 So I know we've got some time constraints. So I'm going to move to H-145 and their number of witnesses I did not get to testify last week. So we do want to hear from them again. And then Martin is going to be co-chairing this with me as one who has taken the lead on this bill. But I'd like to introduce Representative Ann Donahue, who also has done an enormous amount of work on this subject and was the lead sponsor of I think the original bill last year. One of the original bills. So welcome. Good to see you. Thank you very much, Representative Ann Donahue. And I just would like to comment briefly on two of the proposed revisions or changes that I've seen either floating around or in the bill. And I haven't gotten very expert on this Zoom yet. I'm going to, I can't do two screens at once, so I'm going to go to my notes and apologies for lack of eye contact or whatever one calls it. So the two pieces I want to comment on, one is the proposed addition of the phrase except in circumstances when the use of lethal force is justified, which I believe is a Department of Public Safety request to insert in two places to make it clear that both in terms of the duty to intervene when an officer observes another officer using a prohibited restraint and the penalties for use of prohibited restraint. And I think those who are on the committee last year know that that I was concerned about the final bill that we passed making it clear that if an officer is appropriately, I don't know if that's the right term, but if the use of lethal force is necessary under the standards that then this particular type of lethal force is not part, is not banned. So you know, I think this is about I understand the law enforcement community wanting to see this very explicit. I think when we clarified it amended it as per my request last year, I think it made it legally explicit, but not explicit to maybe an ordinary person. So I'm supportive of the change except that I think the wording should be different. I think that a lot of what we were trying to do in the bill itself was change the concept of justification to necessary or objectively reasonable. So although I know we do use justified a couple other parts of the of the language, I would prefer to see it saying except in circumstances where the use of force is objectively reasonable as defined in and reference those parts of the new statute. And the second part is the proposal to add the phrase without the benefit of hindsight, which is in subsection four. And that's an addition to the assessment of whether the decision to use force was objectively reasonable and that it's evaluated from the perspective of a reasonable officer in the same situation based on the totality of the circumstances. And it adds that phrase without the benefit of hindsight. You know, I'm not out and out opposed to it. I am a little concerned. And the reason I'm concerned is I think that the concept that this wouldn't be reviewed using hindsight, I think that's already inherent in the language. You're evaluating whether that decision was objectively reasonable and from the perspective of the officer in the same situation and if they're in the same situation, then obviously they don't have hindsight available to them. So I don't think it's necessary and my concern is that it might in some way water down a little or lose clarity on the issue that was one of my greatest concerns in originally introducing the first version of this bill and which I've maintained a concern that it's not really expressed anywhere and that is the concept that if an officer actually escalates a situation to the point at which it does become objectively reasonable to use force, that that should not be a basis for saying that it was reasonably necessary. So so I'm a little concerned about losing some of the clarity and I guess I'll leave it at that. I would want to make sure that we didn't didn't lose that. And that's all I had to say. Thank you, Anne. Very much appreciate your your testimony. Martin, Martin has a question. There you go. Yeah, yeah, I want to make sure I understood where your first comments. I appreciate I understand what you're talking about with these without the benefit of hindsight. But the issue about the prohibited restraint, were you looking at the new definition of prohibited restraint or were you looking at recommendation from Jen Morrison as far as some language? I'm looking at the wreck. Yes, I was responding to the recommendation from Jen Morrison. It's I don't believe it's in your draft at all, but that that recommendation was being made. And and that was something in a course of emails I was asked about and OK, wanted to respond to it. So so I don't know if you're able to bounce around to another document then. But also under my name is proposed new language H one 45. And it addresses the issue that was raised by Jen Morrison, but it addresses it with a different language. And maybe I don't want to just jump on that right now. But if you can kind of at some point, even just an email to the committee to give your input, I don't want to give you your time to take a look at it. Or if we are with additional testimony, if you want to comment on it. But it does it a little bit. A little different approach, but but trying to get at the same thing. Same intent of making it making it clear. Sure, I will I will look at that and send and send an email. Right, I appreciate it because I am supportive of the of the concept of making it clearer as long as we're maintaining the same or same intent as last year. Great, great. Thank you. Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify. Well, I'm sorry, I did have one more question. I apologize. OK, sorry. So the other the other it's not language that you would have right in front of you necessarily, but it's but it's another proposed change from from Jen Morrison. And that is in B five, adding the language to the extent feasible as an introduction to that provision. And I'm wondering if you have any comments on that proposal. Can you refresh me on what five goes on to say? Yeah, sure. It would be right now it's when a law enforcement officer knows that a subject's conduct is the result of a mental condition, etc. The officer shall take the information into account in determining the amount of force appropriate to use on the subject, if any. And they want the suggestion is to put the language to to the extent feasible at the beginning of that. So so I can also send follow up notes in writing if I get a chance to look at it. But it sounds to me that, again, this is this is an area as with the hindsight piece where that's actually clear in the existing language that it's implicit that it's to the extent feasible based on the way it's wording. So kind of doubling up to the extent feasible might. You know, send the wrong message in terms of. It not losing some of the strength of what's intended. Thank you. Great. Thank you so much, Ian. Thank you. Any other hands so that you get back to committee. Great. Nice to see you. OK. OK, now I would like to welcome will do white. Good morning, will do. Good morning, committee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify on this bill. My name is Will White and I'm the founder of an organization called Mad Freedom that's committed to ending the discrimination and oppression against people based on their perceived mental state. I want to I don't think I have formally thanked this committee for the work it did in the last legislative session and getting S1 19 passed. It was a bill that I was very happy to see passed and actually shocked to see past, but nonetheless very happy about it and I appreciate all the work that you did to make that a possible to make that happen. So today, I just want to talk about both some of the changes that have been proposed to the bill that are actually in the bill and also based on some of the testimony I heard when I listened to the recording last week. The first place I'd like to begin is with the changing the definition of prohibited restraint. So I understand that this proposed change is based on the change is based on a desire to track the law that Commonwealth of Massachusetts passed. And I did go and take a look at the law as passed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It was actually signed by the governor on December 31st, 2020. And the first thing I notice is that the bills that the Vermont's definition is still very different from the Massachusetts definition. And so if your desire is to track that language to get the benefit of an early judicial interpretation of that language, I'm afraid that you would not achieve that result because the language is significantly different. That being said, I do think that the Massachusetts language is a bit more artfully written than the Vermont language. But they do mean different things. And if I may, I did submit to Evan O'Connor, just one PowerPoint slide that shows the Massachusetts language and the Vermont language. Evan, can you put that up? Can you share screen to put that up? Or is that something that I have to do? I don't want to do it. If I could avoid that, I would like to avoid that. But I will, if you can't. Is Evan available or I think he's I'm just pulling it up now. I can do it. No problem. I appreciate that. So I think it's worth I think it's worth putting it up so you can see the difference. It might be easier to track my testimony. So the top of the first definition is the Massachusetts definition. And the second and what's below that is the Vermont definition. And the main difference and meaning that I'd like to point out is that in in Massachusetts, they first of all, they call it a chokehold. And they say that if you basically limit a person's breathing or blood flow with the intent of or with the result of causing bodily injury and consciousness of death, then you've engaged in this this chokehold. Vermont, on the other hand, says if you engage in this maneuver and it reduces the intake of air or impede the flow of oxygen to the brain, then that is a violation. Right. Whether or not it results in bodily injury or unconsciousness or death, that's that's very different. And it's very different because in Vermont and I like the difference, I want to say I like the difference and I like the difference because chokeholds have become for black Americans a form of terror. If you go if you saw any of the coverage of Black Lives Matter protests over the summer, you saw counter protesters reenacting the death of George Floyd as a way to terrorize black Americans. And so a chokehold, so it becomes a bit irrelevant whether a person has engaged in a chokehold that resulted in death or unconsciousness because the very act of engaging in this chokehold is itself a form of terror for many black Americans right now. And so I like the fact that the Vermont Statute actually prohibits if you read the plain meaning, even engaging in it, regardless of whether it causes harm. I don't know if that's what the committee intended, but that is the plain language of the statute and that's where it differs significantly from the Massachusetts Statute. But what I when I said I thought the Massachusetts Statute was more artfully written, I do think that's the