't watered down, and I provided for this committee a analysis of the California statute as introduced and as enacted, and that's in the record, and you can see for yourself how that statute was altered through the legislative process. But without a necessary definition, I don't think a court will uphold this statute. I think it will be deemed void as vague. I don't think it gives clear guidance to officers, and I also think that because of the way structural racism works, by not having a definition of necessary, you have just simply given the system another out to not hold police officers accountable. And I want to talk about body cameras, and while I agree that body cameras could provide a good deterrent to excessive force, I don't think this statute as written provides enough of the deterrent for excessive use of force. What I learned during my tenure on the Mental Health Crisis Response Commission, that for some reason, I think police officers are under the impression that body camera recordings are not really reviewed during investigations by investigators or supervisors. When I was on the Mental Health Crisis Response Commission, I viewed hours and hours of body camera footage, and I reviewed hours and hours of sworn oral testimony. And many times I found instances where there was a discrepancy between what was on the camera and what was testified to orally. And so I think that in order to put any teeth into a requirement that people wear body cameras, you have to have a provision that allows the public access to the footage. I disagree very much with the ACLU's model body camera policy. That policy, for example, limits who can view the body camera footage to people who are subject to it or their legal representatives. And it also says that the way you gain access to the body camera footage is through the Public Records Act. This is another example of how structural racism works. On the face, the ACLU body camera policy looks race neutral. However, when you add in the fact that you have to use the Public Records Act, which requires money and usually a lawyer, when you add in the fact that it's so limited to just the people who are the subject of it, you have effectively, again, once perpetuated unequal outcomes based on race. I note that New York just last week or earlier this week, New York City, has instituted a policy that in cases of force, that includes a stun gun or handgun, body camera footage will be made available to the public within 30 days by posting it on the Internet. That is the way you get around structural racism. It's free. It's available to the public. It's transparent. That's not perpetuating structural racism. That is the way it should be done. I think this policy, if you seriously want to use body cameras to deter excessive force, you need to adopt the policy that allows anyone in the public to see the footage free of charge. I'm sorry, did somebody have a... Okay. Okay. On the part of the statute that deals with improper restraint, I'm very confused by it. I have in my written testimony suggested a rewrite of the definition, which I won't get into now. I'll just talk about what I'm confused about. There is a provision in the statute that provides that if an officer uses improper restraint, they can be punished up to a maximum of 20 years, imprisoned up to a maximum of 20 years, or fined up to a maximum of $50,000. However, I don't see anything in the statute that explains how we get from an officer using improper restraint to a prison sentence. I don't understand if this law is intended to make the use of improper restraint a crime in and of itself that will be adjudicated through the legal system. It's just really unclear. It's also unclear why the statute talks about a maximum sentence and no minimum because the way it's written now, a skillful attorney could successively argue that no prison sentence or fine is required for the use of improper restraint. I just think that it raises more questions than answers for me. And I pose those all as questions because it's unclear to me what that is all about. I think the statute is also insufficient because it doesn't address the excessive force that people with a mental health crisis suffer. As I said at the outset, people with so-called untreated severe mental illnesses are 16 times more likely to be killed by law enforcement and this statute does not address that at all. I know based on my work on the mental health crisis response commission, that based on my review of all the evidence, I concluded that the root cause of that excessive force is essentially explicit and implicit biases or unconscious biases against people with mental illnesses and that simply needs to be addressed. I will stop there in the interest of time and I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Welda. Are there questions from the committee? Mr. Senator Sears, are you wanting to ask any questions? No, I'm fine. I think certainly when we get to tomorrow, when we deal with markup of the bill, we'll certainly look at your suggestions regarding your questions. Okay, thank you. So if there are no further questions, Welda, thank you so much and I'm glad you've submitted your testimony as well. So thank you. Thanks for being on. Next we have Kristen Chandler, who is the training coordinator for team two. So Kristen, if you would go ahead. Good morning. I am Kristen Chandler, the training coordinator for team two and I've gotten in touch with Senator Sears because I've been following testimony in this committee and I just wanted to make sure that people are aware of the really good training that is going on in Vermont for law enforcement officers. I also teach Act 80 at the police academy, which is the mandatory mental health training, the eight hour training that's mandated for all law enforcement in Vermont and I'm a member of the Mental Health Crisis Review Commission as well. Team two is a voluntary training for not only law enforcement but mental health crisis workers, dispatchers, EMTs, and emergency department personnel are also invited to the training. States attorneys are invited and this is a collaborative effort between the Department of Mental Health and the Department of Public Safety that has been in Vermont since 2013. It's offered statewide six times a year in five different regions around the state and since 2014, 2013 was when we trained trainers and there are 35 trainers who are either law enforcement or mental health crisis workers or I have a couple dispatchers who are also trainers in those five regions around the state and since 2014 we've trained about, I want to say 400 law enforcement officers, probably 250 mental health crisis workers or clinicians of some type and a whole host of dispatchers and other folks. The point of the training is to foster that collaborative effort in responding to a mental health crisis. It's to build relationships really which is key to a peaceful and healthy outcome to any kind of mental health crisis. There's a steering committee that's made up of not only law enforcement but consumers. NAMI, Laurie Emerson from NAMI is on the steering committee. There's a mental health designated agencies have representation. Dale, the Department of Aging Independent Living has a spot as well as ADAP because of the, so often there is a co-occurring disorder. So the steering committee helps design the curriculum. It's a scenario-based training that we run through three different scenarios in this one-day training that are focused on the legal aspects, the clinical aspects, and the safety aspects of a particular crisis and they're all based on real-life scenarios. It seems like not many people are always aware that this training exists in Vermont and I have had the good fortune this past year to go to three different national conferences including the International Association of Chiefs of Police to present what we're doing here in Vermont and it's really unique and it's, you may have heard of crisis intervention training which is a 40-hour training which is offered in major metropolitan areas and it's sort of the gold standard of mental health response for law enforcement and it's a five-day training. In Vermont there's one police department that's offering that and that's the Hartford Police and I teach the legal aspect of that during that training as well and this team too is really a response to crisis intervention training for a rural area because it's so hard for police agencies to send officers to a full five-day training especially given the number of agencies we have here who have very small departments but they can't send somebody to a one-day training and we have seen incredible response, incredible learning going on through this training and there's a continued need. There are definitely areas in Vermont where that idea of collaborating in response for law enforcement to call on their mental health counterparts, the experts really in the field to assist them at a scene or to assist them in figuring out how to de-escalate a situation where it's not it's not like an automatic thought by law enforcement and there are but for example Washington County has enjoyed that kind of collaborative relationship for a very long period of time which is really the the genesis of team two came from that model that Washington County has done for years so there's still work to be done for sure and there are every year through the grant there's a requirement for me to write a final report and that's available for you there's also there's a list in in the final report of all the people who've attended people who and the agencies that have never attended and it is a voluntary training that being said the Vermont state police identified team two about two years ago captain Scott identified it he was on the steering committee and made it a priority for Vermont state troopers so they're trying to send all their troopers through the training which has been really helpful of the there's probably 10 police agencies that have never sent anybody to the training and of those agencies they're mostly really tiny small departments but the two that stick out for me that I I continue to hope what they will see that this is a valuable training is the Chittenden County Sheriff they've never attended and the St. Johnsbury police so every every training session it's done regionally because it's important that the people who work in the same region connect with each other I send out invitations to the chiefs it's posted on the criminal justice training council website when the trainings are it's free for law enforcement and like I said this is a collaborative grant between the Department of Public Safety and DMH and it's not a whole lot of money I just want to mention that it's about a hundred thousand dollar grant but it's it's tenuous it's year to year DMH's contribution is about 80 thousand dollars and the state police put in 20 thousand dollars and there's been you know some concern that because of budget cuts and you know the need to trim budgets that team two would be could be one of those things that goes away and I just really I can't emphasize enough the value in this training that I have seen and have gotten direct feedback from consumers who have and I'll just tell you recently dealt with somebody who just went through the training and I just want to tell you this one this one tidbit because part of the training involves not only those scenarios but also a lot of discussion just frank discussion about how to handle different situations and in particular we cover how to work with people who are on the autism spectrum because those calls have become very frequent and just recently in the beginning of June there was a call a 911 hang-up call with a 12-year-old on the autism spectrum that is sort of a repeated this is a has happened more than once and the officer who responded to which had just gone through team two training and had learned some stuff about what what it's like for somebody on the autism spectrum and his response to that 12-year-old was really remarkable because the 12-year-old wanted to touch him he wanted to touch all his duty belt and all of his equipment and the officer recognized that that was something he learned at the training that would happen and he let that happen I got incredible feedback from the parents who had previously had a different officer respond and not not in a good way so there were real and there's all kinds of antidotes like that and you may you might be familiar with there's once a year I put out something called the good news bulletin which is sort of a synopsis from around the state of various calls that have gone really well where there's been great collaboration between the designated mental health agency and local law enforcement or it's just local law enforcement who've used the tools they've learned at team two training to have a really a good outcome where we've seen a real real improvement where in the past the idea was you know get it done quick get it done this get the call over as soon as you can because I got to get on to the next call and we really talk about slowing things down using time and using your partners in the field such as mental health crisis clinicians dispatchers and emergency department personnel and other folks to come up with a safe and effective resolution to a mental health crisis so that's that's the synopsis of what team two is and I'm happy to answer any questions if you have them thank you thank you very much so committee members are there questions for Kristin we we have another person Kristen who's list Jeanette white is listening on the phone now also so just so she cut out okay very good so that's very helpful I like that you mentioned all the parts that I had questions about like is it mandatory what's it cost etc so thank you for coming you bet and next on our agenda the next three persons to speak will be George Carabacus the CEO of health care rehab services in