 Good evening. Thank you for joining us. My name is Jay Choppa. I'm deputy city manager for the City of Fort Worth and tonight we will be providing more information about the meet and confer agreement between the City of Fort Worth and the Fort Worth Police Officer Association. After a brief overview of the agreement and the process that we go through to draft it, we will answer some of the questions that were sent in prior to tonight's meeting and you can also call in with questions this evening and we'll try to answer as many questions as we can during the allotted time. If we don't get to all of the questions during the show we will post all of the answers on social media and on the city's website. Before I get into the overview of the proposed agreement I wanted to provide a little background. The meet and confer agreement is basically an agreement between management and the police officer association that is the union for the police officers. It is similar to what American Airlines does with their pilots and it's similar to what GM does with their auto workers. The process for putting this agreement together was about a year long. The series of meetings where we used the existing agreement and then we worked off of that with requests from the police office association as well as requests from the city management for changes to the agreement. As I mentioned it is a negotiation. Several of the requests made by the police officer association as well as several of the requests or changes sought by management of the city will not be found in this negotiated agreement because we could not come to an agreement or one side or the other did not want to move in that direction. So with that I just wanted to provide that background. We're going to go into a PowerPoint presentation so we can cover the details and some of the background on the actual agreement before you. So the background on the agreement. The meet and confer is an agreement that because the police department operates under chapter 143 of the Texas local government code which is basically known as civil service. This agreement that we have here is provided that the city of Fort Worth can enter into a meet and confer agreement which is the equivalent as I mentioned to a labor agreement. And it must be entered into with a sole and exclusive bargaining agent that represents the police officers. In this case the Fort Worth police officer association is the bargaining agent. In November 2007-2006 there was a meet and confer election and the voters of Fort Worth approved and authorized the city to recognize the employee association as the sole and exclusive bargaining agent for the police officers and to make agreements with the employees association as provided by state law. A petition was signed by the majority of the police officers which basically made the Fort Worth police officers association their sole exclusive bargaining agent. After the meet and confer agreement goes through the negotiation between the city and the POA concerning pay benefits working conditions and following the following steps must occur. The entire agreement needs to be ratified by the majority of the membership of the police officers association and then the entire agreement must be approved by the city council. Currently we are at the stage where the agreement has been ratified by the police officers association and the city council will be taking up a decision to whether or not to approve or deny the agreement on August 4th. If either party does not approve the agreement the parties can restart the negotiations and try to reach a new agreement or they can allow the agreement to expire. The first meet and confer agreement was approved in 2007 or 2008 and it covered the timeframe from 2008 to 2013. After that a second agreement was approved in 2013 and covered that time period to 2017 and then finally the one that is set to expire to end on September 30th of 2020 started in 2017. There is a one year evergreen period that in case you can't get the negotiations completed by September 30th of this year that allows the negotiations to continue. If no new agreement is done by that the end of that one year of agreeing then the agreement actually expires altogether and the city would end up and the city and the police department would be followed under the chapter 143 of the state code. So people often ask why do we have a meet and confer agreement. The chapter 143 of the state code has many requirements that are outdated or unworkable in a modern city especially the size of Fort Worth. Many of the items in that code relate to smaller cities and to a simpler time. The only way to change the requirements in the chapter 143 is to have a labor agreement. The agreement allows the city and the POA to control how to run the operations and in this case you don't have to rely on the legislature. The labor agreement controls and preempts any conflicting state statute ordinance or civil service commission rule. So in essence it allows us to set the rules locally and on how to interact with our our labor in this case the police officer association. The negotiation time frame go back sorry the negotiation time frame July 30th to 2019 through April 30th to 2020 is the time frame that we had that we used to negotiate this agreement. We had a total of there's 29 articles in the agreement and we have 19 articles where we had basically no changes or no substantive changes made to them. The proposed term of the new agreement is we run October 1st 2020 through September 30th 2024. As I mentioned it contains the one year evergreen period and it would until September 30th 2025 this agreement would have the same clause. The and as I mentioned the POA membership did ratify this agreement in May of 2020. Listed before you are a number of articles I mentioned 19 that have negligible or no changes made to them. I'm going to briefly just