case because the Vermont Statute will create a lot of proof problems when you actually get to court because it's actually a little too specific. It talks about exactly where you put the hands, the neck, the throat, the windpipe, the carotid artery. That's a really difficult thing for someone who's gonna be prosecuting the case to have to prove. But then you also say it impedes the flow of blood or oxygen to the brain. Again, it created a higher proof problem because now you have to get somebody, you have to get an expert to say that, yes, this actually impeded the flow of oxygen to the brain. And I just think it doesn't need to be that complicated. So I think that's why I actually prefer the language of the Massachusetts Statute. I think it is clear, more artfully written, creates fewer proof problems at trial if you actually get to trial. And even in considering whether you're going to bring this something to trial, it's cleaner and I think more effective in that regard. My problem with, so then I wanna get into this notion of preserving an officer's right to use this so-called prohibited restraint where lethal force would be otherwise acceptable. This for me raises more of a policy issue. And I would really appreciate some discussion around this from law enforcement. If this is preserved as a tactic that you can use for lethal force, are you going to be training officers to use it? And if the answer to that is yes, I have a problem with that. I have a big problem with training law enforcement to use something that this legislature has deemed a quote prohibited restraint. If you're not going to be training law enforcement officers to use it, how do we know that they would be using it in a way that would be less lethal than what we consider lethal force? Again, I think it's really a policy discussion. I think the community would benefit from hearing law enforcement's intent in this regard. And then finally, I think, and I raised this issue the last time I testified on the bill, if you are actually going to preserve this so-called prohibited restraint as an offense, as an affirmative defense, I really think it's problematic calling it a prohibited restraint. I've tried enough cases to juries and talk to enough jurors after a case where language such as a prohibited restraint would really throw some jurors off because they would say, what do you mean? Well, you're asking me if it was okay for this person to use a prohibited restraint. Well, obviously it's not because it was a prohibited restraint. And so there are jurors who just think that way. And so I think it would cause more confusion. I've just seen jury instructions written like this that just cause so much more confusion and they don't really, so the legislative intent is not truly realized. So I would caution you, if you really want it to be something that's an option that you really should not call it a prohibited restraint. So unless there are questions, I'll just move on to my next comment. Any questions, still hard? Folks, if I'm not seeing your hand, please jump in. So I'm just going to jump in and ask Evan to go back to the full, to no longer sharing screen so we can see everybody a little better. Thanks. So then I want to move on to the definition of a totality of the circumstances that you're proposing to change to add the person or persons involved. I have no objection to that. However, listening to the testimony, I do wonder if you're going to achieve the benefit you want to achieve by adding the word bystander. That word seemed to create a lot of confusion when I listened to the testimony and the questions from legislators last time. Some people were asking questions of all our police officers bystanders or what about this? And anytime when there's that much confusion from a word, it gives me pause about including the word. And then when I heard the explanation of what constitutes a bystander, both from law enforcement and others, they were really, in my mind, describing people who were involved rather than people who were bystanders. The literal definition of a bystander that you would find if you were to look, for example, in Black's law dictionary, it's truly a person who has no concern with what's going on. And he's really simply an onlooker, a spectator, an observer, someone who's there by chance. And so then when I think about that definition of a bystander, it really causes me to wonder, what would a bystander do that would justify the use of force? And that's because I don't have a good answer to that question. I'm reluctant to endorse the inclusion of that language. When I was thinking about a bystander trying to come up with, what are you getting at here? When would a bystander's conduct cause you to use a force that would be justified? I couldn't think of anything. I remember the people in George Floyd telling the officers that the person couldn't breathe. Are they bystanders? Perhaps, perhaps they're bystanders. And perhaps their conduct in alerting the officer to the fact that George Floyd couldn't breathe is something that actually would be part of the totality of the circumstances. However, when I heard law enforcement explain what they thought about bystanders, they were thinking of bystanders as actually more exculpatory, right? Making it their actions, explaining away their actions, not actually, you know, inculpatory used to just saying, no, that use of force wasn't justified. So I have two suggestions. One is, I think we need way more clarity about what role a bystander could play that would justify the use of force. And if you do move forward with including bystander in the statute, I