 Good evening. As a preliminary matter, this is Town Council Douglas Hyme. Permit me to first confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me. Members, when I call your name, please respond in the affirmative. Karen Bishop and Brown. Here. Michael Brownstein. Here. Elliot Elkin. Here. Kerry Fallon. Chief Julie Flaherty. Here. Jill Harvey. I'm here. I'm just making my dinner. So I'll be on screen soon. Mona Motari. Here. Carlos Morales. Here. Barbara Doshia. Here. Kathy Rogers. Here. Clarissa Rowe. Here. Sanjay Nuri. Here. Susan Ryan Volmer. Here. And Laura Giddelson. Here. Good evening. This is an open meeting of the Arlington Police, Civilian Advisory Board Study Committee being conducted remotely consistent with an act relative to extending certain COVID-19 measures adopted during the state of emergency, which among other things allows public meetings to be conducted remotely until April of 2022 to the COVID-19 pandemic. I have four additional notes before we begin the meeting. First, persons participating by Zoom are reminded that folks may be visible, that you may be visible to others and that if you wish to participate, we're asked to provide your full name in the interest of developing an accurate record of the meeting. Two, further, all participants should be advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment and participate solely by telephone. Those persons are not required to identify themselves for a registered advance to the meeting may not be visible on video. Three, all votes in this meeting will be taken by roll call. And four, finally, participants and folks watching can follow the posted agenda materials also found on the town's website. If there's nothing else, then I'll turn it over to the chair, Ms. Skittleson. Thank you. So I will call this meeting, this meeting to order September 8th, 2021 at 7.07 pm. We should be recording, we are recording. And so everybody should be aware of that. I thank you all for getting here on SoCLA PACT agenda. So I'm gonna try to move quickly. I think we're gonna move item three on the agenda up so that Sandy and Karen don't get stuck here any longer than they need to. I'm really happy that deputy town manager Sandy Poehler agreed to talk to us. We had reached out to him to talk a little bit about the collective bargaining agreement with the police unions in town. And when I touched base with him, he said that we really also probably wanna hear from Karen Malloy, who's the town's director of human resources. And she very graciously agreed to join us even though she found out about the meeting either last night or this morning. So thank you so much for being here. I told Sandy that we have talked sort of peripherally about the fact that depending on what recommendations we make, we were concerned there may be issues that would interact with or impact the bargaining with the police unions. And we had seen that when we studied other towns and cities. And so it seems like an important thing for us to know. And so I don't know Sandy, did you just wanna give a brief introduction and take questions, whatever, however you feel like this will go best for you. Sure, thank you. Thank you for having me and Karen here. I think we're both excited to talk to you. I've read your interim report and like some of the other people have already said, I thought it was very good. And so I am impressed with the work that the committee is doing. I think these are important issues and figuring out the right way to get the right solutions is gonna be a challenge. But certainly consistent with the kind of, I think progressive forward thinking that I've seen in my five years here working in the town of Arlington. So let me just explain a little bit about my role and about Karen's role in dealing with our unions. Karen and I together as a team do the bargaining for the town. And I have to say, I'm usually a little bit more of the person on the financial side, whereas Karen is more of the person with 20 plus years of experience. And I think one of the leading HR directors in the state looking at the legal impacts and the history of our relations with our unions. So having said that, I will start doing some of the talking just because you asked me to, but I do think Karen and I have been in many rooms together talking either directly to the unions or at various seminars and so forth talking about bargaining issues. So I think we'll both have things to say and both be happy to answer any of your questions. I know there was a request for our collective bargaining agreements to be sent to you. I frankly don't know if those made it to you yet, but I would say regardless of whether they did, there's probably not gonna be much in the collective bargaining agreements. It's gonna be relevant to the questions that you're exploring. Partly that's because generally the things that you're talking about have not been dealt into within collective bargaining in the past. So there aren't particular provisions. Secondly, because we work under a general rubric of a contract with our unions. And as those of you who have ever been in a contract or if you're a lawyer as you know, that a contract is the meeting of the minds of two parties. In other words, both sides have to agree to the terms of a contract for it to be in that contract. And fundamentally in labor contracts, anything that affects the terms and conditions of employment is a mandatory subject of bargaining between the employer, the city or town and our unions. So what does that mean? In looking at the various possibilities for civilian involvement in looking at discipline and actually the rules under which our employees have to work, they essentially have to come to agreement with us as to what those rules are gonna be. In other words, we cannot say, well, we want you to act in a certain way. There are some caveats to that, but in general, there has to be a shared agreement between us and our employees within the collective bargaining realm under those terms and conditions of employment. There are some things that we can do where we can just go ahead and do something and have what's called impact bargaining where we have the right to implement certain things and then talk to the unions about how that affects them. But most of the things that I think we would be talking about here fall under the category of decisional bargaining or decision bargaining, where again, you're kind of starting from zero within an agreement between the town and the unions. And you have to come to a shared agreement about how things are gonna be done. Generally, I would say the extent that there is any role in a citizen panel reviewing or imposing discipline or being involved with the particular due process rights of our employees to be judged by their activity on the job, any changes to that would require an agreement from the unions as to what that would look like. On the other hand, if there were some sort of a general review by a citizen panel, sort of an unbudged person looking at, for example, discipline hearings over the last year and kind of commenting on how they thought they went without getting into the particulars of an individual, I think that probably would be a legitimate area for somebody to comment on because frankly, anybody in town, any of you has the right to comment on those things, those records or public records. Anybody has access to them. And so I think in that area, there is some room. As I was talking to Laura early today, we were comparing our law school experiences. And one of the things that we both learned in law school is the phrase, it depends. So a lot of what you may suggest, I think at some point, if there are particular ideas you want to propose, certainly Karen and I are glad to offer our opinions. But I also think that we are willing and able to to consult with our labor council, ask labor council what might be the case and give you some feedback on that. I will also say politically, a couple