mention a few of the items that these articles cover just for reference. The authority and and recognition of article one it basically just lays out that the POA represents all officers not just members pain members but all officers of the of the police department it does not include any of the appointed ranks including the assistant chiefs deputy chiefs the commanders or the chief himself. Article two is basically definitions that outlines specific definitions for terms used throughout the agreement. An example of that is officers the term officers for instance is not not referred to POA members specifically and also another as you'll see through the agreement if you looked at it there's a reference to business day versus calendar day. Business day is the actual work day versus a calendar day because it could be days that aren't being worked so those are the type of definitions that are in there. Article three association rights that basically pertains to the the rights the association has as an association with the city for instance having payroll deductions allowed so that members can pay their dues to the association they can have the association can have access to the premise city premises to conduct business they they can ask the police chief to send a uniform email for instance to all of the to all of the members of the association or all officers as the representing association the police chief has to approve that so those types of rights are laid out under that article no changes were made to that article. Time off for association business that is basically well that's actually one of the where we had changes so I'll cover that on the next as we go along management rights this agreement does not grant the city management rights the rights are are already held by city management and the mca does does not have anything to say about it the city retains its rights to hire fire train assign and transfer promotion into motion discipline suspend issues about job evaluate performance and evaluations about how you know uniform should be what equipment to use the safety operations all those things are outlined there but it does not confer any of those rights to the city the city and and its management including the chief have those rights already article six the no strike no lockout that's basically what it means that the police officers cannot strike or lockout and or be locked out and they can't support or sanction any anything related to strikes are not coming into work article eight dispute resolution procedures this area has has things to do with only matters regarding interpretation application enforcement or alleged violation of specific provisions of the actual agreement shall be subject to grievance procedure so they can't for instance dispute disciplinary matters of individual officers it sets out the time frames and the steps for bringing forward a complaint on the the city side for or grieving a a matter of related to the contract article nine labor consultation process the it basically outlines that the Fort Worth police officers association is a sole and exclusive bargaining agent for the covered officers the chief or others cannot management cannot bargain with any other representatives that outside of that entity and and it also lays out that the chief needs to meet with the POAs president and officers once a month article 12 compensation compensatory time and special event staffing this is a article that's in there that allows the city to pay comp time instead of overtime if the if an officer agrees it also sets maximums for the amount of compensatory time allowed it also allows the city to staff big events and special events and it outlines how that that will be handled article 18 or 16 vacant promotional positions resulting from military leave of absence um it's article 16 uh this this basically covers that area of um how to deal with when you have vacant vacant promotional positions that result from somebody going on a military leave of absence or while they're off on military leave it just covers those areas article 19 holidays is exactly that just covers the specifics on how to deal with holidays and and what the officers receive article 20 shift differentials um officers get paid different wages depending on the shift especially they work overnight shift it lays out what those times are and how they get paid and what the differentials are article 21 civilization of certain sworn officer positions um this article provides um that the city cannot replace sworn officers with civilians and so in essence we cannot reduce the um the number of sworn positions and replace them with civilians um it the only time you can do that under case laws if it requires special knowledge to to do that police work but in the case of the this would have to be something negotiated article 22 tuition reimbursement is exactly that provides for officers to have tuition reimbursement as a um a service from the city for for going forward to get a degree that's actually something that's provided to all city employees article 23 a re-opener provision for health care and pension benefits basically it allows if the city wants to make changes to our health care and or a pension system to either strengthen either one or provide some kind of savings it provides allows the the city to approach the poa with opening the the um the contract before when it's going to be time to to renew it so that we can talk about those specific um issues article 24 off-duty employment the city owned um at city-owned facilities that specifically um has to do with security service provided for instance at the convention center will rogers uh those kind of times when police officers are not working as police officers they're off duty but they're working as security in their police officer uniforms how that's handled how they get paid and so that they're being basically directed