would suggest that you actually include a definition. If there are no questions about that, I'll just move on to my next point. Yeah, I have one question on that. If you could respond to this comment as opposed to the question that's well, I'll set this up is that it seems to me, and now I'm already being leading in my question by saying it seems to me, but I'll go with it anyway. It seems to me that the presence or absence or whatnot of a bystander is readily part of the facts that are known by the law enforcement officer. I don't think we necessarily lose anything if we take bystander out of the totality of circumstances because it is still part of the facts known to the law enforcement officer. If you could comment on my leading question, you don't have to be led, certainly. Yeah, I'm focused more on, we're talking about bystanders because we're saying they may affect whether the use of force is reasonable. So I wanna know how could the conduct of a bystander enter into your decision to use force? That's for me the only question, because I can't imagine a scenario where a bystander would affect whether or not you're gonna use force on another party. You know what I'm saying? I just don't see it. And if somebody gave me an explanation about how somebody standing by would justify the use of force, I might be more able to understand why you would include it in the statute. Until I understand that, I'm wary of including these kinds of things in the statute. And I think my weariness comes from just my understanding of how the rules of statutory construction. You know, when a court gets your language, they're gonna give full meaning to every single word. That's what they do. They wanna give full meaning to every single word in the statute. And they're gonna think that you have been really deliberate in the words that you've used in the statute and they will try to give them meaning. And I can't think of a meaning, but I know lawyers are very clever. And so I want to know the full impact of this language before I say, yeah, I endorse it or I think it's innocuous or I think it's implicit. I don't know so I can endorse it and I'm more skeptical of it because I know this language in the hands of clever attorneys could defeat the meaning of the statute. But just if we don't have that language in there, conceivably, if in fact it's relevant, which a court would presumably figure out, if the act of a spectator, as we will use that word instead, is somehow relevant to whether the use of force was justified or not. That's part of the facts, presumably known. So I'm just saying that- I would agree with you. Yes, I would agree with you. I would agree that if, you know, facts we just don't know how, say we just don't know how a bystander's conduct could do this. If it weren't in the statute, if the word weren't in the statute, the officer would still be able to point to the conduct of a bystander in his or her particular instance to say this did affect my use of force. And then it would be considered along with the totality of the circumstances analysis. I do agree with that. Right, because at one point, one of the many versions we looked at last summer, we tried to have a list of all the various kinds of known facts there could be. And ultimately we decided to simplify because you're not gonna capture everything. And if it's relevant, it will be brought out in the disciplinary hearing or in the court. So that's why we've tried to scale back and keep it as simple. Maybe bystander belongs in that other bucket of facts, as opposed to something specific in here. Right, thank you. I think that's a better practice of writing statutes anyway to be probably in this case, not try to capture all the facts because the more facts you try to capture, the more the court will consider that this was complete instead of just kind of abroad. You know what I'm saying? I think it's better to leave it to use words like totality of the circumstances instead of trying to spell them all out. Thanks. And then I also just wanted to say about, before the inclusion of the phrase without the benefit of the hindsight, I don't need to belabor this point. I agree with Falco Schelling's testimony in this regard. I think it's problematic for the reasons that he said, that's all I'll say on that. And then I want to talk about the B5, which in the suggestion to include the phrase to the extent feasible at the beginning of that phrase. Just to remind you, B5 is that part of the statute that reads, and I think it's important to know exactly what B5 says because it says, when a law enforcement officer knows that a subject conduct is the result of, and it lists, you know, medical condition, the officer shall take that information into account in determining the amount of force appropriate to use on the subject if any. Now, when I listened to the testimony last that was given by Jennifer Morrison, you know, she said that it was not always possible to assess the root cause of behavior, or there's not always time to do a laundry list of assessment. But if you read the statute, the statute is not asking for any assessment or any determination of the root cause. The statute says, when the officer knows, and it only applies when the officer knows. It's not, and so I think that's really important to keep in mind because it's not asking for any assessment, and so the argument that we need to the extent feasible for that reason is just not, it's just not found it. But the other thing that she said that I found problematic was, problematic but also very illuminating was in the exchange between representatives alone about