Springfield Michael Fitzgerald the chief of the Broward world police department and chief faculty the Montpelier police chief who is soon retiring so so George is not here yet um nor is Michael I emailed them both and told them they're up so hopefully they'll join soon so you might want to move on to okay so that means we would move on to you chief faculty and after that Mike O'Neill and Rebecca Turner unless the other persons are here and we'll go back to them so if you could start chief that'd be great uh thank you and thank you for having me mr chairman and members of the committee behind me is also my successor this chief Brian Pete so uh he I will you know one thing I will say very quickly uh he also is a presenter at the international associate chiefs of police on a specific grant that he was awarded for CIT work in his previous agencies and now agency now in Borough and also body cams are immediate priority as well from where he's coming from um my comments will be short given all the testimony that you've already heard uh so when it comes to data collection and accountability for agencies we strongly strongly support this uh and also making sure that that the data is readily available to not only law enforcement to look at our practices sometimes we can even see uh you know evidence of implicit bias but also that the public can see that and that also includes even how we how we classify and and quantify use of force because it's not just number of times that force is used but I personally think it's very important to the public understand the circumstances in which uh force is applied in in uh in our operations as police uh police officials uh the you know and also the Vermont police association who I'm speaking of behalf of right now we also support holding those agencies accountable I mean we need to make sure that um if agencies are falling through the cracks that there are various mechanisms that we can um through the Vermont legal cities and towns which covers mostly municipal departments in Vermont uh but there's a roadmap to get them uh this important structure that they need so we have that consistency and that expectation of service that all Vermonters and visitors certainly deserve uh with regard to the um the use of force in the in the application and the of improper restraint uh and the prohibition of it the one glaring piece to me is that it does not allow for you know a qualifier in a deadly force situation in other words if an officer is fighting for his or her life um you know they're gonna do they have to do whatever they can to to survive that encounter and I think that's one thing I'm not seeing here uh even though absolutely I mean it's been a prohibited uh hold uh you know head neck and spine we're even in our own training every year we're on the mats uh you know our instructors are really good even if it's accidentally hey watch where your that arm is watch where your knee is um you know as we're just even going through the techniques annually on our own department so I think there needs to be something there that in a deadly force fighting for your life situation um that any officer has ability to use whatever they need to to survive um that encounter set that's it uh no there's oh okay better beruth uh thank you uh madam vice chair uh so officer facos I I see your point um the struggle for me is when I look at the incidents we've seen nationwide where there is deadly force employed um often against black or brown uh victims the answer on the part of the officer and their attorney usually after a period of um of silence is to say that the officer feared for their life and in that fear they employed deadly force so how do we separate what you are saying which is uh you know an actual situation where someone had no other opportunity from what we see as a a very basic standard defense that's often promulgated by police unions the the idea that um anytime the officer experiences or or says they experience fear they are licensed to go to deadly force well even in your the additional wording in the bill itself you know there there's more than just fear I mean what what are the again the totality of the facts and circumstances I will tell this committee I don't know if I would be here today if it wasn't for a very if I had not used um and in what's as you're deeming as impot proper chokehold when I was a young officer two officers were my partner I were the only ones on in mob kill your uh once it was late 80s early 90s two three in the morning um we had somebody who was a a logger by trade um allegedly on a cocaine had was injured had jumped through a store a plate glass window up a door at back when there's to be a liquor store at the corner berry street and main street so there's when we roll up he is on his hands and knees he's injured and he's growling and uh my partner's on one his cruise on one side I am the other side I get on my car and it's like trying to de-escalate hey we're here to help what's wrong because he's clearly injured from you know cuts on his leg he stands up he's still growling he charges me I so I go to deflect him his body away from the uh the full on charge on me uh but I didn't block a right punch took a significant blow at that point my partner engages with him um as I'm a little you know rattled next thing I'm rolling around again with him I had no idea that my how badly my injured my partner was um and at one point when we're rolling around now on the sidewalk uh he's you know he's desperately trying to grab my firearm which will be a rub revolvers back then and so I had to disengage to keep him away from my firearm and but again going round around fighting with him we ended back on the street at this time I'm on top of him um and he's now he's trying to he's bite he got he's able to bite my hand and I had a device called a handler 12 it was something that we no longer use but it's a control and restraint as well as an impact tool it's kind of a metal uh rubberized hook type type type device and it wasn't until this fight's going on and on he's still trying to get my firearm but I'm also concerned if I you know like if I did pull my firearm you know since we're you know we're grappling around um am I you know is it going to get even worse uh and um and I'm you know injured you know my partner I had no idea how badly my partner was injured it wasn't until I started using an improper hold by this by the standard um knowing that it was deadly force even back then uh but I had a you know but only I could gain control of him and and save my own life at that point that he started to come into compliance and that was the first time when my partner was trying to handcuff him I realized my partner only had use of one arm his rotator cuff was torn so so severely um that he had lost complete use of it at the at the time uh we got and then the with the ambulance we transported him I share that story because uh only because um you know here would would I be committed even the earlier version would I be committing a felony uh to defend myself and I have you know and it was what was available in that fight at that time with somebody who was desperately trying to hurt me and my partner as well as um uh you know trying to get my firearm and it wasn't until I used that that that that tactic um out of desperation in that fight that was the first time he actually set a human word from as opposed to growling in the rage to I can't breathe and as soon as he was secured handcuffs obviously that was immediately released as soon as he was contained upon the stretcher and by the way he did also in the ER he also bit the attending physician um and so I only share that because um had I not used that tactic uh you know would how would that situation resulted in in a firearm discharge or me being killed if I might follow up madam briefly in that you know we want to get the rest of the testimony yeah and uh officer I I understand that um as you tell the story there was nothing else that could have been done um if I'm right we have non-lethal tools now that you carry with you uh such as a taser am I right mob pillar uh by again community policing listening to the the the citizens of my pillar that was heavily debated was something that I did advocate for uh early on as a chief in my pillar um but because it was dividing the community we we listened and we opted not to go with that that that technology so we do not have tasers in mob pillar yeah we have batons and pepper spray I I think there are other communities that have other non-lethal tools but I guess what I would go back to is we haven't seen what defense the officer who was responsible for the death of George Floyd will use but I would imagine he will argue that he was in fear for his life and that he had no other option but to kneel on his neck or to cut off his wind now he may well lose in court and you had you been prosecuted may well have won your case but I guess what I'm saying is if we put in language that allows uh this to be used in certain circumstances it seems to me that we will then have every death use that as the defense and so I was sincere in asking at the beginning of my interrogation if you have suggestions for language that will help us uh you know find the sweet spot I would be very interested to see that um I yeah I I certainly again in every other context absolutely you know support the codification of banning this whole something that again that is in our training and has always been considered a lethal force whenever you're dealing with um something that's gonna it's going to you know this you know disturb the flow of blood or obviously cut off somebody's ability to breathe um you know the comparison of this of this of the situation that I personally was in comparing that to you know the absolute criminal murder by my my perspective of what I saw like everybody else in Minneapolis are two very different situations um and and I wrote a letter uh you know that week um you know saying such I mean what that that how that situation that criminal conduct um but you know damage and further eroded public trust and policing as well as adding to the fear of marginalized communities and that was why we you know we in law enforcement in our the Montclair Police Department really wanted to make a clear statement and then you know and in many other we've heard across the state of Vermont law enforcement saying that was outrageous that was so wrong and criminal so I don't have the exact word the words to use except that anytime anybody's fighting for their life they should be you know uh whatever they have to do is in that situation um and I think that's also where um somebody you know it's not just the fear I mean this was real uh matter of fact my situation I described was witnessed by uh actually a DJ at the time of WNCS and commented um that he was waiting for me to shoot the person but again I could have also once I've cleared you know if I were able to get my weapon out would it also jeopardize me even further and my partner thank you so do you have any further comments on the rest of the uh just that um again this is uh 21st century policing all of these reforms that you know that that you're taking up and variations of that there is definitely a sense of urgency to implement you know the right the right steps in accountability and guidance for police officers I definitely strongly support public safety's you know 10 points for modernization some of those we're still trying to figure out such as what does uh community you know this community oversight look like and and to what authority and and impact will they have on police policy on police accountability but back to 21st century policing uh something that's been that's the cornerstone of the philosophy of the Montpelier police department those six pillars 2016 I was took advantage of an invitation to the White House with then Chief Trevor Whipple and Chief Leanne Toomey where we talked about policy and an actual practical how do we you know how do we actually deploy those six pillars in you know in action on that include included uh you know wonderful training from from Dr. Marks from Morehouse College on implicit bias uh years a year later two years later um you know Chief Del Pozo was able to get Dr. Marks up to to Burlington if we one of our supervisors went through that training we've brought in people from uh in our promotional process we've had um the outside uh you know representative from the community of color and to participate in that to ask specific questions of candidates of the Montpelier police department about um from you know 21st century policing to make sure that the officers not just the command staff understand and embrace those six pillars technology how and all that so everything that is here the rest of it with that um you know the Vermont Police Association does support the data they said this you know that they're uh we echo what what Commissioner Shirling has already said about um language that's in statute but having a uniform uh policy that we all have the same expectations across the state okay thank you very much and could we just um maybe the new chief could just come forward just wondering um we're in Montpelier normally and we probably will see you regularly so just wondering just come forward and say hello your new chief I see in the background I missed part of that but uh Alice uh I'm wondering somebody just came in m one two four three and it seems like there's a lot of background noise associated with them yes there is okay there they've muted senator that question we just wanted to say hello since we'll we're all going to be in Montpelier at some point so thank you both very much for being there and speaking so next next on the schedule we'll go back to George Karabakis from health care rehab services and is uh let's see is Michael Fitzpatrick also available um Alice I'm I'm sorry to interrupt yes can't hear you Philip I'm