by whoever's managing that event at that time and and not necessarily the city so that lays those things out article 25 the complete agreement um it clarifies that the city can um it basically enter the the memorandum of understanding that to clarify or interprets any provision of the mca and that the only agreement that exists is between is this agreement between the city and the poa that if it's not if something is not in the agreement then it doesn't exist and and we can't really negotiate that outside of that and you can't you can't have agreements for something that's not in the agreement um article 26 the savings clause um it basically says that if there is some reason a court or some entity finds uh any part of the of this agreement to to be invalid under law it doesn't do away with the whole agreement the remaining pieces of the agreement not related to what that one issue might be if law changes that's no longer valid the rest of the agreement would still be in place and then finally notice is basically article 29 is just whom gets who at the city and who in the poa would get notices with any time there's a a grievance or some kind of communication that needs to occur so those are all the articles that were basically stayed the same now we're going to go more in depth into the articles that had more significant changes and those are laid out here um article four time for time for assistance association business disciplinary action article 10 wages and certain pays hiring for beginning positions the physical fitness program promotions demotions and restatements reinstatements non-discrimination maintenance of standards duration termination and specialty provisions and i'll go through each of those quickly article four time for association business basically um the the agreement provides that the city will allocate 6000 hours to be used for association business by the president those hours are used by the president and um any of the officers while they're doing association business the majority of those hours as we call them abl is funded by deducting three hours from each police officer's vacation bank so the because we have about 1700 hour uh 7800 officers uh that translates to having about 5400 of those 6000 hours covered by that vacation time so it doesn't actually call cost the city any additional dollars because that vacation those vacation hours are already provided so an additional 600 hours is added to that and this allows then the board members and the president to work on um on the police association business uh while using those hours um the the abl is only available to poa board members uh and the negotiating team so during this whole period of several meetings we had over the last year or so the the members that represented the poa they used those hours uh while they were uh conducting their business um and the they can also use those hours to conduct uh association business activities for instance if they're uh doing something in the community or having meetings with uh other other officials and the like they can use those hours for that time some of the changes that were made in the agreement the proposed changes uh was one was in order not to reduce the strength of the authorized strength of the department so currently the way the current agreement the past agreements have been is that the police the police officer association president uh is a full time uh employee with the poa when he's elected or she's elected and so at that at that point they no longer have their position with the police department so the police department was basically working with one less position during that time period what we're suggested here and what was negotiated is that the poa president would be the poa president they're in their tenure and we would backfill that position so we added a position so that the police department and the chief would then have that position available as a full-time position to city if the in the future if the the president changes and basically the current president goes back to their old position and whoever gets um gets elected then their position becomes available for someone to fill and this way we're not reducing the overall number of police officers out on the street um we also included a an additional category where the abl could be used by the poa members the board members and that basically is tied to critical uh police incidents uh oftentimes the the police office association will provide support for issues when for instance recently we had a police officer struck by a vehicle the police office association provided a lot of support to that they could respond to that critical incident and they could use abl hours and be uh representatives of the police office association versus being uh representatives as police officers themselves because they weren't working um and then it also uh in this agreement allows the president to petition the chief to extend additional abl time uh for designated uh association board members for instance if if there is a reason that a member needs to use abl to to represent the police office association for a week for instance he could petition the chief to ask for that to happen so that that person can attend whatever function might be that that would be the case and the chief would have to approve that in order for that to occur article five management rights no changes were made here um as i mentioned before the the city does the agreement does not provide the city management any rights those rights are exist already with or without the agreement and so there's no reason to say that but we just wanted to lay out that the police chief and the city retain those rights even though we have this agreement in place article seven disciplinary action um basically this generally applies to administrative investigations uh which is defined of when internal affairs section of