 Senate Judiciary Committee. I forgot what day it is, which is common under this pandemic, but I know that it is Wednesday. And Senator Ingram has an amendment to S219, which deals with data collection. Commissioner Shirling is here to comment on it. And Ledger Council will bring here also to explain anything. But Senator Ingram, perhaps you'd like to explain the amendment and why you're offering it, why you think that it should be done. Yes, thank you. The amendment, as I said on the floor, I hardly support the bill and I appreciate all the work that the committee has done on it. And I think it's it's a very good bill. I had been working on this idea of data collection and trying to improve it and introduce that as a standalone bill S262 earlier in the session. And I had the opportunity to work with one of the members of the racial equity panel, Stephanie Seguino, who is a UVM professor and is very well versed in statistics and data. And she she actually offered the suggestions that are in the in the bill. And you know, I truly feel I don't mean this to be any, you know, opposition to what you've done at all. I truly feel that this would be a way to strengthen the bill and and improve on what's already good. But since some of this work has already been done, I thought that I would offer it for your consideration. So just briefly the first so the the proposal is to amend only section three. So it would be to substitute this language for what is now section three in in your bill. And it adds some different categories to the kinds of data that would be collected. For instance, adds the pass and not just the driver, but the passenger. If there's any contraband that's found in the car, this is all about traffic stops. And then a few different categories about force and injury possible injury or the impairment of the person to begin with the year, the vehicle must stay the duration of the stop and the and the total years of the officer's service. And then the next part of it is it adds the executive director of racial equity as a person that would be a part of collecting the receiving the data as you had done in in 2019. But it also it changes from the private company that is the vendor now that was chosen by the criminal justice training council, which I believe you've you've heard some complaints about that company as well. But Stephanie Sagrino was quite adamant that she really felt that they were not doing an adequate job. So it shifts that to the office of the attorney general, the thinking being that, you know, they are a public institution, they are a public entity and would be accountable to the people in a way that a private company is not. That that's essentially what's contained in the amendments. And I appreciate your considering it. And, you know, as I said, I just had already done this work on it and felt that it would be worth some worth taking a look at it. Thank you. Any questions for Senator Ingham? I have a quick question. The one that jumps out at me as the biggest change is moving it from the private vendor to the AG's office. Has there been any discussion with the AG's office about whether they're willing and able? I had spoken to David share quite a while ago. I will confess, I mean, since COVID and everything I haven't talked to them since then. But he he's the one that's in charge of matters. And he was supportive at that at the time. It's been a while. Okay. I don't have I'm not sure that this is our questions. I have some comments and some real concerns about it. But I'll wait if that is more appropriate for discussion because they're not necessarily I guess my the question for Senator Ingham is what is the purpose in collecting some of these things like the duration of the stop? For example, if you have a stop that lasts my sheriff sent me his last months of stops and he had a stop that lasted 46 minutes. The reason it lasted 46 minutes was because it was a DUI and they were waiting for the tow truck to come and get the car. And he had one that was 20 minutes because the guy couldn't find his insurance car and spent 20 minutes looking under seats and everywhere for his insurance card. So I don't understand why duration and years of service in the force would be and so I have some other real concerns but I around the invasion of privacy of passengers. If I have a passenger in a car, they have no right to fight. Ask me what my age or gender or race is. I don't believe and also whether the cop thinks I have a psychological impairment and that's public information remember so now the cop writes down on there. You know she seemed a little scattered I think maybe she's depressed or bipolar. They're not equipped to do that and that now becomes public information and everybody in Putney sees that I have a disorder. So those are my concerns. They're not particularly questions but I guess my just question would be what is the purpose? How is this used to help set our policy? Yeah in general the purpose I mean that there's you know very good questions. But the purpose is to identify ways in which people's color might be treated differently from white people basically. I mean for instance the duration of the stop you know the examples you gave are perfectly legitimate reasons why the stop might take longer but there have been you know instances in which you know say a black man is detained much longer at a traffic stop than is necessary you know than a white person you know say their brake light was out or something and you know they could just be you know sort of border on harassment that they've kept the person of color you know longer. So those are the kinds of things you know the state that the person was was in you know would help to identify whether you know what it has to do a lot with what we feel the officer is judging and if there is any basis for perhaps you know discrimination because of the way the the officer is interpreting things generally. Can I just add here on this login sheet that he sent me it says call type ticket date time on scene at cleared at so that's already collected I don't understand. Well it's not uniformly collected is what my understanding is from from Stephanie she she was telling me that when they receive information it's not it's not necessarily consistently collected and it's not reported consistently so it's very difficult to compare. Which is something we are working on. Okay. Senator Benning has a question or a comment. So Deb first off thanks for bringing us it's opening up a conversation that I think we need to be considering as we go through this process and we've heard from several people slow down and make sure you do this right. 