training because she said that she wanted to add to the extent feasible because it's easier to operationalize because they train officers to address behaviors. And when I heard that, it became more clear to me why we see, you know, 11 year olds being pepper sprayed and five year olds being handcuffed because if you're only addressing behavior, then I guess you're indifferent to who's is exhibiting that behavior. But it was my understanding or at least when I was encouraging the legislature to adopt this language was that it was to generate actually a new type of training where we did more than just address behaviors that if we knew the source of those behaviors we would take that into account. And so I think this is really a conversation worth having because I don't think it is a good reason to put to the extent feasible in the statute in order for law enforcement to continue to train officers the way they have always trained officers. I do believe that this B5 is asking law enforcement to train officers differently when they have the knowledge of why somebody is acting in the way they're acting. And I'm really actually troubled because when the in the current draft the December 2020 draft of the statewide policy law enforcement use of force came out, there appears in that policy the statement there is not a separate legal standard for use of force involving persons experiencing mental impairment. That is not an accurate statement of the law but it may be an accurate statement of what they want the law to be. And so that statement in the policy the suggested language about including to the extent feasible suggests to me that the law enforcement in this committee are not on the same page when it comes to what the standard is when the law enforcement officer knows that a person's behavior is because of mental impairment. So I'm very much opposed to this language and very much look forward to a conversation between this committee and law enforcement about their understanding of what this committee has asked them to do in enacting this provision. And I'll stop there. Thank you so much, Will. I really appreciate your testimony incredibly thoughtful and comprehensive and your slide was really helpful too. I tend to be a visual person. I think it was helpful to many folks and it'd be great to have it on our website. So thank you. Not seeing any hands. I wanna make sure I don't miss anybody. No questions. Great. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Okay, Robert Powell, welcome. So, Robert Powell. You're muted, Rob. Now I'm unmuted and let's see if I can be seen for a moment. Okay. I have problems with my camera and it freezes. So anyway, I appreciate you're inviting my comment on this. I'm late to this party as well. I'm trying to follow along with what I heard this morning. I concur with what I've heard from Willda. Obviously she studied this issue quite thoroughly including prior testimony which I have not had the opportunity to do so. I am concerned that by adding the language proposed by law enforcement, I agree with Willda and with representatives of the law that less is more when drafting language. The more you put in there and I agree with Willda's take on this, the court is gonna try to figure out what each word means. So, with regard to the bystander language, I'm sorry, I have to flip back and forth which was section B. I'm comparing what's in the bill is introduced with what was posted today by representative Lillan. And I'm confused, is that representative Lillan, is this your proposal or the committee discussed proposal? This is a proposal based on some of the testimony that we heard last week. And it's my proposal at this point. It's not the committee's. Well, I think this is an improvement over what is here in the bill is introduced. Totality of the circumstances is a term of art known to the legal community and includes any and everything present at the time. I think when you start to try to expand the definition, you're gonna confuse judges. I agree with Willda that lawyers from time to time try to insert more confusion into a case that then exists in an effort to benefit their party's position. So again, I go back to the lessons more and I like the language in representative Lillan's proposal. I question, so that's a substitution for six, right? So what would eliminate as person there are persons involved in any bystanders. I think those terms are fully encompassed by the term totality of the circumstances. So that's my comment on that. Likewise, and I again agree with Willda's take that, well, similarly in terms of what I would term to be surpluses is in B4 and B4 without the benefit of hindsight. Any case in the federal courts where there's a discussion of use of force, the case president always says without the benefit of hindsight. So codifying that I don't think is necessary. That is the way that judges interpret these matters. And I mean, one thing I would and I don't know if the committee has waded into this debate yet, but qualified immunity sort of overshadows all of this. And I don't know if the committee has thought about it. There are other state legislatures around the country who are grappling with that issue. Qualified immunity in very brief, if you have not stopped me, if you're familiar with the term and what it means. Nobody's stopping me, so I'll keep talking. Qualified immunity is basically a device whereby a governmental official will be immune from any legal action unless their acts violate a constitutionally established right. So what that means in practice is you have to have a prior decision with the facts aligned on all