the of the department actually um do an investigation that could result in suspension demotion or some type of additional indefinite suspension of um of um of an officer because they've done something it does not in this case or when we're talking about disciplinary action the internal affairs does not investigate allegations of criminal conduct by police officers the police department has a special investigation unit a special investigation unit that actually performs those types of investigations so when we're talking about this article seven and disciplinary action it does not pertain to any issues where potential criminal investigation or something has been done criminally by an officer um when supervisors do an investigation the chain of command which is basically the supervisory chain they can transfer it to the internal affairs for further action along with information that the supervisor has gathered this is not to be used when this happens it's not to be used to get around officer rights in article seven so when that happens you got to follow you got to follow article seven and we just made cleared that language associated with that um it also the changes were made that includes prohibitions on who can investigate in this situation one of the other changes that was made is that an officer that is subject to an administrative investigation has the right to be informed upon an inquiry of the identities of each investigator participating in the interrogation of the officer so basically the officer can ask find out who's going to be investigating them and who's doing the investigation um they can also request a copy of their own written or verbal statement the the officer cannot release the copy to any other person other than him to himself or to his association or peer representative or legal counsel so the officer does have the right to have a representative of the POA be with him and or legal counsel and then all evidence that's part of this investigation remains with the internal affair section but the officers has the allow is allowed uh the opportunity to review we can't copy can't take anything with them any of the information collected and then the the investigator determines when the officer is allowed to review that so the in this case we made a change that allows the officer to uh see the investing the information um before they're interviewed article seven addresses um the condition of 48 hours prior to the notice of the general nature of the investigation uh before an officer can be interviewed by internal affairs this is basically a due process part of the investigation it does not as I mentioned before this has nothing to do with uh any kind of criminal investigation if the in in this case officer is compared compelled when they're doing an administrative review of something by the chief to enter to provide a statement and be interviewed they get notice and they have 48 it can't happen within prior to 48 hours of notice if an incident involves some kind of criminal activity or some kind of suspicion and s i u is doing the investigation uh the 48 hour um uh rule does not apply uh in this case in that case the officer has all the do the same civil rights and do rights of of anybody and they don't aren't can't be compelled to testify against themselves or to give a statement against themselves so it does not apply apply in that case um this article also outlines where interviews can take place uh that the change is also made that a recording device can be used in interviews so that uh everything can be recorded and and there's no uh mistakes made when reports are written uh it provides for confidentiality and um by law a police officer again can't be compelled to to give a statement and and cannot be compelled to be given a statement in a criminal case but they can in administrative investigation uh so it does provide garrity protection uh where that that statement cannot be used them in a in a criminal case against them article seven changes made also include how the administrative interview process procedures work um the officer now has a will have the right to an association or pre-representative as i mentioned before to be present during the administrative review and so the basically the article sets out all the the procedures related to that uh it also added that suspension disciplinary suspensions can be delivered to the affected officer or his or her attorney so it can be go through the attorney if you can't find the officer themselves um it also provides guidance regarding interplay of criminal and administrative cases where officers are indicted or charged with felonies or class a or being misdemeanors basically it it there are certain steps that have to be taken if a officer has been indicted and the officers that are indicted of felony can be is officially charged with the commission of a class a or b misdemeanor or felony or are convicted or quit or quit it or otherwise absolved of such to they notify the chief within 48 hours and then that begins a process on um for the disciplinary action that any disciplinary action that might be taken by the chief they can be suspended until 45 days following the final disposition of the criminal case and they can the officer can delay or request the delay of any related civil service commission hearings until 30 days following the final disposition of the case oftentimes in these situations there there is some kind of disciplinary action and then oftentimes there's an appeal and so you go through a process of having a civil service commission or some kind of review of that discipline before it all comes to to final um to a final uh ending one way or the other it also lays that a conviction of a felonier will automatically terminate employment uh conviction of a class a or class b may lead to disciplinary action up to termination but that becomes uh the choice of the chief