of things. One, whatever gets proposed, unless there is buy-in very early on from the unions, even if they don't legally have a leg stand on, they may raise some of their own objections or they may contend that some of these things are subject to bargaining. And that in and of itself may have to play out over time. I can't predict what that's gonna be. I can never really predict what the unions are going to do, but that is often the case. I think you asked me about collective bargaining, but I am gonna delve off into one related area. And that is, I think, and because I think it's related to the work that Karen and I do and certainly is related to the work that the chief does. And that is the whole framework of accountability, authority and communication within the department. Any kind of outside entity that interferes with the chief's ability and the town manager's ability in a frankly, very hierarchical structure to be able to impose discipline, set clear standards, but also communicate up and down between the chief and the unions. Any interference with that, I worried could be deleterious to those relationships. That doesn't mean there can't be or shouldn't be a citizen input. I think that could be an important thing to do, but I also think I would urge you to think about what the relationships are of any organization and making sure that the authority of the chief is maintained so that she can do her job well. If at some point we think the chief isn't doing her job well, that's a question of whether we need a different chief. But if we do think the chief is doing her job well, it's important that we have structures that allow her to do that job well. And so both in terms of her authority, but also in terms of people knowing that if she says the rules are a certain thing that her employees know that that is the case. So that's just my kind of related two cents because I would say that Karen and I spent a lot of time in our discussions with all the town unions, talking about communication, talking about those relationships, talking about the union members' sense of being listened to and respected and understanding who makes decisions and how that works. So I would just say that's been an important part of our experience. Those I think are my opening remarks. Karen, I don't know if you want to add anything to that. If you do, great. Otherwise I think we'd be happy to take any questions. I don't have anything to add. Thank you, Sandy. Thank you so much for being here tonight, Karen. I will, I guess, open it up to questions. Sanjay, if you can just keep an eye on the video for people raising their hands because I still can only see a small number of people. I see Clarissa has her hand up. Yeah, I see Clarissa, yeah. One of the things, and hello, Karen and Sandy. One of the things that comes into play, and I'm sorry I missed the last meeting when the Padrini case was underway, is the evidence of case law in labor negotiations. And I think what has happened with the case law for complaints is something that this group should understand. I'm being somewhat obtuse. I think that Sandy and Karen know what I'm saying, but it would be great if both of you talked about the case law and what kind of legal ramifications that has on our, or Julie, any of you talk about what has happened in the past and how the town can bring a complaint against an officer and what kind of result we actually will have. I think in general, what you're referring to is the fact that both police and fire officers have the right to arbitration over complaints and that arbitration is a sticky wicked. It is unpredictable. We have sometimes done very well there and sometimes not done well at all. And in general, it is one of those things that I think all municipal employers try to avoid at all costs because it just crazy things can come out of it. One of the things I think we have felt over the years is a dissatisfaction with some of the decisions that arbitrators have rendered not solely in Arlington but across the state. And so I think we think that there is our feeling generally that there is a sort of bias toward employees among arbitrators and that there is not necessarily, and I can say this from my own personal experience, a lot of attention, sufficient attention to detail or to the facts among certain arbitrators. A lot of what we do when we go into an arbitration is a lot of education of the arbitrators for the arbitrators because it's frankly, extremely necessary. There is also I think a concern that arbitrators need to sort of split the baby all the time or make sure that they are friendly enough to the unions so that the unions will continue to agree to hire them because when arbitrators are picked, there's a process where each side has to agree who the arbitrator is gonna be. Karen, do you wanna add anything else about arbitration? I think that to Clarissa's question and how nebulous you say case law is, right? So you have all these arbitration awards from these individual attorneys from individual departments across the Commonwealth. One of the things I think I'm hopeful for in the future is similar to how education reform created a centralized place and certain standards for teachers that started to build a library of cases or litigation where you could say, hey, look, this teacher, the termination was upheld for this reason. And I don't understand, it's still in its formation but my understanding is that with police reform, we have the hope of a similar thing happening if you have standards and if you have the state involved in administering it, there could start to take shape, a set of decisions that everyone can reference instead of it just being up to your good luck that you happened to have a labor attorney that did another case in another town and through their network of people found out about some decisions in some other communities. Does that make sense? It makes sense to me. I think one of the hardest things for people that haven't been involved in the town is how complicated this issue is. And as Julie knows and Sandy and Karen know, the labor issues really affect how we run the town and it's a very complicated subject and we're really lucky to have Sandy and Karen and Julie because it's much more complicated than the normal citizen would understand. And I only understand a tiny little bit of it now but I've been involved for a long time and I think it does color how we deal with bad apples and how we've had to deal with bad apples as a euphemistic term. So that's it for my question. Thank you, Karen and Sandy. Mona, did you raise your hands? It looks like no, but I see Carlos has his up. Okay, Carlos. Sandy, Karen, thank you for being here. I have, maybe it's a good question, but the first one is it's the police reform at the state level. It's do you have any knowledge that has that trigger anything from the unions, right? To affect the bargaining agreements in some sense. Then the second question to that is what is the difference when you have legislation at the state level changing some requirements about how things should be reviewed or so versus when you have maybe a town by law that is changing something about how things are done. So that's kind of like first one is does the new police reform at the state level is that maybe triggering some bargaining agreement and what is the difference of like that review board sitting at the state level a state law versus a town by law. Karen, do you want to take the first and then maybe I'll take the second. Sure, I just want to apologize to everybody. I actually have another town meeting that starts at 730 and I'm disappointed genuinely because I would love to be part of this conversation. I'm enjoying it, but I am sorry I have to run to that. No, not yet. It may, but not yet. It's still, it's interesting. I think this winter I wrote down, you know something that I was kind of like, okay this summer we're clearly going to have to talk about a component