wondering if Peggy can tell us who m one two four three is because they they keep muting and unmuting with noise yeah is it Michael Fitzgerald and one two four three yes okay you need to to mute if you want to mute yourself um Michael we'll start with and you might share your time with him but we'll start with George who is on so go ahead George but if you could yourself Michael while we're hearing from George please I don't I don't think he gets it Alice I can I can mute I'm going to mute you Michael okay very good thank you okay George go ahead please you're muted too there we go I think I'm good okay thank you uh so um um first of all I well I am George Karabakakis uh CEO of hcrs and we are the um designated community mental health agency serving Windam and Windsor counties and it's uh an honor to to be here thank you for having me uh and also chief um uh Michael Fitzgerald from Brattleboro will be uh also uh joining me in terms of uh sharing a little bit about the program that I wanted to talk about and uh the you know we're talking about I mean there's I certainly heard what chief Faco spoke to and um we we have um developed a program in southeastern Vermont and and in Brattleboro but throughout southeastern Vermont that I think is an alternative and is an option and um so I just want to spend you know a few minutes speaking about that you know the you know the reality is that law enforcement is oftentimes at first stop when there are challenging situations that arise you know whether they're mental health substance use domestic violence issues a whole range of behaviors that often oftentimes lead officers to being called by family members and neighbors and individuals in need and and these calls come from a whole range of sources of services and sources including homeless shelters schools emergency rooms healthcare providers social service providers and given that a significant number of the total calls that a police department might receive these are issues the the issues that I just mentioned that really require the kind of collaboration that is necessary and I I I know it in our programs that that collaboration is with with hcrs as well as many other social service providers and in 2003 which was almost 18 years ago we worked with the bellows falls police department to develop a police social work program and it was so successful and it made such a difference in reducing calls and reducing contacts with the police department that we expanded it and over the years we expanded it from brattle borough to hartford where we have a case manager an hcrs case manager or community support specialist who is embedded and is co-located with the with the officers in the various police departments what they do is provide de-escalation they establish rapport they work with issues that the individual might have some really respond to their individual needs make the appropriate referrals whether it's for housing whether it's for healthcare whether it's truancy issues or mental health or substance use issues or or in some cases because people are so isolated it might simply be building connections in the community to help those individuals succeed and and most importantly to help reach people proactively at an earlier stage so we can minimize the risk and the impact and keep them out of criminal justice system keep them out of a system which isn't really what most likely what they need the work that our staff do is it's on the street it's in the community it's in people's homes in motels in schools wherever that need might be it might simply be sitting at the kitchen table talking about what that individual what their life circumstances are and so you know recently we we received a call from a health officer in one of our towns regarding a gentleman who'd been living in a rented space in one room where it turned out if you walked in there were things from the floor to the ceiling a whole range of things because there was a massive bed bug infestation this is someone who had some pretty significant mental health challenges who had some very uh some medical issues that had not been addressed uh and who was facing eviction and so the police social work liaison was called went in helped support that individual work with that individual to make sure that they got the health care they needed the mental health supports they needed uh they uh we worked with or that individual work with the housing provider with long-term shelter options uh and also helped them address the issues around transportation because that was a pretty significant issue among many others and to help support that person get connected so they weren't isolated and there are so many situations where people's lives have been changed because of those connections our team is really closely connected to our children's services adult services our developmental services as well as getting support from our peer support team we have a pretty we have a really great peer support program at Acerus and I feel that connection really could benefit from expansion and I think they're doing some great work and um so that um and I should also add that our police social work liaisons work really closely with social service providers throughout the community we currently have six police social work liaisons serving uh Brattleboro Bellows Falls Springfield Windsor Hartford uh Weathersfield and Ludlow have access to police social work staff we also have a police social work liaison who is embedded in the Vermont State Police in the Westminster Barracks which I believe serves 26 towns uh and actually on the handout that I passed that I sent um Christine Bullard is there with Lieutenant French and uh had received the team two one of the team two training awards uh this past year and they've been doing a great job we also through a HRSA grant which is um health resources services administration's federal grant uh we're putting we've pulled together a community coalition around opiate and substance use uh and um so we have through those funds and now have a police social work liaison with the Wyndham County Sheriff's as well as Wilmington and Dover uh and you you know if you've ever been there you know you can't get there from here and it's having someone there is really critical so we've just literally hired that person within the last few weeks uh the staff in these positions operate differently in each community because each community is unique so we're responding uniquely to the needs of those communities to help support people to in many ways level the playing field and make sure that they get the services and the supports that they need because in most the likelihood is they don't need to be incarcerated they don't need the to enter into the criminal justice system they need support and they need services and we've been doing this uh for 17 years and it's been a great really a great program that has been replicated throughout the state there's a lot of I think a lot of designated agencies that have really built up their collaborations with law enforcement and I think it's something that really should be taken a look at uh we have in the last year we've impacted 888 adults 189 children uh and we've had 577 interventions uh police social work interventions and I would anyway I there's more I could say about that but I just I really want to uh I think it's important to share uh you know that this program really can provide the kind of early intervention that can support folks in our community so that there isn't the need for further contact and um so in any event that's a little bit about the um our program right and I don't know if you have any questions I or if uh chief uh there's uh chief Fitzgerald has any thoughts or anything to share George we'll go to chief Fitzgerald and shortly is there are there any questions for before we go on to um chief Fitzgerald I think we lost him I don't see him he's uh he I see him on the upper line oh there he is sorry about that so so thank you very much George good work and now uh just to I just want to say something else that um Senator White is hopefully on the phone someplace um because she will be back at about 10 30 and Senator Sears our chairman is on the line listening um they had some other things come up that they had to miss this right now but chief Fitzgerald if you would go ahead that'd be great thank you very much um I apologize for my lack of technology ability earlier but I truly appreciate um your your time in this and I respect your time and I'll keep it very short I would just like to echo what uh George was saying we've we've had a social worker on staff for approximately 12 years now and um they are critical they're critical to the success of my department and I don't say that lightly they're they're just as their prevention helps us greatly it has reduced um use of force that we have used it's it's a positive um long-term addition to solutions to some of the uh incidences that we respond to not only that we have a trainer that is embedded with my staff that helps us um when we have questions on dealing with mental health crises on the best way to handle that I mean we we've got a subject matter expert all right right in our back room so um once again I know your time is is precious and I really appreciate that I I can't emphasize enough how critical uh having that component um embedded with the police department is to the success of community policing within the state and so just what would answer one question um how is the how is the how are the trainer and the social worker paid for uh excuse me I'm sorry I can speak to that uh well about 18 years ago uh we started this program uh sort of on a a prayer in a dime I don't know whatever that phrase is but it was a patchwork of funding united way and uh town funding and we put in match dollars and we started small and we and but to cut to the chase uh all of the police social work liaisons with the exception of the one that I mentioned that is funded through the HRSA grant which is a federal grant uh are funded primarily through act 79 dollars uh post Irene there was act 79 which supported community alternatives we as an organization felt that it was so important to have this kind of partnership that's that that's where we put those dollars we could have put them in crisis services or we could have put them in outpatient services uh or or community other community other services but we felt this was important so it's primarily act 79 there is some fee for service Medicaid uh but quite honestly uh they do not generate revenue so it's got to be grant dollars because the nature of the program is whether it's health and safety checks or whether it's going out with uh to address the needs of individuals who frequently contact the police department and their referrals uh billing fee for service is problematic you're not going to go and start asking for all that information you do what you need to do to help support that individual so it it's going to be grant dollars or funds that are leveraged through global commitment uh so that's primarily how it's funded through the uh designated through hcrs um thank you um so are there other questions from the committee for either George or chief Fitzgerald okay well thank thank you both very much for speaking to us thank you very much can I just say one thing and I do want to say I think I'd be remiss in saying that the partnership with uh with the Broward police department has really been outstanding in terms of the community connections and supports and I really have to I just feel like I'd be remiss if I didn't say that because I think we've got a department that's really working hard to support alternatives and collaborations and I think that's really important uh in any community so I think I just want to thank the committee and all of you as well so thank you both very much so next on the agenda is um Mike O'Neill from president of remote troopers association then Rebecca Turner the chief appellate defender for the defender general's office and Jessica Brown supervising attorney of the Chittin county public defender's office so if Michael if you would please go ahead good morning I'm Michael Neal the executive director of the Broward troopers association just for the record I'm going to start my testimony much differently than I planned on my unmuted comment out of context sounded like it was intended to be negative but it wasn't so I'm going to share a story and it was my daughter that I was speaking to she was behind me and I recently told her a story with everything that's going on in the news about a training I attended that Tabitha was at with members of the fair and impartial committee as well as the state police command staff the trainer had showed the video that was intended to be an example of how white privilege impacts um many young children and it was a young black girl that was shown in the video and at the end of it I was at a loss to even have a comment about the video as were most of my co-workers that were there with us and Tabitha was very surprised by that and had a very passionate response and really forced us to think about something that I had never experienced in life and didn't understand and it was actually a very positive impact on me and that's why I had shared the story with my daughter about Tabitha and I've also told several other people that I didn't realize I wasn't muted and it didn't come across that way but it was intended to be in a very positive way she helped me understand something that day that I had never experienced in life and did not know so I will call her and make sure that she hears that from me and I apologize that I was unmuted but I'm not sure that turned out to be a bad thing because I think it's important to for people to hear that we are open to change we are open to learning about different cultures I did not grow up in an environment where that was something I understood in life