for their decision so some of the changes that on that it just that were made were to further clarify the officer's rights during the investigation it suspends the internal investigations during an officer's military deployment oftentimes we have several officers that may be called up to military and they're gone for a period of time six months or a year uh while they're gone an issue comes up where command staffers their supervisors were reviewing some type of incident or there's some type of potential disciplinary action under state law that has to occur within 180 days but they're gone for more than 180 days you basically don't have the opportunity to actually do the um the investigation and provide the discipline well we negotiate into the agreement the ability to have that time basically frozen so that those 180 days do not run while they're off on military leave um the changes also provide for procedures during disciplinary settlement negotiations between the officer chief and the command staff it allows the chief to now negotiate uh beyond what's allowed under 143 uh with the uh with the officer and not just require them uh under 143 there's certain provisions that say they can suspend for 15 days or they have to then indefinitely suspend or go to a much harsher uh penalty that oftentimes gets appealed and then gets reversed in this case the chief can negotiate something that's more than the the minimum amount but allows the the takes away the officer's right to appeal and they end up negotiating a discipline that that makes sense article 10 wages a certain pays it basically lays out how wages are going to work on an annual basis appendix c shows the the pay schedule for each of the police ranks and it also includes what the across the board and the step what we call step raises would be the changes that were made to give a little bit background on this as we enter negotiations the city management stance was that we would be willing to negotiate on the wages and overall cost of the contract so how much it would cost the city and the city taxpayers with a cap at three percent annually if you put it cap three percent annually then what that total number was over four four year period and so the negotiation was basically we we opened the the ability to have conversations with the police officer association um as long anything having to do with wages or special pays or anything as long as we didn't go over that four year dollar amount that equal a three percent increase on an annual basis and so you'll see in the next slide what the actual increases are for on an annual basis for across the board wages wages wage increases but because as we were finishing this negotiation the covid situation came forward and the state shut down the city shut down a big portion of this overall budget for the police department includes the ccpd the crime control prevention district sales tax that was recently approved because this that sales tax has been impacted by the covid situation and the city's budget overall is being impacted by the covid situation we had to go back and add some additional discussions with the police officer association related to the already closed out and and um negotiations on wages and so basically what we the negotiations laid out was a three-tier scenario um that would be based on what the next year's wages will be tied to how well the ccpd sales tax performs during the end of this fiscal year um it also in the in this section we clarified a piece about acting pay so when a when an officer is moved up to a higher ranking because that is vacant for a period of time but they don't have the position permanently they would receive acting pay it just clarifies that the officer will receive either the lowest pay of the higher rank or a five percent increase if the person's already making at least the lowest rank whichever is uh greater so getting into the wages what was negotiated originally um was a request and and city approved as i mentioned we weren't going to go over the three percent if you average that out on an annual basis so it was negotiated would be a four percent increase next year but then that would drop in the subsequent three years to two point eight seven two percent and then two percent and four in year four uh to keep those those numbers down uh below as the the original number we're trying to reach um that was the original agreement what we ended up doing is uh based on the ccpd sales tax collections if those decrease uh the decreases that we see this year are between zero and five percent or or better um then we would keep that negotiated those negotiated numbers if the sales tax collections come in worse from five to ten percent less than what they were the year before then next year's actual increase drops to two percent and we adjust the following years to get back to that three percent average across as you go forward and if the sales tax on the ccpd is actually much worse and it's over ten percent less the police officers would not receive a zero they would not receive a a increase next year in in there across the board wages but then we would adjust the following three years to make up that difference so that's what the changes were for the wage proposal as we went forward article 11 uh basically it lays out um some of the conditions that are required for hiring new positions in the in the Fort Worth police department when recruiting and it increased points uh one of the efforts that the police department has and the poa uh uh agreed is with is to uh increase the overall education of the level of education the people that come in and get recruited so we increased points for candidates with a bachelor's degree so they would get an extra point if you had already have a bachelor's degree when you apply to the to the police department uh previously there were some points added if a person um i'm sorry we'd