of this, but it's still it's for me anyway in my experience I would want the chief to comment on this. I haven't seen anything that has been raised as a subject of bargaining. Yeah, in terms of legal issues I think the legal issue is fundamentally the contract clause of the US constitution that if we have our collective bargaining agreements or contracts and we cannot unilaterally alter those terms of those contracts through a local bylaw. It's like one side of the bargain that's saying, oh we're going to change the terms of conditions because we want to. I think that is very difficult. I think even to some extent state law that you then get into some trickier issues about if the legislature has created a that kind of universe under which people have to act if there's an existing contract that's contrary to that then what happens that gets to what keeps lawyers busy. But I think to your main point, Carlos just passing a bylaw does not then in and of itself eviscerate what's in a contract or obliterate our ability or our necessity to have to bargain with a union over something that might be in that bylaw. Is that answer your question, Carlos? Yeah, he's not in approval. And then I said Doug has that. I see Doug has a hand up, so I'll call on Doug. Yeah, there's one piece of that that I just want to make sure is clear for everybody including for Sandy and Karen from my perspective is that one of the big things that we're sort of it's tempting to overlook is that because the state is going to essentially create an accreditation process if you're no longer accredited there's an interesting legal question about whether or not your union contractor your civil service status protection because what the state is saying is this isn't a contractual matter. This is a predicate to serving as a law enforcement officer in the state of Massachusetts. And if they either independently through their review or they receive some internal affairs decision from Arlington or anywhere else that basically substantiates seriousness conduct and they decide to pull someone's accreditation it's an open legal question about whether or not they have any collective bargaining rights. I would say that probably they don't because it's not a question of the town saying you're fired. It's a question of whether or not you meet the prerequisites to serve as a law enforcement officer in Arlington but it's not totally certain. It's not clear. So what that means if Doug you can tell me if this is wrong is you could potentially because it's unclear you could potentially have a scenario where you could lose your accreditation but not lose your job. It's not clear. Yeah, I mean, it's not 100% clear. It would be hard for me to imagine that being the case in most other contexts. For example, nurses, doctors, speech language pathologists, people who work in schools, psychologists you can't continue to work in your job if you've lost your accreditation from the state licensing authority. So that'll be an interesting thing to watch unfold but it's an important piece to understand that I just wanna make sure everybody was clear on. That's probably maybe the unsaid biggest game changer in terms of the impact on collectible. Thank you. Kathy. So to follow up on that, Doug and Sandy is that a negotiable item in a labor contract? My knowledge of labor law is minimal. I bargained against SEIU 615 for 20 years now successfully. So I have some understanding of how these things work but could a provision that says if you are no longer accredited pursuant to this new state law or state agency that you do lose your job. I mean, is that a provision that could be negotiated in a union contract? I would say, first of all, anything could be what the union position would be again would have to come to an agreement with them on that. I think the issue of whether somebody would then lose his or her job because of not being accredited I think is an issue that is still... I think that will be resolved around interpretations of the new state law as opposed to individual communities making that decision. So I don't think that that's something that we're going to need to come to grips with frankly or to try to bargain with the union over because I think it is likely to resolve itself either with legislative clarification or a case in another community and it will just become clear one way or the other. But my concern is that in six months or so or less than six months the study committee has to make a recommendation and we're depending, I think it sounds as though we could be depending on how this law is interpreted by unions, then by courts and then go up to three levels until it gets to the SJC. It's a very long time to wait to see if there's a good result that could in fact eliminate the need for the purpose of this eliminate the need for the whatever thing we're supposed to come up with. So I'm just worried about timing here. We have six months to make a recommendation and it doesn't sound to me that a lot of these very key issues are going to be resolved by then. I would say as long as there is ambiguity at the state level on this issue I would see it unlikely that the unions would agree to any change. I appreciate your candor Sandy very much. That's a very important point that you just made that they wouldn't because I'm going back to use I'm going to use Clarissa's term that I thought was good. She said, how do we deal with bad apples? And that I think is one of the purposes of what this group is supposed to study. How do we deal? And I totally understand what you and Karen have very eloquently presented about, there are real limitations here but I'm still wondering how is it that we as the committee make our recommendations appreciating what you have said but yet not abandoning the charge that we have and our responsibilities to the people of this community. Good luck. I just wanted to say my understanding is once an officer is decertified by the state then they're not able to perform their duties as a police officer and they will not be eligible to be employed. That's my understanding that our several committees and groups that have been formed to this point and there are several more and we're still daily we're getting updates from the state. So I think we'll have to wait and see but that's my understanding that if an officer is decertified then they're not eligible for employment. Thank you. And I think Kathy, you are right to be worried about what we present to town meeting but the world is changing right now. We have to do the best that we can do and I think our draft report is doing a really good job. We can't make the legislature do what we want in our timeframe, they're just not going to. We have a real advocate from Arlington who was working hard at police reform and she's working with the chief and she's working with Sandy and she's working with Karen and that's our state senator Cindy Friedman. We have to give them a chance to do something statewide and we just have to be patient. We're doing the best we can and we can't have all the answers by town meeting in the spring. I mean, this is the perspective of an old lady who's been in town meeting for a very long time. With all due respect Clarissa, right? Yes. I don't think telling town meeting and the town to just be patient will be enough for the work of the community. We have to do the best we can. We have to do our work and being mindful of the changing landscape around us and being mindful of the constraints on us, right? But just telling people to be patient, I don't think is. No, I'm not telling you. I don't believe people should be patient. That's not my philosophy in life. My philosophy in life is speak up and we should do that. But getting town meeting to, we can't present something that's fully baked to the town meeting. We just have to accept that as part of what we're doing. I think that's a job we can. Yeah, but I think at a philosophical level, right? Nothing that we present