so I will move on to my comments and my apologies but it truly was intended as a positive comment I wanted my daughter to know who she was and I said she blasted us in some ways she did that day and it was a good thing for most of us that were there so I will move on and I will call her later. The Vermont Troopers Association supports many of the positive reforms that are being discussed our board has taken a few votes on these issues recently and we supported Commissioner Shirling's proposals that he made to Senate government operations on the 10 points that he made but on s219 I'd like to just make a few comments we do support the race data section of this and the ability to force compliance of departments that aren't currently doing these things and the improvements to it we do support the use of body cameras videos have been a part of law enforcement in Vermont video cameras for close to 20 years they're in all of our cruisers they're an important part of everything we do documentation is one of the cornerstones of law enforcement you know you can't do the job and build a solid criminal case without documenting what you do in video reflects things very accurately there's no question about what has taken place so we support video cameras this will just enhance what we are currently doing our members currently have a body mic on them all the time so although everything they do may not be captured in video most of it is captured with audio unless they go too far from the cruiser and the body camera will solve that problem so we are in support of those the policy and the use of lethal force we also support this we think it's important that there is a statewide uniform policy I agree with commissioner shirling that I heard testify a couple of days ago that it may be something that is better in a policy that is mandated by the legislature so there is the ability for it to be always evolving changing and improving but I don't know the best way to handle this it seems to make sense that we need to at times change this and it may be easier to change if it's in a mandated policy chief fecos explained very well one of our concerns in that chokeholds are not appropriate as a controlled tactic we do not use them they're against our policy but they may be necessary as a means of lethal force and senator beruth I appreciate your concern there I understand that and there may be a fine line where the policy or the law needs to address this but that is one of our concerns that it not be eliminated as a means of lethal force if necessary and I do understand the concerns the improper conduct section of s2 19 we also support the vta worked with several stakeholders in the senate government operations committee on x 56 that was passed a couple of years ago that dealt with unprofessional conduct and this adds to that and we think improves that one of the last comments I'd like to make is about police unions there is a perception out there that police unions are an obstacle or a hindrance in ensuring that bad police officers are disciplined or removed I don't believe from the perspective of the troopers association that is true there is nothing in our contract that prohibits discipline from being imposed our goal is very simple to ensure that whatever discipline is imposed is fair and just you know we have a process for appealing any discipline to the vermont labor relations board but we don't have an interest in maintaining an employee that should not be on the job that's not in the interest of anyone in law enforcement we just our our goal is to just ensure the discipline is fair so that concludes my comments thank you mike uh are there questions for um mike and dick sears has a question if it's okay go ahead senator sears uh thank you mike thank you committee again if you didn't hear me i'm sorry i'm not there and zoom person um but i'm with my wife and i'll be in new york to get a doctor's office my question mike um really is about these use of force or improper restraint and how we get to a point where um it's obviously the situation that the chief described the situation that you're concerned with um is how do we restrain someone but i i i go through this as someone who's gone through restraint training there's actually gun restraints and i'm not sure what the concern is i mean the question is not whether or not um you're defending yourself or whatever else but the question is whether as part of your restraint of that person you are employing either um that's oh cold i hate that term by the way um but you're employing some form of restraint that involves um affecting the person's ability to breathe persons uh and we saw what happened in Minneapolis um and how um how anyone could could even believe that was a proper use of restraint is beyond me um and once the person is um under control under the restraint um the first thing you do is try to de-escalate um the beginning of it is de-escalation so i didn't see any de-escalation um in um Minneapolis and in what you're describing um was everything else done there's always there's always things for question and i'm you know in a in a in a wrestling match or something there may be a something happens while you're doing that but that's not part of the restraint it's when you're actually doing the restraint and you actually are inhibiting that person's ability to breathe so thanks i'm gonna have to mute myself um thank you um if i could just respond to that i i believe i agree with senator sears on this um my concern is not at all about using those type of holds as a restraint it would only be if you were in a situation like chief fecos described where it becomes a situation where you're using that as lethal deadly force i would never advocate that it be used as a restraint i completely agree what happened in minneapolis can never be justified in any way and was a criminal act um my concern is just that the law does not limit the type of hold from becoming a lethal force situation if ever necessary it should never be used as a restraint or any way of controlling someone thank you thank you mike um anyone else with a question on the committee okay thank you very much uh mike so next we will go to um rebecca turner from the defender general's office then jessica brown and then next uh jeffrey jones so go ahead rebecca please thank you thank you senator nick uh my name is rebecca turner for the record i'm the head of the appellate division for the office of the defender general i was previously indicated um but beyond that i also come to share my perspective uh working as a public defender in the system for over 13 years now almost 13 years uh where i've seen up close and represented people of color who uh have cases and wind up in the criminal juvenile justice system family court system after of course the initial encounters with officers right where i have seen the transcripts where i've talked with my clients and the families about what they experienced and well i commend the the committee and legislature for taking up um some legislation in response to events that are happening uh i think my point here uh i want to make clear my limited time to talk with you is that it has to be considered just the start right that if we are serious about true police reform we need to go beyond data we need to go beyond considering policies for use of force creating new crimes and that's because true police reform we have to acknowledge and understand the various systems in place that keep and isolate uh and insulate police misconduct and allow that to continue uh you know there have been references to police unions hiring and firing practices uh transparency accountability outside of um department public safety there is that there's also the infrastructures built into the criminal justice system itself the standards that are forgiving that again allow and insulate this misconduct to continue but coming back to and looking specifically at the bill at hand um s219 i saw you know saw the three parts and i wanted to start with the data provision right and again um i'm glad to see language linking compliance with funding because a theme throughout has to be not just requirement but how and what are going to be the consequences for failing to uh follow through and and the data language they are linking to funding is important but it doesn't go far enough right it's limited to traffic stops and analyzing traffic stops but we need data collection with police encounters with pedestrians on the street right we need data collection based on what prosecutors are doing once they get the arrests who are they charging what counts are they charging once they charge are they asking for bail hold without conditions we also need to know data from the court what are the courts doing when faced with these requests are the imposing conditions differently based on the race of the defendant before them ethnicity gender right who's getting convicted what kind of sentences are being asked for again looking at the prosecutors or the judge is imposing once those sentences are imposed what's going on at doc how are those sentences actually being served who's getting out on furlough and parole who's getting revoked who's in segregation who's getting dr's again we need data all across through the system from beginning to end right now this legislature started and just focused on traffic stops it's just the beginning i want to turn to the use of force provision there's been a lot of testimony good testimony already uh critiquing the need to have more concrete standards and i support that there's been discussion about the reasonableness uh issues the slipperiness of that language right and again the concern being is that with vague standards we allowed the misconduct and to continue because we isolate the officers around a general sense of what's reasonable uh there was a question from the committee yesterday from i believe it was uh senator benning in terms of making wanting to make sure we have standards that are concrete enough that officers know what they can and cannot do right everyone's safety involved is at stake and that is true and i think the standards that are used here in this provision are too vague uh i think that again most familiar in my world with self-defense standards that is a place to look for concrete language again the requirement that you're not the initial aggressor time and time again i have seen encounters that result in arrests and charges of resisting lawful arrests right which start from my black client choosing to walk across the street at the wrong place going too closely to law enforcement officers speaking too inappropriately right to a law enforcement officer and these subjective interpretations of the encounter by the officer lead to quickly escalated events again having definite concrete standards will help in terms of um understanding for the officers right when lawful use of force is involved but better yet right better yet and there's been the great discussion about the mental health uh support that already um exist in these law enforcement organizations but better yet is to avoid the use of force issue entirely by changing how law enforcement or how we respond to emergency calls there are other jurisdictions that have established an alternative to the 911 number for example right established a different emergency number when there's no immediate danger for physical injury sending in response teams that are based and made up of experts in the mental health field right we heard about the required skill set needed to respond to a juvenile who's on the autistic spectrum disorder right officers should not be expected to be experts in everything and we can we should be responding to these mental health crises accordingly with the skilled clinicians and licensed mental health providers instead of local law enforcement so again the use of force provision the start but it should go further uh senator sears uh has has uh and others have talked about the definition of improper restraints uh going beyond what you know what is currently in the bill now which is restraints as to your ability to breathe i certainly support that we have uh language provided by a recent federal court decision now i'm i'm blanking on it but describing other restraints that are at issue why not include in the definition in the provision itself um unnecessary use of tasers right stun guns pepper sprays and other restraints uh that we have seen specifically in the context of woodside but as discussed there moving next to the provisions relating to what i considered accountability uh the establishment of the new crime and frankly a new crime isn't enough it's too late right it's too late to fix uh a situation that could have been dealt with in other ways there are also problems of how many times um whether a prosecutor will exercise his or her discretion to prosecute the officer uh but when i look at the discussion on when the council can deal with unprofessional conduct provision and there is this new category b to incorporate use of improper restraints or standing by and observing that happen right and in that language of the provision it specifically allows the council to respond with the first uh first occurrence right what i noticed though was that the other uh other action category b sexual harassment with physical touching excessive use of force and bias the council is for some reason prohibited from acting in the first appearance in the first instance of it so i'd revisit that language and make sure that all category b uh instances should be a situation where the council can act to address directly right and then turning to the body cam language uh the body camera is it's it's a good addition and support the requirement to have it uh as a defense attorney i regularly see the problem that the video fails the video wasn't used the video wasn't turned on right and so again we need some enforcement mechanism beyond just merely