fours in order to hold somebody liable. So, let's say the seven-year-old out of control behavior who threatened suicide with a knife doesn't line up with somebody who's a nine-year-old attempting suicide with a weapon. I mean, that would not be clearly established in the views of our federal judges at this point in time. And that's what the national debate is about. Do we want to be so overly protective of state actors, particularly police, where there is a general principle that is essentially abdicated because you can't find a similar case with the exact same facts. So I think it's important to be considering these issues when you're trying to regulate use of force because unless and until you can find a case that aligns, it's gonna be dismissed on qualified immunity on motions. You're not gonna get to a jury with it. So what does that mean to curtail some police officers, unfortunately, who think they have the right to use excessive force or whatever force they think is appropriate irrespective of the circumstances? I think not having that discussion is not really discharging what you're trying to accomplish. That said, I'll go back to the language and I agree on any questions about that. I just went through a qualified immunity in 25 words or less, which is a very complex concept, but it's something that overarches your entire work in this area. And you might want to hear from the legislature on that or somebody who will speak solely to that topic with more preparation than I just did. But I think it's important to understand where you're litigating these cases in the civil context, you're gonna have, as a plaintiff, you're gonna have to contend with that concept. I still see no questions or hands, so I'll keep going. Actually, I'm sorry, Felicia, go ahead. Yes, thank you. I'm interested on your perspective on whether or not a mending qualified immunity has a place in this bill, or if you were just mentioning it with regard to how we structure this bill so that it does not butt up against qualified immunity and not end up being effective. Thank you for the question. I don't think, I just want you to be aware that the good work you're doing on this bill will likely be for not if qualified immunity still controls. So whether you do it in this bill or a standalone, I think it's important to conversation this art state legislature needs to have. New Mexico is actively working on a bill. There are other states, there are other drafts out there. I'm happy to supply it to the committee or committee council. There's actually a pretty well-developed national movement to curtail qualified immunity as established by the United States Supreme Court. There's nothing that, to my knowledge, and I've not fully researched the issue that our state supreme court has weighed in on application of qualified immunity, but it is generally these excessive use of force cases in these so-called 1983 cases which provide civil remedy for state actors violating constitutional rights or usually litigated in federal court. However, if qualified immunity did not exist in state court, you'd see more and more actions in state court with the purpose and intent of curtailing state actors who just disrespect and don't follow constitutional mandates. So my suggestion would be, this is round two of your discussion on use of force. It's late in the game. I would suggest you have a committee conversation about qualified immunity and consider a committee bill that would address it. Other questions on that? I, just to respond, I really appreciate your response on that. It does spark the question that maybe is better for some committee discussion at a later point of adding in that anyone found in violation of this use of force statute is not granted protection under qualified immunity. You're gonna hear a lot of pushback. I am not knowledgeable enough on Vermont's qualified immunity statute to just openly suggest that without having testimony history on it, but it does sound like something that would need to be put in consideration. I don't wanna speak for the committee, but I do wanna speak that it would be my opinion that I would hate to do good work and not have it be effective. Well, that's my concern. And I think you are doing very good work in this bill this year and vote on what happened last year. I just, you know, I agree that if you don't contend with that overarching problem, this good work may not produce the outcomes that you're seeking. So I appreciate your interest in that. I'd be happy to participate in that. I have worked in this area. I don't know if you know anything about my background, but I do bring these cases in federal court and qualified immunities and it's a very difficult hurdle to overcome. And I'll leave it at that for now. Excuse me, Martin has his hand up. Yeah, I was gonna follow up on this issue actually and I know it isn't 100% clear on the outcome. However, by having more well-defined standards in statute and presumably as we're watching what's developing in the policy, the policy to operationalize the standards that we have here, wouldn't that narrow the opportunity to make the qualified immunity defense? I'm not saying it gets rid of it. I'm not at all saying that, but by having these clear standards both in statute and in policy, it would seem to me that that makes it more difficult for that to be a successful defense, the qualified immunity defense. Is that not the case? Let me think on that a moment. I mean, the qualified immunity decisions talk about established constitutional principles. I mean, what you're doing is obviously providing statutory guidance. Would