37 years as a criminal defense attorney had me looking at the data collection portion of this with a very skeptical eye the pretext for a stop in many instances is relatively minor and I'll use the example of a recent case that I had where the pretext for the stop was your license plate is covered with snow I can't read it which blossomed into a heck of a lot larger charge felony drug situation and this is not an uncommon event I'm not going to say it's common but it is certainly surfaced enough in my work that I'm concerned when you expand the necessary data you are expanding the length of time of interaction between a person who is stopped and the police officer and bad things tend to happen the longer that goes on there was a car in hardwick that had four individuals in it that had pulled over so it was about one o'clock in the morning it had pulled over so two of the people could get out and leave themselves and an officer came and what should have been a simple hi what are you guys doing here are you okay all right be careful thank you goodbye turned into a full scale shakedown of all the individuals involved and that led to subsequent charges drug charges for all of them because the officer decided to learn through that process that they probably wouldn't mind if a dog came along and sniffed the car those kinds of things happen to people of all skin color and when we are talking about um adding the necessary material that an officer has to collect you are actually increasing the length of time that the officer has to question people and that in turn leads to invasions of privacy like janette is talking about because this material is all on a public dispatch log and i'm going to have to push back a little bit on whoever told you that um data about the time of the stop and the end of the stop is not collected uniformly virtually everybody in my neck of the woods that i'm aware of sends to the state police dispatch where they are what time they made a stop when they concluded that stop so i i think that information is already available but giving the officer a reason to ask questions about race um that material comes into play along with the officer making observations about mental health or asking questions about mental health and this amendment would in fact give them date authorization to continue the conversation in a way that could have the opposite effect of what you're trying to accomplish so i'm i'm somewhat concerned that it hasn't been fully fleshed out yet it's a conversation that we need to have in a much wider setting and right now i'm just not comfortable without witnesses from both sides coming in and talking about this subject so if i vote against your amendment you know why but chair yes senator bruce uh question for brin i i don't have our 219 in front of me um so i'm looking at the amendment only um doesn't 219 as we passed it yesterday to third reading doesn't it expand the categories of collection for the kinds of contact so in other words uh some of what's here in terms of use of force is already covered in what we passed in 219 one of it is yes that's correct so for the record brin here from legislative council um what section three of 219 does is it expands the data collection to use of force other physical force was employed um in effectuating the stop um so that there is an overlap there so the type of force is not i don't there's no requirement in s219 that the type of force that's used um i'm sorry there is a requirement that the whether force was used and the type of force be collected um but other like the type of resistance offered is not is not required in 219 219 reads um whether physical force was employed or threatened in effecting the stop and if so the type of force avoid whether the force resulted in bodily injury or death and whether a written warning was issued blah blah blah and um so it's it's somewhat similar to senator ingram's amendment um although it's i don't see it getting into the justification senator white so could i ask just another clarification here my understanding about the vendor my understanding is that the way it works is that you have maybe commissioner sterling would be a better person to ask well i want to pose the question so first so that he can see if i did you have all these agencies that collect the information and what we're trying to do is make sure that they're collecting them in the same manner so they're using the same coding then that information gets fed into the vendor who then collates in a it in a way that can be sent to vcic and other places and that the vendor that that is the role of the vendor is to collate that information as it comes in and if i'm wrong i mean if i'm right why would that live with the ag's office this is a i thought a technical um a technical thing that the vendor did not a response to public or anything so just correct me if i'm wrong on that thank you who somebody michael sterling uh commissioner sterling are you available i am sir uh sorry about the uh no it's it's fine we don't see any sun here in southern vermont today right now i don't think it's sun i think it's just uh it says daylight um oh uh to be responsive uh to senator white uh that is correct um we have two vendors right now um i do want to take one second and just say uh the the the folks that are being referred to as the vendor is not a for-profit entity every state has selected one of these folks to do data analysis and they are a trusted entity they do the data analysis not just on our race data collection and traffic stops but on opiates on domestic violence on sexual violence on overall crime and it does it gives me great pause when i hear folks uh saying that there has been testimony here at the legislative level with distrust of what these folks do they do it in good faith they do not do it uh they do not do data analysis with any outcomes in mind and they use trusted methodologies that are in play on a national level so i really want to push back in the most stern terms around any distrust around the external data analysis that's being conducted at a statewide level with that said uh there are challenges to the two platforms that we use to collect data and how they allow data analysis to be done and senator white is exactly right that's where uh the challenges have historically been we are on the precipice now in the selection of a statewide system that would enable uh not only a better data collection in the field but much more robust data analysis at the back end to include the development of public facing dashboards that would show uh the public municipalities and others data on the fly without having to be a data scientist and at the same time provide raw data to anyone who's interested in analyzing that data whether it's one of our colleges or universities an external researcher somewhere else in the country or someone who just has an interested data and wants to unpack it on their home computer all of the information that