requiring that they get it and deploy it but what happens when they have it deployed and they don't turn on the button there should be what's equivalent the criminal uh court system the exculpatory rule right uh where whenever law enforcement violates the laws you can't bring that evidence in should be the same with the body cam the officer had the equipment and should have worn it and should have pressed the on button and doesn't and the officer should not be allowed to come into court and now fill in the blanks with testimony that can't be confirmed but could have been the body camera i think uh at this point again it's a good start but more at every level of every position and i'll stop here thank you very much rebecca so senator baruth you have a question i do i thank you so much i appreciated everything you said but that last thing i found particularly interesting so when when you say the exculpatory rule it exists somewhere um and you're suggesting we import it it could be what exculpatory rule is more of of an idea it's a remedy and in the law where you violate and i you know you're right to constitutional rights search and seizure uh or so you can get it suppressed right the evidence suppressed here you don't have evidence because you don't have the camera footage because it's not on so therefore the officer will come in to provide evidence of what happened what would have been captured by video right it should be essentially a prohibition of that officer to not come in and fill in that testimony right uh unless there's some other explanation or for we could do it in and you know the committee could draft up a rule and the rules of evidence in terms of that so you're you're thinking uh and correct me if i'm wrong about the charge that might be filed against a client that the defender general might be defended um i was thinking about charges that might be filed against an officer so they don't turn on the button and there's no video of them perhaps deploying deadly force when they shouldn't have um so you were talking about exclusively the first uh category i was i i didn't think about it as it would apply to the second that's certainly another situation where think about you know again the reasons why we have this one camera is accountability training yeah assessment of whether it was proper or not no and i i'm sorry i i just wanted to say um i i think this bill needs a provision that makes clear what the penalties are for not deploying the body camera because it has begun to look like uh almost an unofficial uh allowed tactic around the country that it turns out all of the most prominent cases that the body cameras either weren't deployed don't work etc so there's a there's a last layer that we have to push through there yes senator nicker yes if i might i agree totally with senator bruce but i want to add that to me this is the beginning and it's not the end and passage of this bill however we perform we take it's not it certainly is just the beginning um we have a massive problem clearly in this nation and actually in the world and uh so this may really the beginning and i want to assure people that as far as senator judiciary goes and i'm sure government operations appropriations and other committees in the senate the leadership under senator ash is made clear that this is the beginning senator sears i appreciate that hearing that and and as a member of the racial disparities panel that a ton um chairs and we spoke with you about uh we'll we'll we'll take that and run probably in terms of coming back with with more suggestions for the session but it is it is just beginning and so much has to be considered and addressed um but there are so many exciting ideas and initiatives out there and so thank you for for uh taking the time to hear from me thank you rebecca are there further questions senator banning good morning rebecca um you went through a list of who needed to be involved in data collection from um the physical confrontation in a pedestrian situation right through prosecutorial decisions and court decisions and i'm going to throw my own colleagues under the bus for a moment why did you leave out defense attorneys that's that's fair it's certainly public defenders and defense attorneys aren't immune from racial bias at all we all we all live the air and and the racism and it's inherent it is in the end so absolutely to you know to the extent that we have concerns or issues in terms of client confidentiality i think that's where i i instinctively drop that off um and um in terms of of making sure that we are um you know again not engaging in racial bias for their own representation absolutely that needs to be a factor and trained on uh and i'm open to considering the data uh issues there but again i'm just sensitive to the issues of confidentiality with clients thanks thank you so uh thank you very much rebecca thank you next we have um jessica brown who's here the supervising attorney for the chitin and county public defender's office um go ahead thank you good morning um so yeah for the record my name is jessica brown i'm the supervising attorney for the chitin and county public defender office in burlington um i actually also am an appointee to the racial disparities in the criminal and juvenile justice system panel um i was appointed as an at-large community member by attorney general tj donovan um so i do want to say that the views i'm going to express are my own they're not meant to represent the panel or my employer my views though are certainly informed by more than 20 years of experience as a public defender representing marginalized people in our communities um and certainly also my experience is for a few more than two decades i won't say exactly how many as a black american woman um i believe that the best way to diminish violence in policing and racial disparities in the criminal and juvenile legal systems is by reducing contact between the public and police to me this is a concept and a goal that citizens and law enforcement officials alike should all embrace less need for police involvement in our communities to address some of the specific proposals in s2 19 um i agree that race data collection should be uniform and standardized and required for law enforcement agencies across the state uh further uh as rebecca just talked about i think that race data collection should be should also be required of the courts the state attorney's offices the attorney general's office the department of corrections the department of children and families and to the extent that we can do it the office of the defender general to root out our own biases and also to hold other agencies accountable um at every level of the criminal and juvenile legal systems there are high impact high discretion points at which explicit and implicit bias result in disparate treatment of black and brown indigenous undocumented limited english proficient and other people of color but collecting data only puts numbers to disparate treatment that we already know is occurring um collecting data is not a solution in and of itself nor to me quite frankly is criminalizing more conduct even if what we're criminalizing is with our laws is uh violent police conduct um in our system as it currently functions even laws that are meant to curb police misconduct inevitably end up being wielded most harshly against black and brown people the nation's attention has been drawn to minneapolis because of the death of george george floyd uh and the officer who killed george floyd has been charged and it will remain to be seen whether he's convicted of any crime um but the officer who killed felando castile in minneapolis was acquitted um to my knowledge in the last five years the one minneapolis police officer who has been convicted of killing a citizen while on duty is the Somali american officer who shot and killed a white woman who had called police for assistance uh chokeholds uh have been banned in york city since 1993 that ban did not prevent the choking death of eric garner in 2014 and in fact the officer who killed eric garner worked for the nypd for another five years after eric garner's death we've seen in our own state that body camera recordings do not prevent police officers from engaging in misconduct nor do body camera recordings necessarily or automatically result in transparent public accountability for police misconduct data collection new different more better training for law enforcement officers body cameras new laws to criminal to criminalize misconduct by by law enforcement officers these are to my mind common and natural responses to the recognition that we have to do something about and confront the systemic racism in our criminal and juvenile legal systems because i feel like these are things that we think that we can start to do fairly quickly but none of these approaches have solved the problem of systemic racism in our system yet so why do we expect that if we keep trying these same approaches with some changes and some tweaks that we will get different results i don't believe that we will so again i say that i think the best way to diminish violence in policing and racial disparities in the criminal and juvenile legal systems is to reduce contact in the public and police and i believe that some of the ways that we do that are first of all by listening to people who have experienced police intervention and or violence at the hands of police i would encourage this committee to the extent that you can to try to hear directly from black and brown indigenous other people of color undocumented people people with limited english proficiency people with mental illness people with substance use disorders people with disabilities victims of intimate partner violence members of the lgbt qia plus community and members of other marginalized communities about their experiences with police interventions and what different interventions might have better helped them i would also say that we should be creating and supporting agencies that are not embedded in police departments to respond to and provide services to address mental health crises substance use disorders other medical needs housing and food instability and unemployment we should be developing programs oops something's something's happened to the audio to engage community volunteers because when i talk about i'm sorry did someone say something i i did but you're back on it okay you were muted keep going thank you thank you um i'll close by saying that when i talk about refocusing efforts and resources away from the same types of things that we've tried to reform law enforcement agencies i do not mean to suggest that we ignore harm or wrongdoing in our communities rather i mean to encourage us to focus our efforts and our resources first on meeting the needs of the most marginalized members of our communities because if we're meeting the needs of the most marginalized members of our communities reduction and harm and wrongdoing will follow and our communities will need less intervention by an interaction with law enforcement agencies which is ultimately the way we best protect black and brown people from the systemic racism that infects our criminal juvenile legal systems thank you for letting me speak this morning happy to answer any questions although i realizing i realize i'm echoing a lot of what's been said by other speakers so far this morning and yesterday um i appreciate you having me going on with her thank you jessica i can't unmute her um job senator banning question thanks jessica thank you for your testimony i'm um curious about the chokehold provision that we're talking about and i want to get your opinion it seems to me there is a very strong difference between the use of a chokehold to detain or restrain someone you can't hear you senator benning either can anyone hear me i can hear both joe and you pecky as can i i can hear senator benning can people not hear me because i did not see that i was muted at any point we could hear you it's just your image had frozen okay hear you now fine no thank you okay so back to um chokeholds yes it seems to me there's a clear difference between the use of a chokehold in detaining or restraining someone as opposed to the use of a chokehold if an officer is uh fighting for their life and i don't know whether you see a difference there or whether both should be considered a strict liability if we were to ban chokeholds um i agree that there's a difference i you know i agree that um police officers sometimes are defending themselves um defending their own lives um and that that should be considered differently and a different standard a self-defense standard perhaps um then uh simply using um and i know that people don't necessarily agree on the terminology of chokehold but i think that it invokes what we're all talking about which is restraining someone around their neck interfering with their breathing um so to answer your question if what you're asking is should there be different standards for sort of defense of a life um versus simply restraining someone um yes i think that's right or i wouldn't disagree with it i think that challenge becomes um and you know this is what we see in here so frequently that um and the concern i think uh for people who want to sort of ban chokehold outright is that it seems very simple or a law enforcement officer to say i feared for my life and for that to abdicate that law enforcement officer of responsibility for whatever form of restraint or violence they used against someone who was seriously injured or killed i guess my my concern is that um there is at least the perception that the jury process should be removed from that equation and in a strict liability situation that covers both detention as well as the officer's argument of self-defense there's got to be a line of demarcation somewhere that a jury can look at and say this clearly went beyond the line and as a result we use