to town meeting is ever fully baked, right? The world continues to change around us. The world, right, in all aspects and what anyone presents to town meeting is their best attempt at the current status of the world, right? And so our job is to present the best thing that we can to town meeting at the coming year based on the world as we see it now, right? And there's certainly room for us to tell town meeting, right? Here are the things that we don't know about what's gonna happen, right? These are the things that may, you know, that are still coming. Right, and they have recommendations that you should listen to. Yeah, and that, you know, what we recommend today may not be the right thing in two more years, right? In two more years, town meeting might have to make changes or additional changes or things like that, right? You know, we shouldn't be so wedded to the idea that what we create now is we'll be perfect, right? That we get stuck in not doing anything. Thank you. Thank you, Sun Ching. Yep. Carlos. I see Carlos, yeah. Yeah. So now that we're getting into some conversational about execution, you know, I would like to hear, you know, hear from Sandy some thoughts about, hey, you know, say that we are, we do our homework and we have, hey, I think this is the best that we can do for Arlington. At what point can we go around and talk to people in the unions or somebody out there to kind of like see what their response is, is that even a strategy? So how do we get there? How do we talk to people? I would say we first talk to you. It's like, hey, Sandy, this is what we're thinking in the repose, how's it gonna work, right? So we'll do that for sure, right? But how do you do it? I mean, it's like, do you do a binding? Do you have to talk to people in the union and say, hey, this is what we're trying to do and explain yourself and, you know, or rather than just the hearing, it's like, oh, you know, there was a bylaw in town in Arlington that got passed. So how? So that's a very good question. I don't have a simple answer for you. I would say a couple of things to keep in mind. One, if the town is talking to the unions, the town can talk only to the union leadership. In other words, we can't go around who the union president is, for example, to talk to the membership. So we within our role as an employer are limited in our conversations. I think you've raised an interesting question if at some point this group would want to get some input from the unions and what the best way to do that is. I think that's a question that I would like to consult with Karen and Labor Council about that and get some feedback for you so that it's done in the right way. I mean, I generally think talking to people is a good idea and gets better results. I also, but I think, let's let me, let me get back to you on that for some specifics. I think at the end of the day, legally, as long as what your recommendations are, don't cross over into the areas that are mandatory bargaining. Then if you recommend something that's just a change in the bylaw or setting up some sort of civilian feedback to the police chief or to the town or whatever, that you don't have to talk to the unions. The town can pass bylaws and do things like that. But I think that's more a tactical question that you're raising is what's the best way to communicate with the unions. And I think that's a worthwhile conversation to continue to have. Yeah. Thank you. Sandy, would it be possible for you and Karen, you might have to think about this, right? To provide us a list of things that would be considered bargainable just so that I don't think that's something that we as committee members necessarily have an innate understanding of. And with some understanding that, that there is often disagreement about what is bargainable and what isn't. Well, yeah, that you get into fights like that all the time. So I would say as a general overview, if you are changing the terms and conditions of employment, that becomes bargainable. So if, so for example, the chief has rules and regulations, disciplinary rules and regulations. If you were going to try to change that by some recommendation, that would be subject to bargaining. The rules and regulations. Yes. So there are certain things that she can, but basically those define the terms and conditions of people's employment. There are some things that she has management rights to change already. She can probably talk about what some of those things are. There are some things that, nevertheless, she would have, like she can assign somebody to a particular shift or whatever, but there are other things where certain people bidding for shifts on an annual basis is subject to the contract. So there are certain ways, there are some things that she can do automatically under her management rights and some things she has to follow the contract. And the same thing with disciplinary proceedings. There is a grievance procedure within the contract for if somebody has a grievance for a management action, how it goes up the line. That is written in the contract. And you want, again, I don't know if you've gotten the contracts yet. I know we don't, I don't think we have a fully integrated contract, as we say over the years, we tend to have like a three year memorandum of understanding that just deals with five issues. And then the whole contract isn't rewritten. So I don't know that, I know Karen's been working on getting an integrated contract signed by both sides. And that's, that is a very typical issue in cities and towns, not having those integrated contracts. Nevertheless, I think there's something we can get you. But I, so just to get back to the whole disciplinary process is defined in the contract. And it's very clear. And anything that would change that would have to be bargained. On the other hand, I think civilian review and comments on the department's disciplinary processes or looking at that there's been five cases in the last year. And this is where I'm gonna give you my opinion, subject to the caveat that before you take that as really worthwhile, we would talk to labor council about some of these issues. But if a civilian committee said, hey, we had five issues and it seems like the police department did a very good job of investigating them and they got the facts and they did their job and we wanna say publicly that we have confidence in what's going on. I don't think that's something that would have to be bargained. Similarly, if the committee were to say, we think that there may be need to do a certain amount of more work, I think that probably would not be bargainable. It then somewhat then gets into issues of, if you're saying, well, for these cases, we're fine. But when you dealt with officer Sandy Pooler, you really blew it. And because we think Sandy Pooler should be fired, that gets to be a little more complicated. Because then Sandy Pooler has due process rights, reputation rights, et cetera, et cetera. Even if the committee doesn't have the power to impose that condition, you're saying just offering comment on a specific case. I would want to pursue that question in a little more detail with labor council because I think it's on the edge because you Sanjay as an individual would have every right to say, you should have fired Sandy Pooler. And there's nothing anybody can do about that. That's your right. If there is a city, excuse me, a town committee that has official standing and is making those kind of remarks, I think it starts to be a little bit different. And again, I don't think there's a bright line rule. I do think it's something that we should talk with labor council more about. And I think this can be an iterative process. In other words, if there's some things that you know that you don't want to do, so we don't have to take up labor council's time list and avoid that. If there are areas where you think, well, we're kind of going in this direction that might be more useful to try to