we're going to be collecting in the future the next level of transparency is to allow others to analyze that data and query it and ask questions of it that in some cases we haven't even thought to ask and then loop back to us and say hey did you know that your data says x and we may say no we didn't even think to ask that question um so that's the future of uh data collection and analysis at a macro level thank you i have other comments on the draft but i'll i will hold before the chair to if i could just say the commissioner i didn't i don't think i use the phrase distrust of the the uh company i i what i have heard is that what you're talking about about the platforms and the lack of the dashboard has been of concern to a lot of people um i i said that the office of the attorney general would be a public entity which i think would be an added bonus i didn't say it's because we don't trust uh what the vendor is trying to do i just don't think i think it could be strengthen the data reporting if we had a different way of doing it well i i appreciate that senator i would just suggest uh that um a it doesn't need to be recodified in law at this stage because we're going to make that all of this data um as transparent as possible and if we fail to do that then um i would suggest that the codification be that we simply are mandated to put uh all of our data not just around race data collection on force on responses within communities on all the things i've mentioned domestic and sexual violence of course redacting personal identifying information but all of that data should be forward facing for anyone to query uh in any way that they're capable here in the 21st century thank you um i i uh i have a couple of suggestions one would be that um we take up s264 in august s264 is the amendment that's being offered by senator 262 actually my well my computer said you may be correct anyway whatever you take up s264 or 262 in august there is another issue that i wanted to raise about we did hear many witnesses during our discussions of this suggesting that we should not just be limiting the traffic stops but also stops of pedestrians stops of other nature that are made so because um if you know rural communities that is traffic stops but in some of the cities and major towns they are also pedestrian stops where somebody is stopped and so forth so i think it does deserve for discussion i will mention that there have been disagreements there was a study done a while back by the University of Vermont that involved the bennington police department then the center for justice research did a further study of that and the two groups disagreed strongly on the results of both um and so you had the argument between whether you call them vendors or people that were assessing the data ended up in a big argument so i do think that issue also needs to be resolved however um so senator white who's an expert on no no i was just going to say um could we hear the commissioner said that he had some other comments and i would like to hear from that because my intention unless i'm convinced otherwise by somebody is to vote against this amendment but i would like to hear the commissioner uh on his other on the other uh aspects i'm suggesting that we continue the conversation about this subject that's been raised today in yesterday by senator engram's amendment that we continue that discussion after the august after the july break in august that there are other things regarding data collection that need to be examined including the vendor but we could use s264 or 262 whichever the number is as a vehicle for that discussion so uh if you have questions if uh commissioner uh senator engram did you want to comment and then commissioner surley thank you mr chair i i would um i would be satisfied with that and i would withdraw the amendment so that you can the committee can take more more time and i appreciate your willingness to do that and and i would respectfully ask that you do definitely take it up in august rather than wait till um 2021 just because i won't be in the senate in 2021 so i and i would love to be able to um kind of see this process play out so i i appreciate the committee's attention to it and um and if you um will give it a good thought later i will i would draw it assuming that judiciary is able to meet after the august break after the july break in august we will take it up on that i i believe that that's the intent to have committees meet and work on legislation during the break as well as the big bill so um that that would be the only thing and i i recognize that who knows who would be the chair of senate judiciary in 2021 so i'm not counting any eggs and maybe rin that year for incumbents rin will be the chair i don't just a guess okay well she may be uh commissioner schirling did you have some final comments uh i think i have a variety but i think a whole most of them um other than a couple uh just as folks are thinking about this over the next couple months and maybe uh adding to drafts um collecting data on all interactions is the the total is the goal of senator sears indicated not just on traffic stops that we should be able to unpack this for all community interactions um and uh i agree with uh the comments that uh both senator benning and senator white indicated about some of the concerns about scope and the potential for creeping into other um sort of fishing expeditions on on stops with some of the data that's being collected but most importantly for future drafting uh the section on uh collecting information biographical information on passengers is currently not legal in most instances we have to have a reason i have reasonable grounds to identify and interact with a passenger we can't just do that blank at least so you'd be creating a statutory construct that would create a whole set of interactions that would be new and as senator benning indicated all kinds of things can happen um when you uh create more complexity uh roadside both both the things that he indicated but there's also a variety of other concerns i think we would have about expanding time roadside thank you commissioner um and i had the i had the bill on my computer here so let me check the number you're correct senator england it is s262 which was introduced by senator england and baruch others senator baruch it is 262 so there is a commitment to take up the issues contained in s262 um after the july break and uh we look forward to continuing the conversation unfortunately brinn had to leave before we could finish so she has to watch the house i don't know why anybody would want to do that but maybe she has a choice i guess it's her job i don't i guess it yeah that would be the only reason well thank you all very much thank you very much senators i appreciate your um thank you thank you