george floyd as an example i don't know how any jury could dismiss that as a murder um but there are other situations that i look at that might be problematic and it would take a jury to decide what the actual facts and totality of circumstances are i don't know whether you've thought about any particular language that might be in play because this is the one part of this bill that i'm struggling with and i've got a lot of concerns as a defense attorney that if we remove that jury analysis with the sweeping statement that all choke holds are banned we have gone a step too far and we actually could be placing lives at risk it's just something to think about if you happen to come up with any suggestions or ideas i'd like to know what they are um i don't have any suggestions or ideas at the moment but i really appreciate you sort of outlining it this way um as i and i sort of want to just say it back to you to make sure i'm understanding your issue correctly i understand what you're saying to be that if there's just sort of strict liability no choke holds at all whether you're trying to restrain someone or whether you are in fear legitimately in fear for your life your concern is that there actually should be a jury for example let's say a police officer gets charged with a murder a jury should be able to consider a standard that allows for self-defense by the police officer versus unlawful restraint is it am i understand that that's right if you if you apply the choke hold to detain someone or to restrain someone i think that's clearly beyond the line and we can fashion language it says that's verboten where i get very uncomfortable is when we get to the next step where for whatever reason there has been escalation and if that escalation is on behalf of the law enforcement officer then i agree that there's a problem and we should try to address that but what i'm concerned about is that when it gets to the ultimate question of whose life is at stake at that moment in time having a ban on the choke hold might be very problematic for someone who is acting in their own self-defense and i i don't know how to get to that dividing line of demarcation that says this is clearly not acceptable and this is something we will at least consider as a possibility right well can we hear from senator bruce because he's raised his hand a couple of times uh bruce uh thank you so um joe said he can't understand how a jury could have quit the officer who killed george floyd but i mean come on we've seen it happen every single time we've had one of these with very very very few exceptions and the winning argument is always the officer feared for his life often the jury is mostly white in vermont it's fair to say it would be almost all white almost all the time all the prosecutors would be white and the unspoken argument in such a case with a a person like george floyd or erik garner is that they're a large black man and a large black man is a threat in and of himself it's never specifically communicated that way to the jury but that's the i think um the thing that we're fighting against which is an entrenched attitude that black men are thought by their presence of threat and so if an officer tries to bring them under control in any situation and they can't there's a legitimate fear for their life hence they can move to deadly force so um i see i see what joe's saying but i think what we're saying then is let's just move the ban on chokeholds to a decision that a white jury in vermont will consider about potentially the the use of this on a non-white suspect and i think in that case where we're foregrounding and we're allowing to continue a situation where we've seen again and again and again juries acquit officers under these kinds of assumptions so i'm for making the ban on chokeholds what it is uh which is a ban rather than offering what will amount to an affirmative defense for officers i think this is a great discussion that we need to have in debate as a committee and i'm questioning how much time we've got available to do that and the last thing i'll say about it is that you know matt valeria my boss who i think is on this call and uh rebecca turner and marshal paul um have a lot more experience than i do at drafting and proposing you know legislation that they submit um to committees like this so i i'm sure that this will be an ongoing discussion that um will have um you know as an agency um and you'll hear from them probably um you know i my issues with chokeholds or and or a ban on chokeholds is that as i kind of stated in my in my remarks you know bans don't bans don't necessarily prevent officers from using those types of restraints and so i understand that what we're talking about here is drafting legislation that will result in cons you know potential consequences for using um that form of restraint um but um sorry a message just popped up on the screen and i got distracted um so rather than like trailing off and not making any more sense i will uh sort of leave it at that um i appreciate this discussion and it's certainly something for the defender general's office to talk about and consider and um probably for the racial disparities panel to consider as well so thanks again for inviting me to speak thank thank you very much jessica uh next we'll go to um jeffrey jones who is waiting there and he's the jones appointment to the racial disparities board is that correct jeffrey uh that is correct yeah um please go ahead just a bit of background i was the first black officer in the vermont state police i'm retired now um i may have some value in terms of experiential not in terms of drafting that's jessica and rebecca who talk about that stuff and i'm always confused um but a couple points that made notes badly um senator benning and i agree with you to me there's a real obvious path to me which is that a chokehold is a lethal force and if defined under the rules of lethal force in vermont for police departments that's a much higher level which uh requires it's a higher level of of action okay and i think looking down that road might be beneficial you can't it's beyond how do i put this uh if someone's running away and you shoot them in the back and they're unarmed that's pretty clear right that's not if you're in fear you shouldn't be a cop okay and for floyd four guys are kneeling on him and he feels in fear so he kills them that's murder where i come from and you know i i i look on that kind of perhaps ignorant point of view um i think the laws are not necessary for the good cops who are the vast majority but there's a certain kind of cop out there on vermont street and i've seen it sort for many many years was a kind of guy that had his lunch money taken away from him in junior high school and he's getting his back and he's got a taser and he's got a gun and nobody's going to diss him and uh that's a very small minority but that's but that's a reality i'm sorry i really believe that um i made some bad notes one is that tasers should be more closely controlled because that's frequently this sounds like an overstatement but an instrument of torture it leaves no marks that club will doesn't give you a broken nose but i've seen people deploy the taser on people in handcuffs or in cells i'm think sure we've all seen that and it becomes an instrument of oria let me show you what it's really about um so i'd like to see that addressed um sorry if i'm going oddly around and around um trooper anil i agree with everything you say if you're still on i don't have your name up now um and the only other thing that i'd like to see and i didn't see and this came out of miss turners something she wrote which is i've been thinking more about it the militarization of ramon police uh it was something she has added to the rd ap briefing which i'm sure will be in front of you as soon as we get our act together i would like to see a statewide vetting process for the acquisition of military weapons i'm not saying they're not necessary i'm not clear that all the training is with sufficient discipline and familiarization and um i don't see a use policy over covering them or a training policy over covering them and pretty much you can ask for i mean everybody's got an m14 now i don't know if everybody needs an m14 um i think that's it i uh i would be happy to answer questions if i can um certainly the old i'd like to close with the fact that resisting arrest can be created very very easily if you and i are standing there talking about the weather and i grab your wrist and you snatch it back that's resisting arrest arrest with no warning that's a normal human response and really should be looked at with with some critical eye i'm sorry i'm not a lawyer i don't know where to go with this but there it is thank you very much um senator batting so jeff i i'm going to say as a 37 year defense attorney i've seen plenty of bad apples i've seen plenty of situations where resisting arrest is created and it has always bothered me that we don't have some way of um creating a policy that all police will deescalate before they escalate a situation that leads us to many of the situations that we're now talking about i remain concerned about strict liability at the level of you as a police officer being under legitimate deadly force threatening your life none of us would question your ability to raise your gun if there is a gun pointed directly at you i'm trying to reach that same place with a chokehold maneuver that if universally swept into this category might prevent you from defending yourself at that moment in time while at the same time i appreciate my colleague senator bruce concern that we've had this long history of situations that were escalated as a result of police conduct and then this situation gets created where they decide to use that and they might get in front of a jury and be let off i appreciate that concern i'm trying to figure out how to design a line of demarcation which enables a police officer who is legitimately under threat of deadly force to be able to use that as well as any other maneuver to save their own life at that moment in time without sweeping them all under the rug at once i i guess it's just a comment to make because of your testimony not a question directly to you although i'll close with one question to you that has been bugging me since you came on is that a picture of homer alaska behind you no i'm sorry to bug you that's a picture of signau fjord in norway where on occasion it looks exactly like the fjord in homer alaska that's what i think it's very buggy it's a great place great shot thank you so thanks for your comments thank you sir go ahead thank you um thank you very great i just um jeffrey i mean i just wanted to uh tell you that um i chair government operations and your comment about the milit a statewide policy on militarization of law enforcement agencies we are looking at that in that committee so there are two committees looking at all of these issues and we have that on our radar and are taking testimony on that thank you senator thank you janette uh any further questions okay thank you very much jeffrey thank you and next on our schedule and to conclude the testimony is drew bloom the use of force instructor at the vermont state vs no for vsea i'm sorry go ahead drew hi can everyone hear me yes hi good morning i just want to make sure that everyone can hear me because i just i just got on um thank you for the opportunity to speak today i appreciate it and there's really so much that i could talk about it i'm not sure how much time i'm going to be allotted but just to give you you folks some background i was asked to come on today by by vsea but i also am an employee at the brahman police academy i'm one of the directors there and uh i've been a law enforcement officer in brahman for just over 30 years now starting uh in my career back in 1990 uh working in titania county for the burlington and then uh south burlington police departments i went to the dmv enforcement division was uh ended up being a captain there when i retired from there in 2017 and went to the academy to become one of the one of the directors i've been teaching use of force to law enforcement officers since 1992 um i started teaching as adjunct staff at the police academy in 1994 and uh i've had the opportunity over the course of my career to be so passionate about this topic for the safety of officers for the safety of their agencies and for the safety of the citizens that they serve throughout my career in law enforcement in brahman i've been privileged to do so many wonderful things and experience so many different aspects of this job but any promotion that i've taken any assignment that i've had has always been with the caveat that if i'm not going to be permitted to be teaching use of force i'm not going to take the job because it's been that passionate to me because i had a very emotional event happen early in my career that kind of set me on this path since then i've been a part of the safari land training academy as well which is an international organization that teaches use of force to law enforcement officers all over the world and about three years ago i was appointed as an advisory board member to that entity and i've had the opportunity to teach and train with law enforcement officers in foreign countries as far away as singapore i've been down to trinidad i've been in the throughout the caribbean and i've been in all different jurisdictions throughout this country and in canada instructing over over the course of my career i'm a certified force analyst through the force science institute i'm a graduate of the fbi national academy and i've been an expert witness several times in federal lawsuits for the vermont league of cities and towns and i've consulted for the vermont attorney general's office and for numerous police agencies and have also been helpful in in guiding other states in some of their centralized training practices