limit the scope and not just talk about everything under the sun. At the same time, we can try to give you some general feedback as I have been doing now. I'm gonna go off of what the question, Sandy just asked. So if, but if there was a hypothetical town body that was commenting on policies and procedures, but not on a specific officer's like actions about those procedures, is that in the bar in that iffy category or is that different? I think that that is much more on the side of something that you have every right to do. Thank you. Yeah. The other question I sort of hope, sorry, I see Bob has a question. I'll let him go first. Am I on? I guess I am. I shouldn't know this, but I don't. How often is the contract negotiated? One, two, three year kind of thing. Yeah, as a general matter, our labor contracts go three years at a time. There's sometimes exceptions to that, but that's the general role. Okay, thank you. So my second question was about, a lot of times bodies, like the ones we're considering deal with records and have access to various kinds of records and of all kinds, right? And are there, would anything of that nature be something that would be subject to bargaining? Anything that is a public record, you have access to. So that would not be, that would not be subject to bargaining. But right, committees of various police committees often have access to much more than what is public record. And I see Doug has his hand up too. So that's another area where I know what you're talking about. Not knowing what the specifics are that, but it is my understanding that now, certain internal affairs documents are going to be our public records now under the new state reform. I have not had to deal with that, so I don't know all the details. On the other hand, there may be things that are in somebody's personnel file that would not be considered a public record, whether that would be turned over to a committee. Again, I think that's a question that deserves some conversation, but I don't have a Pat answer for you on that one. Sure. Doug's hand is up. Laura, I'm just calling on people since I know you can't see it. Please, yeah, now I sent you a message, I don't know if you saw it, go ahead and take that over because I really, it's not getting better. Okay, sorry, yeah, go ahead, Doug, sorry. So if I can just contextualize something, both for Mr. Pooler and for the committee. An interesting example is, for example, we heard from Mr. Korr about Cambridge's civilian review model. So in Cambridge's civilian review model, the actual investigation is conducted by the professional standards division of the police department, just like it is here right now in Ireland too. So presumably, although not certainly, you wouldn't have a collective bargaining right to say that the professional standards division is gonna do an investigation and somebody else is going to have more information about that investigation relative to the investigation itself. There's already an entity that's performing the investigation. So the collective bargaining issue isn't about how the investigation's performed or who performs it. It's really just about what information is conveyed and this additional potential layer of hearing process that you might be subject to. In New York City, it's very different. In New York City, the civilian complaint review board of New York City has professional investigators that will interview police officers separate from internal affairs. And in that context, those police officers have a collectively bargaining right to have union counsel present during those interviews. So just to contextualize it again, I think what's a little bit difficult for everybody, the committee for Sandy, is that there might be some pieces of it that don't have any impact on collective bargaining. Our professional standards division conducts investigations. Cambridge's professional standards divisions conducts investigations. But in Cambridge, there's another sort of body that might receive that information of which part of what you're talking about, Sanjay. And in New York City, on the other hand, you have a wholly different authorized entity that is actually performing the investigation itself. That would certainly need to be collectively bargained. That's a very bright line thing. But whether or not you have to bargain something for another body beyond the police command structure, the management structure to just receive that information and talk about it is a closer question. Sandy, does that help contextualize it? Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right, Doug. Are there any other questions, comments, or buttocks? Should we go around and just make sure that people, I know sometimes people, when we actually call on them, they have things that they didn't bring up. So, Susan, I'm gonna call on you first. No, okay. I actually do have a question, but I don't want to ask it because it's can of worms. I'm gonna save it for another thing. Okay, that's fine. Michael, anything? Jillian? Who else did we not hear from? Ann, maybe? No, I don't have anything. Thanks for asking. Yep, Mona and Elliot. I think we heard everybody else asked a question. Feel free to ask if you do, but I just wanna actually ask people this in case. Thank you. If there aren't any other questions, I just wanna say thank you, Sandy. This was, I think, really helpful in answering questions we have and making us think about maybe questions we haven't thought about in the past. And I think there's a good chance we will take you up on your offer for follow-up or as a conduit to labor counsel if we have questions down the road. That would be great. I would say it took me, I've been doing collective bargaining for over 20 years now. So it's taken me over 20 years in labor law to be completely confused. So good luck to you. Thank you. Thank you. Good luck, everybody. And again, I will be glad to talk to you more sometime in the future. Great, thank you. Bye-bye. Okay, I am gonna go back up to the top of the agenda and hand it over to Sanjay for the minutes, the prior minutes. Yes, just give me one second to get them shared here. Context switching here. Oh my God. Do I need to even share them? Did anybody have any objections on the minutes that I circulated? I think I gave enough time for everybody to have seen them and had a time, had a chance to look around. Okay. Would somebody like to move that we approve the minutes from us? And for after that we approve the minutes. Second. These are the August 24th, 2021 meeting minutes. Thank you. Would you like me to conduct a roll call? Yes, please. I'm sorry, I might not go in perfect order, but I'm just gonna go in the order folks that I see and then the chairs. Kathy Rogers. Yes. Anne Brown. Yes. Barbara Dosha. Yes. Elliot Elkin. Yes. Carlos Morales. Yes. Monomotati. Yes. I'm sorry, Carlos. Did I get you already? Yes. Okay. Michael Brownstein. Yes. Sanjay Newton. Yes. Susan Ryan-Volmer. Yes. Laura Gillis. Yes. It's unanimous vote. I don't think I missed any of it. Oh, Miss Rowe. I'm sorry, Miss Rowe, I missed you. Is that a yes? It's unanimous vote. Thank you. I'm staying. Okay. I was absent. Oh, okay. It's unanimous vote. Okay. I know that it's summertime, so I don't know how many of you representing different commissions and committees have that since our last meeting or have any updates, but I'll just go around and check with the people I see, Carlos. No updates. Okay. Thank you. Anne. No updates. We're meeting next week, so hopefully after that. Okay, great. Michael. We'll be meeting September 15th. Okay. And Kathy. We've been meeting another week and our retreat is on Sunday. I think the next step for me is when the report is final, is to share it with the group. Great, thank you. Anybody I missed? Okay. You missed Susan. No, sorry. We haven't met since the last meeting. Okay. I am going to go ahead and actually turn the meeting over to Susan now because she is really the one to talk