that rise to the level of established constitutional provisions or principles? I'd have to think on that. I understand your point and it may be of help and again, I go back to my earlier comment where you want to be as succinct and directed as possible without language which I would consider to be surplusage and confusing. Like, I mean, I put it in hindsight, bystanders, other persons, I think the broader clear language left alone, I think provides better guidance to all concerned. So let me just follow up just a little bit on this thought again. What we've been dealing with until recently with Vermont's law, with what California recently did, what Massachusetts just did, which goes into even more in depth. Prior to that, it was really just that these standards were developed in case law. So if there wasn't cases on point, well, then qualified immunity applied, but here we're putting into effect a statute that lays out those standards and other states are doing that as well. And really this is pretty new as far as actually having those statutory standards. But I'll look just specifically at the before the, which we talked a bit about, Will DeWight talked a little bit about as far as the law enforcement, if the officer knows, they're supposed to take that into account. And presumably, and we're hoping to see this soon in the policy that's gonna be developed, it will be talking about, all right, well, if they know about these impairments, here's the steps. Hopefully it'll involve a lot of the policies that actually were in place in Burlington, but just were not followed in the Grenin case. But it would seem to me that it would be, it will become more difficult for a law enforcement officer to ignore that situation or just taking the Grenin situation for a qualified immunity defense to be successful. You know, I'm speculating somewhat obviously, because this is new ground, but I guess I'm, my thought is that I'm not, I'm not quite, I'm not there where I'm thinking what we're putting into place is gonna be undermined by the qualified immunity defense. And maybe that was, there wasn't a question in there, but if you wanna comment on what I just said, that would be appreciated. Well, I think it would be best for me to consider your comments and parameters of discussion and provide a response after having given us some more thoughts and some research. I understand your point, Representative Belan, certainly statutory guidances. It's helpful. But then I talk about, and then I think about Molda White's comment having gone through the draft use of course policy in which, and I agree with her, and if you have a letter in your committee folder today from Zach Horsley to Disability Rights for a Month, that clearly says that, and I had a case, it was a taser death in Sefford in 2012. We got a statement of interest from Department of Justice. It was one of the last acts of Obama's Justice Department, the statement of interest in which it said that, persons who exhibit behaviors that are manifestly indicative of a mental health issue require accommodation. And Molda's take on the draft policy is that, the policy that you don't actually have the ability to prescribe, right? I mean, this is not like, it's not gonna go through the legislative committee on administrative roles. This is a policy, as I understand the process, that police can write, implement and train on. And if it doesn't conform with the law, what's the legislative's prerogative in that regard? Well, we can come back and be more specific and amend the statute next year, you know, or next biennium. So we try to have this law setting forth these standards certainly, but then allowing the flexibility to law enforcement to operationalize them. But that doesn't mean that if those policies go into place and they really are not operationalizing what we've set out as standards, we can tighten down a little bit. But that's hopefully, I don't suspect that that's gonna happen. I think that the law enforcement is, in our conversations with them, really are trying to implement the standards that we have in here, but we'll see. Well, I appreciate your continued attention to the issue. And your concern around making sure that your good intents are followed and fully implemented by law enforcement, prosecutors, civil litigants, and all involved. So let me give some more thought to the broader question and provide the committee with some materials. And I do appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today. If anybody has any further, unless somebody has further questions from me, I'll yield to the next person on your list. Thank you. Not seeing any questions. Okay, so we, thank you. Thank you, Rob. Good to see you again. Yeah, thank you. So committee, we only have about seven minutes or so, but I do wanna give Jen Morrison a chance to comment if she'd like. And certainly we will, I'm sorry for remaining witnesses and also Jen that we don't have, that we're running out of time, but certainly we are gonna continue this discussion next week. So welcome, Jen. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair and good morning, everyone. Thank you for your continued hard work on this most important topic. I wanted to just say a couple of quick things. I really appreciated the testimony this morning. I took copious notes. I'm certainly gonna be watching this again. I wanna reassure Will DeWyte, anyone else who's watching, the draft, a second draft is forthcoming. We have a very small team of attorneys and two police chiefs, myself and Trevor Whipple, who are reviewing every piece of feedback, whether it was an email or the more corporate feedback from Med Freedom, disability rights, Vermont, et cetera. And we are really going over in detail the recommendations and the next draft of the policy will reflect a lot of that feedback, not all of it. And we'll be keeping track of what parts we use and don't use. We're at a little bit of a crossroads of do we write a second draft when we don't know what the underpinning legislation is going to say? You know, we're trying to make that decision of do I invest that type of time, knowing that we have all this body of feedback and we're going to incorporate a bunch of it or do we wait until we know what the underlying legislation is? So there is another draft forthcoming and I look forward to sharing that with the interested stakeholders. So I guess I would ask and to Mr. Appel also that some trust needs to be extended here, that the Department of Public Safety has made an investment in a position as a policy expert to have a single person now available. This has never been available before to have the bandwidth to pull together all sorts of different viewpoints to try and create policy for law enforcement. So this is something that is different and new this year. I'm going to do my very best to demonstrate that this can be a raging success. So I look forward to working with all the folks who have testified going forward. And I just wanted to also state to that the comment about responding to behaviors was not meant to be presumed as in a vacuum. That's obviously our training is multi-dimensional and is based on scenarios and all sorts of context. So while I can understand why review the video might have caused Ms. White a little bit of hesitation around my comment about use of forces, we're trained to address behaviors. It's not one dimensional, it's multi-dimensional. So I did wanna address that. I really appreciate all the discussion today. I think that this morning is the first time that I saw Representative Lalonde's alterations to the current H-145. I certainly would wanna run this over by our legal people. But I think we're gonna get there. I think that what he wrote is not, you know, I don't look at it and go, we can't live with that. But obviously I need to talk to our legal people. There's a lot smarter people involved in this than I am. So I appreciate the continued good work. I'm available anytime for questions or comments from the committee or from stakeholders as well. So I'll look forward to seeing where this goes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. I truly appreciate working with you. And yeah, we will get back to it next week. And I think Martin will probably address his amendment, but we did not expect you to be prepared for that. So don't worry, okay. Martin. Yeah, I just wanted to ask, Jen, if you could also, I don't know if it will come up, but just in case there was language that was proposed by disability rights Vermont, which is on our page. If you could have looked at that in case we do need you to weigh in on that language. I don't know if that's the case, but just wanted to... Sure. We have our group yesterday reviewed the disability rights Vermont feedback. We broke it down into what we believe are 14 individual comments. And we made copious notes on whether, parts of it will be incorporated into the next one or whether it actually already exists somewhere in training. So I am prepared at any time to speak to that feedback. Just, I wanna make sure that I'm clear. This is something that we just received as testimony on the, not on the policy, but on the law, on the bill. And it's on our website under today's date. So that's a little bit different. I understand that they did provide input on the policy, but they have provided proposed language, which I don't know if we're gonna be taken up or not, but I just wanted to flag that for you. So you knew that was there. Thank you. I appreciate that. And also for the committee's edification, I am seeking the assistance of a group to facilitate the first attempt to put together that appendix D you'll see in the use of force draft use of force policy that there's a placeholder for appendix D, which is guidelines for law enforcement when interacting with a person experiencing or perceived to be experiencing mental impairment. So understanding that I'm trying to be a sponge and take in all the info from all different sides of it. I will be using some facilitators to pull together the stakeholders in that and help us build that so that we can provide that resource out to the field. So that is something that the work on that will begin soon, I hope. Great, excellent. Thank you. Anybody else? Coach. You're muted, coach. Sorry about that. I wanted to thank all of the witnesses that participated this morning. Jen, we really appreciate your work. I would just like to extend if we can be of any help in utilizing the communications that we've put together with the affected communities in the state, please reach out to Martin and let him know and we would be happy to help with that. I think it's imperative that that be done and I'm offering that assistance. Thank you, sir. I appreciate that and I will go direct with Representative Lalonde to see if we can develop a list, shall we say, of people to invite into the process. Thank you. Great. Not seeing any other hands. Again, thank you to everybody who has testified in my apologies to those who we didn't get to today but I forget which day next week but we definitely are taking it up next week because this is an important bill and I wanna keep moving on it. So with that, I will adjourn and we will go offline, please. Thank you.