as they've wanted to use vermont as a model for use of force training because we are very fortunate in the fact that we are standardized here meaning that every single officer in this state goes through the same amount of training before i get into the the the bill and some of my concerns through the bill through i'm going to interrupt for just a minute you have 10 minutes and i just want to tell you that senator sears is on the phone listening so go ahead with your testimony okay thank you senator uh and thank you senator sears i remember working with you many years ago when uh there was no identity theft statute in vermont and i worked with you on that in your committee back then um in any event i want to talk about how use of force is trained from a legal perspective there's not only do we train at the basic training level the the cycle motor skills that are necessary for officers to uh to have when they're when they're using force at a wide range of levels across the use of force continuum but they also spend a tremendous amount of time in the academic aspects of use of force in fact the the use of force classroom block of instruction alone has 257 slides in the power point with numerous different blocks of instruction ranging from the legalities of use of force the medical implications of their force decisions the documentation of force along with several other topics that are all interrelated that they must know and have a thorough and sound understanding of those academics use of force nationwide and in vermont since 1989 has been directly linked to the civil rights act and there have always been both civil and criminal penalties for officers that are found to have been using excessive force not only at the federal level where there are criminal penalties in which an officer could be investigated by the fbi and indicted you know at the federal level and of course through civil litigation throughout a 1983 lawsuit and that happens you know when officers are suspected of using unreasonable excessive force in vermont officers also face numerous criminal penalties here already that are on the books if they're found to have used excessive force and some of those statutes include things like simple assault aggravated assault unlawful restraint and also a neglect of duty if an officer fails to intervene if they witness another officer doing something inappropriate there are already statutes on the books here that would that would cover those things prior to 1989 the standard for use of force in this country was force that was referred to as if something would shock the conscience of a citizen that it could be potentially found to be excessive the us supreme court sought to take the subjectivity out of that in 1989 in the in the landmark case of grand v connor and that case has been stood the test of time since that since then for a host of reasons the supreme court did an outstanding job in giving law enforcement officers tools to make that calculus of reasonableness and they looked at things like the severity of the crime whether or not the suspect involved posed an immediate threat to the officer or others whether or not they were actively resisting or attempting to evade which means active resistance is taking an affirmative action to resist the facilitation of control and the court also recognized that this would have to be occurring in tents uncertain and rapidly evolving circumstances and they said at that time that force was going to be based on another reasonable improved law enforcement officers knowledge based on their similar levels of training experience knowing without the benefit of 2020 hindsight only the facts and circumstances that they had known to them at the time of this incident now we also have to take into account all of the different perceptual and circumstantial factors that go into coming up with the calculus of reasonableness things like age size gender number of officers versus number of suspects special circumstances or knowledge that you may have had of an individual prior to that encounter whether or not there's an injury or exhaustion that occurs during a struggle being on the ground in an uncontrolled combative situation being within close proximity to weapons having those weapons available all of those things change the circumstances and that is why when we assess reasonableness for use of force each case must be assessed individually so if you have four or five officers on a scene and there's an allegation of excessive force each officer must be assessed individually cannot be done as a group so since the landmark decision of Graham our own Vermont Supreme Court in 1993 echoed Graham in Colby Johnson in the city of Rutland which was a 1993 Vermont Supreme Court case and in that case our own Supreme Court said that we will have the Graham standard here in Vermont now since then since Graham in 1993 or in 1989 rather I'm sorry there have been numerous other cases that we have had to rely on when we teach use of force from a legal from a legal standpoint and we teach a principle at the academy that's known as quantum of force which means that not only must an officer choose the most reasonable option to overcome a level of resistance and to facilitate control but if they have any time whatsoever when making that decision they not only have to pick the most reasonable option but they have to also pick the least injurious option and the courts have told us that we have to consider the availability of less injurious alternative methods of capture we have to consider what an officer may have known about someone's mental condition health condition or other relevant frailties that they must have all of these things have to be done in a split second making these decisions in a split second it's very very difficult now part of this legislation I also noted take some language from Tennessee versus Garner when it addresses using deadly force to apprehend a fleeing phone which of course Tennessee Garner was a 19 famous 1985 landmark US Supreme Court case the legislation that I've read here has some aspects of Tennessee Garner but in Vermont this is even more restrictive as things are at things stand today in Vermont right now in order for an officer to use deadly force to apprehend stop a fleeing phone they have to have probable cause which is of course a much higher standard than reasonable suspicion that they're probably caused to believe that that person has committed a violent felony or is about to commit a violent felony they have to have probable cause to believe that if they allow that individual to escape that individual is very likely to cause serious bodily injury or death to another they also have to warn that person or they have to be prepared to articulate why they were they couldn't warn that person if they if they did not and they also have to be able to show that they have exhausted all other means of capture before utilizing deadly force and when we talk about the necessity standard versus the reasonableness standard this terrifies me for several reasons an officer will always want to use the least amount of force they will always want to use the minimum amount of force they will always want to use only force that is necessary at the police academy we spend in basic training and in training at all levels a tremendous amount of time teaching de-escalation and when people think of de-escalation they think about it as using good verbal skills using the circumstances to prevent confrontation and from day one of use of force training I teach our officers to sacrifice your ego to avoid conflict because it's not about you it's about the safety and security of the communities that we are guardians of we don't teach cops to be warriors we teach them to be community guardians warriors are for war and that's not our goal at the academy and that's not something that that we that we strive to do when we have to use reasonable force the courts have already taught us how we come up with that calculus you can never know what the least the minimum or necessary amounts of force are and here's an example if there is a very physically fit looking uh male subject say 26 years old and he's armed with a knife and he is approaching me saying I am going to kill you with this weapon my perception as a law enforcement officer is going to be this is a situation that is deadly force this individual has the ability they have the opportunity and the jeopardy is real the threat is imminent and it's immediate it's happening right now so I would be justified in my own mind to draw my firearm and use deadly force however all I may have to do is tell the person to drop the knife and yell at him hey drop the knife and they may do it so the least amount of force was nothing more than a verbal command that was the minimum amount of force that was only the force that was necessary but me as the officer would have absolutely no way of knowing that because I cannot get into their head what makes me nervous about the necessity standard also is that if an officer takes an action that is potentially conflicting with their training and they help to create a jeopardy then they can be liable for that that scares me an example of that would be something the effect of we try to train officers to stand clear of doorways they add of open hallways just because it's not a tactical place to be now let's say just hypothetically an officer has to stand in a hallway because of flower pots in the way or a potted plant or something so they're in the hallway a subject jumps out his arms with a firearm is pointing at the officer the officer now has to use deadly force to save his own life and to mitigate the threat so it could then potentially be argued that the officer did something contrary to the training of the troll procedures which was not to stand in doorways so because of that the use of deadly force was not necessary so that scares me when we talk about a necessity standard when it comes to the the point one point in the legislation where it mentions that officers are allowed to use force to effect an arrest that's correct but there are also two other circumstances where officers are allowed to place handcuffs on somebody and take them in the custody one of course is when they have probable cause to arrest them the second circumstance is when they're taking individual into custody because they're a danger to themselves or others which is known by known as protective custody and the third circumstance which is not mentioned in this legislation is when officers are placing handcuffs on someone during an investigative detention which they're permitted to do only and this is very very specifically taught only when they can articulate that there is a safety threat to themselves or someone else on scene and this is during a detention when they have reasonable suspicion but they have not yet established circumstances that rise to the level of probable cause to arrest so there are really three circumstances when an officer can be handcuffed drew i'm going to stop you there drew going to stop you there and see if people have questions if you don't mind senator sears and i do thank you so much for your testimony i do remember you from way back when it's right on on a number of those cases you cite despite all the best training i'm thinking of a young man that i was a person of color i can remember having him up in canada on an algonquin trip canoeing and he would say things and kind of get my goat and i was physical never got to a point where um anybody had to risk what he would say on some positive things came out but this young man and i would absolutely agree with you and i can tell you that there have been times where i've assessed cases for reasonableness and i've said the cops wrong and they need to pay for what they did and i think any use of force trainer would say the same thing if they're worth their worth their weight and that's and that has been something that i've i've held very near and dear for the 30 years that i've involved been involved in this business which it's a difficult business they don't belong and they should pay for it and i'd be the first one to to stand up because when someone does something contrary to to policing practices and best practices and something that is contrary to what likely i taught them to do it infuriates me and i think that they that they should have to pay for that and there are penalties that are in place for that right now what i would like to caution this committee and these committees on in the legislature is that it is so difficult right now for officers to make these split second decisions in high stress when there is there is a degree of adrenalization going on and it is hypersensitive it is so difficult right now for these cops when i train these young men and women in the classroom and i talk about their obligations for reasonable application of force and this starts this starts with me on the second the second week of their academy training they they get this this block in the classroom and i can see the looks on their faces when they realize for the first time that it's not like on tv and when they realize the liabilities that are involved and how difficult it is and all of the steps throughout the use of force model and continuum that they have to know and memorize and then learn the skills that they have to be able to execute you know just responding to a stimulus in a split second it really can can make your head spin i'd like to address the portion of the legislation also that talks about about choke holds true first of all before you go before you do that um senator baruth has a question uh half question half comment so um i take drew's point about uh adrenaline and anxiety and and uh and fear on the part of a police officer but what i would say is a police officer is backed by the force their cruiser their duty belt uh other officers who are on call to come and support