about the next three items on the agenda. So, Susan, go ahead. So the first item is just adding a little chunk to the interim report about the information that we collected on how civilian complaints about police interactions can be filed in town. We had heard from Chief Flaherty in our second meeting in April and then we also heard from Kathy at a meeting in June where they both described processes. So I apologize for not getting this done sooner, but I drafted something and just in concept, if folks agree with what was sent out, we don't have to definitively approve it this evening. We can certainly make little minor editorial adjustments as needed as we did with the full interim report the last time. Yeah, Kathy. I just wanted to say, I'd like to be able to check the statement with leadership of the Arlington Human Rights Committee. Am I pretty sure that what I said in June is accurate? Yes, but I never ran by them those words. So if I'm in error, I want to catch it before the report goes public. So I need a few days to be able to reach out to leadership and clarify that or amend it as necessary. That to me sounds like a potential for a little more than tweaking. Susan, I just didn't want to mislead the study group. Okay. I don't know, has anybody had a chance to look at it? I know I gave you like five minutes. Okay. So. We're meeting again in two weeks. Maybe we can determine that then. I think that sounds reasonable. I did have a chance to read it and I had one small tweak. Where was it here? There's just a section where. Oh, you mentioned that the. There's an ordering I'd like to change. I think we should just reverse the order of those two paragraphs to clarify what's being said. Okay. Sorry. Before, before I give a, I just wanted to thank you for. You mentioned that the. The bylaws of the human rights. Commission or sorry, that their website. Does have something about bias, but not about police. And not explicitly stating that they can receive complaints about police interactions. I think we should just reverse the order of those two paragraphs. Okay. Thank you for. For thinking of this and for, for doing it, because I think this is actually a really big part of, of our work. And, and I think it's important that we put it there. So it's noted in the charge. And I, I can't believe. We all missed it the last time. But anyway, so we'll get that in. And obviously Kathy needs to review it closely in chief. Larry needs to review it closely because it's a summary of presentations that you both made to the board. So. We can move on to the next item. If there's no more comment on this. The next one is our plan for soliciting input from the public about the work that we're doing, which is a topic that has come up. Probably the last three or four meetings. And so. I just thought about the many comments that people have made over the last few meetings. And I think I can summarize it into, we have four tools that we can work with. And I'd love to just run through the four tools that we can work with. And if folks agree on the strategy. Implement it over the next two months. So first, our committee has reps from envision Arlington standing committee, envision Arlington diversity task force, human rights commission, rainbow commission, disability commission, board of youth services and council on aging. And I think we can solicit input. From the, those commissions. And by extension, the communities that they represent in a fairly structured process. First, each of us who come from a commission can share the work we've completed thus far. One of the things that that we're going to be doing, we're trying to get time on an upcoming select board meeting to present the interim report. Once we have that presentation done, that's a tool that can be used by everyone on this committee who needs to go back to their commission. To report on the work. So you can report on the work and then you have a context through which you can then ask two questions that we previously agreed on. I think in an August meeting, which is the first question consistent with the historic commission, what information do you believe it's important for the civilian police advisory board study committee to understand about the community that you represent. And what are your hopes and expectations. For the civilian police advisory board study committee. And that seems like a fairly structured, straightforward way to solicit input. Then it'll be up to your commission to decide how they want to give that input. Do they want to just write a memo and send it to us. Do they want to say, oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. I'm thinking about what we just did with some of our community members who were particularly active and summarize what they say. But that's something that we can leave up to the commission. We don't need to try and control or direct that process. We just need to provide a structure. Second thing we can do, and I think Ann and Karen and Michael have really brought this up repeatedly is. Listening sessions with other constituencies in town who So this would include members of faith community, veterans, immigrants and refugees, police officers, people who live in public housing who were originally supposed to be represented on the committee but aren't. And possibly in jail, maybe you can provide this information. I don't know what language would be like the second most language that people in town speak but we might if we might need to hold at least one listening session in whatever language that is I don't know if that would be Spanish Cantonese Mandarin whatever. And figure out how to do that. To do that I would really ask for volunteers who might want to be interested in sitting in on some of these sessions and again, it can be structured and how we do it we have our two prompt questions. We ask the questions and just collect stories and information. Third tool that we have our communication systems that are already in place in town. So the town sends out an email to people who sign up the police department sends out an email the people to sign up. And we can certainly, you know, if folks want us to draft an email or that people can use as a template but that's another way, send an email out to the public who have signed up for those communications asking them for their input. And again, you know, what do you think the committee needs to know and what are your hopes and expectations of the committee. And the last thing we can do is kind of hold that catch all open meeting in October for anyone in town who's interested. We all know these events typically attract a certain type of person who might have an extra grind or people who aren't paying attention just don't want to come but it's up to us to spread the word. And, you know, get people who we think care about this and have interesting opinions and thoughtful, mindful intentional get them to attend. So, we'd be curious to hear what people think about that. So I'm going to since I don't see anybody speaking yet I just wanted to say thank you, Susan for sort of pulling all that together that was like a lot in a small space and I, I know that I have said this to you privately but I'm going to say it through the whole committee I'm not sure if I really totally completely aware that was Susan does in her like real professional life is communications and helping people and organizations. Think about how to get these messages out. And so I think we're really lucky to have her expert opinions or ideas and experience help us think about how to how we can make use of the very short amount of time that we have in a as efficiently and effectively as possible. Thank you. I think Carlos had a stand up. Yeah, so thank you. Thank you again I mean I think I'm a visual person Susan so if you can just send me the bullets with the class. I think they were fantastic I think you're you're taking advantage of what we already have, you know, in here to not create extra extra work and you know the structure you know that the people that have already natural constituencies go out down reach out, and then all the way to to basically trying to do the outreach to those that maybe they're hard to to to to get to to boys themselves and then of course that the I think I think all of them catches a lot of the the pieces or I think it's just great to some extent my question now is like, how do we do how do we now implement this or I mean I want to hear about other people thoughts about comments but I think it's how do we do it. I have thoughts on that. I mean, I have thoughts on that too and I think right. I think Susan has has laid out for the three of them are fairly straightforward right the the commissions, the holding a public meeting. And I'm forgetting what the third one was. Oh yes emails, the and soliciting written feedback to us right the the hard one is going out to individual communities right and you know that's hard. And there's a reason it's hard, and that's a reason that almost nobody succeeds at doing it, but we can do our very best to do it and I think. I mean, I don't know what Susan has in mind right but well I don't, I'll let Susan say what she has in mind. What I have in mind is basically going to Jill Harvey and picking her brain for the organ is not organizing she's done in town already. But, I mean, Arlington has had pretty high profile events from faith communities in response to swastikas, you know, and who organize those. I'm now talking in a way that irritates the crap out of me when people start this meetings recorded I need to self censor. When people just start talking off the top of their head with ideas but there are people who are connected with various communities certainly with immigrants and refugees in town that's a really strong community. Right in us. Yeah, but I think we sort of have to write the time is now right we have to make our decisions as a committee I think. I mean, what what I would sort of like to see right is us maybe perhaps divide up into pairs, right and say okay, this pair is in charge of reaching out to x, y and or z, right and they can, they are in charge of making those connections, and soliciting that feedback and bringing that feedback back to the to the whole committee, because I don't think. Right, we can't do all of those individual things as a full committee for logistical reasons, and because I don't think that that would be appropriate for meeting with a lot of those different kinds of communities right. Um, so I think, you know, perhaps if people could, well, people could indicate that that they don't want to volunteer otherwise you could perhaps divide us up into pairs and assign us assign us some. But we should ask people to comment on that but I'd like to that's sort of my what I sort of would like to see. Yeah, I second that. I see a few head nods but it'd be really nice to hear from some people verbally. Well, one thing that I like about this idea is it if we're if we divide into smaller groups. It makes the task of trying to get as much of this done by October ish more doable because we're not all trying to coordinate all these different meetings. And I also think it allows us to kind of be more tailored as we reach out to these communities or people we think are good into the communities in terms of what how they think, like what is the best format for talking to like an immigrant community or any of any of the communities so I think this is a good idea and I would hope that we get a lot of volunteers from from us. So absent anyone like proactively volunteering can we just assume everyone is willing if they get an email from Laura and I, Carlos giving a thumbs up, Michael, yeah. Yes. And I'm like in pairs, and just to sign you are you have faith veterans police, etc. Okay. So that's what we'll do. Just note on the, on the part of the professional sort of staff on the committee, I'm at your disposal, but I'm sensitive to the fact that, you know, might have a more specific role so I'm again would trust the chairs and to make a decision about what would make sense for for our time, but I'm available for whatever you guys would like me to thank you. I'm also happy to coordinate, however I can and I just wanted to comment on your original presentation I know we've been talking about it a lot and different avenues and I really like having all of those avenues. As I stated before we respond to approximately 30,000 calls a year, and we have a lot of interactions with people and using town emails that are already in place and going out and talking to people. I think we'll solicit people with opinions who've had actual interactions with the police department. So thank you very much. Which is an important base of knowledge. Okay, I don't know if we have to vote on this or, or we can just move on to the next item, but it feels like we have a plan in place but I'm going to reality check with Sanjay does this sound to you Sanjay like, we've got a, I don't know why I'm the authority on that but I think it sounds good. I think that it sounds like we have agreement amongst folks here I don't think that we need to formally vote on any of that, unless Doug really is the one who should tell us whether we need to vote and I don't think we need, he's shaking. Okay. Okay. All right. All right, then the next item is sort of a communications update and again, this is a theme and a thread that runs that has run through our last few meetings. So just wanted to give an update and some ideas. Sanjay, about half of our meetings unfortunately we lost some of the first ones but about half of our meetings are now available on the ACMI channel. Sanjay was interviewed by ACMI's James Milan about the presentation he made to the committee, even though it hasn't aired yet. And we're soon going to publish the interim report to the town website, along with a lot of other information that I think interested members of the public will find interesting which is some of the documents that we've been referencing other external sources. Some of those have already been posted to our web page on the town website and we have more that are coming. Folks have really been talking about and I'm really thinking of Carlos because you keep talking about a brochure Carlos. So really like user friendly ways to share what we're learning. And that is another one you've been really clear like how am I going to talk to this when I'm back at school to other students who are interested in this. So towards that end, I've gone ahead and I've drafted some short blog posts that are pulled from the interim report. So I've got a post on what various civilian oversight models are a post on investigative oversight models, the history of civilian oversight what other communities in Massachusetts are doing. We have a lot of information from other reports that have been published in Lexington we've talked about that report we've got reports from Newton summerville Springfield Pittsfield in Boston. So, you know with those little posts. We can certainly ask the advocate Newark Arlington to publish them, we can share them on Arlington Community groups on Facebook, and then take cover, because it's Facebook. Jokes. We would in person we're all just using. I laughed I was muted. Okay, and the other thing we can do, like again utilizing town newsletters. Would you would any town entity ever want to share some of these shorter bite size things we have learned some interesting things. Would the town be open to us writing short little social media posts. Okay, check out this blog post about what our police civilian study board advisory committee. Probably mangle the name of our title is doing, maybe the police department would be willing to share some of these on their social media channels I don't know we're learning a lot. A lot of people in town are interested in this. This seems like a pretty easy way to share this. And then the last thing I would do and again this