them where we started this conversation was what is being experienced by people of color in america writ large and in vermont in particular and trust me their anxiety exceeds the level that an officer might experience as a situation develops because they have no weapon and they know that even raising their hand or reaching for their wallet to get their id could wind up with them dead on the street so i i feel as though this conversation always segues into let's understand the situation of the officer and all the stress they're under and yes there's a dead person on the street but really that officer was just terrified and i don't mean to minimize it but i i feel that we we always wind up circling back to it as a way to get away from uh and here i go to my question um creating a penalty for a police officer who uses the wrong sort of force at the wrong time so this legislation creates a category that specifically mentions law enforcement um and the reason why i prefer that is that if you go into court and you try to hold an officer uh to the charge of aggravated assault juries i think look at the situation and they say here's a nice clean cut young officer who was pursuing their duty trying to protect the public do i really want to convict them of aggravated assault did they really set out to commit a crime and i think that's one of the reasons why you wind up with so many acquittals even when you have this on uh video so if you ask a jury um to convict under this crime as it's described what you're saying is did that officer use a restraint that was forbidden yes they did then we're going to hold them accountable so um i would ask drew do you see a difference between in that sense between the situation that um a jury might find themselves in with an aggravated assault charge and a police officer and this crime as created here i can't comment as to whether or not i see a difference because i've i've never been charged with aggravated assault um and i've never been charged with a crime and had to have a jury trial um i would think that that would be uh in in either of those circumstances i think it would be horrifying and uh and completely devastating regardless of what what the charge is so i really can't comment on one being any worse than the other because they're both uh felonies that are absolutely terrifying so i would think that having having either of those things hanging over my head would be would be terrifying um i would like to talk about if if uh and unless you would like to to follow up with that sir i would like to talk about you know my my thoughts about the chokehold section of the legislation drew drew could you do that very briefly as you're over your time limit and yes i i'll try to wrap up as quickly as i can thank you um first of all i would like to say that we've never we've never taught chokeholds at the police academy we've never instructed any arrest technique and where any pressure is allowed to be placed on someone's head neck or spine when someone has to be handcuffed in a prone position when they've been combative this is done as quickly as possible by mobilizing the shoulder and controlling their arm and officers are trained to get that person onto their sides seated up and standing up as quickly as possible they're also trained to not only ensure that the person is breathing but they have to ask them are you breathing that's part of the talk track of what we train them to say and then we also ensure that they understand the medical implications of their action and get any medical medical help that that person needs as quickly as possible immediately on scene in that during that incident now we do teach at a very high level in the ground fighting instructor school and we've taught these since 1996 some lateral vascular neck restraints that can result in serious bodily injury or death they can only be used if you can use your firearm they can only be used at deadly force if deadly force is reasonable and there may be circumstances where that happens if an officer and and as i said these are not taught in basic training these are taught to advanced instructors that have already been you regular use of force instructors and then they can come to the ground defense instructor school and the focus of most of that class is not on neck restraints but there are some portions of it that do teach them and they are deadly force only techniques they can only be used at that level and there may be some times if an officer is on the ground and somebody's got their gun or the gun is out of the holster uh or it's not operative and they're being murdered um a strike to the throat a technique that involves a neck restraint to the throat that might be reasonable uh and it might be okay and then for an officer to then be charged with a 20 year felony for for trying to save their their life or the life of someone else you know if there's someone on top of somebody else on the ground murdering them do you necessarily want an officer to use their firearm to shoot that person off of them and potentially have a round pass through that individual into you or miss that individual and hit you i would rather they do a neck restraint if it's a deadly force situation and i i think that these belong in deadly force but i think to prohibit them uh i i i think it's it's really very very dangerous in 2017 a a paper went out nationally as a best practice recommendation it's called the national consensus policy and discussion paper on use of force it was written by 12 of the most prominent law enforcement entities in the country to include the international association the chiefs of police calia which does law enforcement accreditation uh the association for academy trainers and they specifically addressed choke holds in this paper and they said that choke holds belong at deadly force and that is the only place that they should ever be used and authorized and i i agree with that and i think to take that away from us and to make it a potential 20 year felony is is horrible i there's no other there's no other thing i can say because to to say never ever ever no matter what you know if someone's got my gun and i can't get their hand off my gun uh i'm gonna want to grab them by the throat because i can't think of much else in that circumstance that i might be able to do thank you and i can tell you that through i'm sorry thank you very much there's a lot of information that you gave so appreciate it but we we do need to end the testimony now and fairness to everybody and sure thank you very nice of you to come and speak we appreciate it so next um we if we want to have any discussion of this now i think we're going to tomorrow do a um discussion of the bill and see what happens so there are a lot of things to think of drew you might give that last information piece that you said if you can email something to Peggy Delaney and tell her what that what that policy was that you just mentioned that i think it would be helpful yes i i have it and i can i can send it along um i and i think i can i can find her email address easily enough uh she's right here p delaney at ledge le g dot state dot vt dot us okay i'll yeah i'll send that off thank you senator sears thank you great uh before your question senator bruce can we just hear from brinn for hi brinn hi committee for the record brinn here from legislative council um i it's my understanding that you'd like to see um an affirmative defense and um section six of the bill the new crime i i wouldn't have a restraint i i don't want it to uh be misunderstood i would oppose that okay so we'll just have it could you just as a pot draw it up as a possible amendment and then we'll do that for that um if i could ask a question of brinn so brinn an affirmative defense means and correct me if i'm wrong that that the legislation offers it and strengthens that defense um as opposed to it being a defense that might be offered in absence if the if the law was silent on it um am i right on that brinn sorry i could senator i couldn't hear you there for a moment um i'm sometimes i'm losing my sound so could you repeat that um my understanding of what an affirmative defense is is that um if if it was not included in the legislation it doesn't mean that defense couldn't be brought forward but it's stronger if the legislation offers it as an affirmative defense is that you're muted brinn sorry can you hear me now yes yeah so that is true i think that the way that the um that the crime is currently drafted because it's a um it's it's set up right now as a strict liability offense um adding an affirmative defense may make it clear um in under those circumstances that the um anyone who's being charged under that uh crime could could raise the defense of self defense so i just i just want to say and i hope i'm not putting too fine a point on it we we would be in the case of george floyd that officer is gonna argue that he needed to use that technique of cutting off the wind of george floyd if there was an affirmative defense in their statute he would then have a stronger case the other thing i just want to point out is from my reading about that case in minnesota certain senior officers are qualified to use chokeholds and they're they're in the same way that was just described to us by drew he said that the ground defense instructor school teaches them but not too basic training to advanced officers and my reading on the minnesota case is similar that they have uh their training program doesn't teach them at the basic level but for people who are cleared for higher levels they are taught so i i think honestly the worst thing we could do is put in an affirmative defense that says essentially all you have to do is say that you feared for your life and you are retroactively cleared from having used a chokehold um so that's uh you know i feel like what we have now in the draft is a very clear piece of language and i i think the affirmative defense actually goes in the worst direction which would be to say um go ahead and offer this defense yeah so senator benning would like to make a comment also so using george floyd's situation there is an officer who is placing his knee on george floyd's neck there are two other officers who are helping keep him on the ground and my recollection of the video is there's another officer who is walking around trying to figure out exactly what to do hypothetically if that one officer went up to the officer whose knee is on george floyd's neck and put a chokehold on the officer this bill would have that officer automatically facing a felony and that's where i get into real trouble with this situation because the way it's designed sweeps everybody under the rug and if the officer was actually trying to save george floyd's life in that process we've just damned him to a felony charge well i i mean joe i feel now now you're taking the creation of a hypothetical to an absurd level you're saying we need chokeholds so that officers can choke each other to save i i mean what's absurd about that fellow well what what's absurd i mean in 37 years of criminal law i've been in a hell of a lot of juries what and i've been in a hell of a lot of situations where i know virtually everything under the sun comes into play we're not responding to cases where officers couldn't use a restraint and we're killed we're responding to cases where they are using restraints and killing people on camera which should i just want to make one point one more point if you remember the rodney king beating um was the really the first of this sequence that we've seen of police brutality captured on camera and i would point out the the bell events video which i sent around to the committee that's not 1993 that's last year in burlington so um in the rodney king beating there were a whole series of officers with metal batons hitting rodney king putting him in the hospital breaking his zygomatic arch which is an incredibly difficult bone in the body to break um and it was all captured on video when they went to a jury they said look rodney king is uh is a large man he was in angles that the camera couldn't capture he was making aggressive movements so yes you seem to see the whole video but there are things you can't see and that's where the defense created space for the officers to have used those tactics and they were in fact acquitted now go back to the george floyd video when they get into court the george floyd lawyer i'm sorry the lawyer for the person who killed george floyd is going to argue that that video presents an incomplete portrait and really george floyd remained a threat and that's why the officer continued to have his knee on his neck so i don't want to aid in that sort of defense which is a kind of ex post facto you know wiping away of guilt for an officer who committed murder in my day i understand i also understand we're out of time alice so i'm not going to respond at this moment i think this is a great debate that we need to have we just don't have time to do it right now that's part of my frustration about where we are in the zoom process that's correct so oh janette you haven't had a chance to say no i just was going to say are we going to have a chance tomorrow to um just discuss this as a committee without having i mean people can join us but without having witness testimony so that we can we can grapple with it some of these issues is that the plan the plan is to meet at nine tomorrow and go over the bill with brand what we have with brand and obviously have some discussions okay because i had some comments on this um last issue here but i'll save them for tomorrow that would be good okay very good well thank you all very much uh a lot of 11 witnesses in that period of time was was great to hear from all of them senator sears thanks a lot for being out there brand thank you and peggy arrange you catered zoom today so uh we'll see you tomorrow for many of you will see in a in a few minutes