goes to those got her hands up before we go to the last. I'm going to say with all of that, if you have like blog posts all of that that can go on the committee page on the town website. So, like if there's little videos, they, we would just need to convert everything to a Vimeo account but all of that can go on there. And then things like on my page can redirect to that as well. So that's definitely an option. Okay, so that's, that's just a super easy way to share. It's not soliciting information which is a really important piece of what we need to do, but it is pushing out what we've been learning. And does anybody have any like reaction or concerns or questions about that Doug your hand is up. Well, first let me echo my appreciation for all the thought and planning that's going into this and the skill that you've developed without a lot of time. I think it sounds like terrific plan. I'm going to be just lawyer Doug for just one moment and advise everybody with respect to social media that the open meeting law applies to social media discourse. So, when you're on a Facebook thread, when you're on a Twitter thread, if you discuss the substance of what's the charge before your committee that could be an open meeting law. So just try to be cognizant of that. If everybody's like in a Facebook group and you start discussing a matter with it's within your jurisdiction, among a quorum of you, unlikely given the size of this committee, but I just want you guys to all be cautious about reacting, answering questions is maybe one thing, but getting into a discourse with each other is something to just be aware of in the social media context. Okay, yeah. I guess the place that that might happen is Facebook but it's hard to imagine a quorum coming together on that but that's a great, a really important reminder. But I think it's, I think it sounds great. Any other responses or reactions. Great. Yeah. Thank you. I like having these things also as pushing out as much of it as makes sense without overloading everybody, the sort of, as we also organize these other feedback interactions because the more context that we provide, you know, to people who may not take and read the entire report or, you know, whatever I think the more, the more productive those listening sessions or meetings can be. Yep. I'm sorry, can I say one thing, I apologize, Sandra, go ahead. No, no, go ahead. I, that is something I should have said, I will hope that whatever. Whatever you guys post out there. I would make sure to have a link to that forward. Because one of the things that I have seen mostly in the context of zoning is that when we talk about zoning matters. There's a lot of folks who, and understandable, it totally makes sense that like everybody's only got so much time of the day zoning can be an especially dense subject. There's a lot of really important stuff in those details. And sometimes I just think that you guys have drafted really nice draft report. I would just make sure that that that's accessible in all these sort of postcard ideas or blog posts, but there's always a link to that report, maybe you guys are automatically already thinking about that maybe I'm sorry if I missed that. That people will read the full thing, because without reading without reading it all it's not going to do a service to the work of this committee, and all the things that you guys have thought about and are thinking about now. I wasn't explicit about it but each of the posts that have written now all have multiple links back to the report. So, if somebody trips down a rabbit hole they're going to land in the interim report. And that's sort of, I was going to say a similar thing in that, you know as much work as we can do now to bring people, you know whether that's town meeting members, or people in town, right along on this journey with us right of what we're learning or how we're coming to our recommendations right as long as much as we can bring people along with us that we're not at town meeting dumping a report on their right on their desk so to speak. Right, and saying okay here read read all these words that that you don't understand yet. So, so I think as much as we can bring people along I think that's a really important job for us to be doing. Um, yeah, and that's it. That's the end of my update. Okay. Let me just take a look back at our agenda, which has just, oh here it is. We don't have anything else on the agenda. I have two sort of new new little new business things. If you don't mind, would that be okay. So, in the similar vein to what Susan has done I've written what we had talked about as an executive summary. I have a sort of rough draft of that, which I'd love to circulate to all of you before our next meeting. You know, it's kind of a, maybe like one and a half two page version of our final report, maybe that's to, we'll see, we can compare with Susan's blog posts and maybe it's to, it's the same thing, and we can pick hers probably. People don't hear anything until you've said it seven times. Yeah, so we can, well, we'll see we can, we can perhaps do both. I think that I sort of had, there was a question last time about sort of the context of the creation of this committee at town meeting and select board and all that sort of stuff. And so I've been sort of thinking about my recollections of all of that as since I'm one of the town meeting members appointed to the committee. And so I'll put together a memo for folks who don't have that, who don't have that history. Because I think people were asking people were asking about that and sort of how it fits into the work that we have to do. And I think that's come up a couple of different times over the course of our meetings so I'll put together a memo for before our next meeting for folks. I also really just realized that I don't know if we've, if we have told the whole committee about our guest speaker for our next meeting Susan, did you want to give people that I can't recall. And this was chief Flaherty's idea we're going to we have confirmed that chief Michael win of Pittsfield mass police department who is one of nine people appointed to the post commission, working on the state law is going to come to us and talk about his experiences with the Pittsfield civilian board and how that works and whatnot and answer any questions we might have. Maybe he'll answer some post questions for us to We can ask whatever we want I think, and he will be at our next meeting. Which is Monday, September 20. For everyone who doesn't if you do not have an I will send out the zoom link for that it's I've already, it's already on the town calendar but I don't think I've sent it out to everyone here. Jillian Jillian has her hand on. Okay, just real quick, I know earlier in the meeting, there was a question about feedback from the commissions. And I think Kathy you said they'd be meeting before this next meeting that's actually not the case. The disability rainbow and human rights got pushed back to the week of the 20th because of young rapport. So we won't have updates from those groups. Just, so it'll be October. Which raises one last thing right all all send it to do. I'll send a poll for our future, our future meetings. I assume that we'll set up to attempt to set up to for October, one of which will be the community input meeting and one of which will be a regular business meeting. That's reasonable. I see some nods. Okay. That makes sense. And is giving a thumbs up. And I can almost see everyone at this point. Can I move that we adjourn. Am I am I over my skis. No, I was going to ask if anybody wanted to move to adjourn. I moved to adjourn. Second. On a motion by Sanjay seconded by was that Kathy. Yes. Bob. Yes. Elliot. Yes, Carlos. Yes, Michael. Yes, Mona. Yes. And. Yes. Clarissa. She left. Kathy. Yes. Sanjay. Yes. Susan. Yes. Laura. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody missing anybody. So. Thank you. Meeting adjourned. Thank you. Good night. Folks.