also we reinstated this past year the fort worth cadets program which basically is a program targeted at um um uh individuals between the age of 16 and 21 and um uh you cannot become a police officer until you're 21 so they it targets them the cadet program to come and work with the police department learn about the police department get some experience they're not officers uh but they go through basically a training program and then if they apply to become police officers they would uh if they graduate from that program they would get additional points uh in the over on the front end and then there was extra points for fort worth residency that was removed uh in essence uh one of the reasons was because uh it we saw that it was having a negative impact in our attempt to recruit on the diversity side uh we wanted to have a bigger pool and uh oftentimes that would that was having a negative uh impact there um and then on article 14 we made changes to the physical fitness program um it provides that as as the police chief and the uh command staff want to make changes in the training staff to the physical assessment test uh that the police officer position would have a representative included on their committee uh when they make changes to that and it also requires that uh any officers on on family medical leave act uh the american disability act or line of duty or any other type of sickness leave that they need to obtain a medical release prior to conducting the physical exam one of the reasons that occurs is because the physical exam if a police officer passes the physical exam they're eligible for a special pay stipend and so we wanted to make sure that there wasn't a situation where somebody might be out of work or have some kind of injury but want to do it just to receive the stipend we would need a doctors okay for them to come off of the out of that situation before they could actually take the exam article 15 uh the promotions the motions and reinstatements uh i mentioned earlier that the appointed positions are not subject to uh are not part of the police officer association and not subject to this agreement um basically the assistant chief the police chief appoints assistant chiefs deputy chiefs in the commander positions um they are exempt from competitive examinations like the rest of the department uh the chief is not required to make these appointments with any particular time period um and the chief has a right to demote someone and they have no appeal rights of course they cannot be done under the state law they can't be demoted beyond what their previous rank was before they became a uh an appointed in a an appointed position so for instance if a deputy chief is demoted and they were a captain before they became a commander and then deputy chief they would they needed they would need to go back to being a captain and that's far the demotion could only go that far back um it also clarifies that a commander uh the chief can appoint one commander per patrol division that was put in there just to specify as the city forward continues to grow we currently have six patrol divisions if we add a seventh you'd have the ability to add a commander position to do that as we go forward um under the promotions demotions and reinstatements um also uh the the the article provides for minimum requirements for taking promotional exams how long you have to be in a certain position prior to taking a test as mentioned uh all the positions but the appointed positions they're increased from one rank to the other does require a test and then based on your scoring of the test is is whether or not you have the opportunity to move into the next rank when a position becomes available um uh it clarifies that promotional processes once it started when the test is given it continues even if the agreement expires it also provides for how long an eligibility lasts a list for a certain test will last prior to it going dormant and then you have to redo it uh so if no vacancies come open then those folks would have to take the test again for instance uh and it just clarifies certain um um pieces of how officers are promoted the proposed changes overall basically it provides for new educational requirements after an appointment to assistant chief deputy chief or commander is is done currently captains are required to have a certain level of of uh education and the idea was that to ensure that anybody that was in an appointed position above a captain ultimately would have at a minimum the same level of education is required for a captain position uh it also established a review board we're establishing a review board of officer for officer promotional appeals so when somebody appeals a the fact that dating score is high because they believe something was wrong with the test um there's a a new appeal process that would involve existing officers rather than the civil service commission where a blind group of of the professional officers in that area that really are the subject matter experts would get to provide a decision on whether or not a question is fair or how the test would have administered was fair oftentimes the civil service commission process takes a much longer time article 17 um is a non-discrimination clause in the agreement uh and basically says the city neither the city nor the poa will discriminate in employment of police officers based on any protected class that's race color national origin religion age sex gender sexual orientation military veteran stylist or disability handicap um and the poa has the duty of fair representation for all officers not just those that are members so they have uh it lays that out in this in this agreement and then it also states that the city will not interfere with any of the poa operations or the dealings with their members as they as they go forward the changes that were proposed for this agreement is basically um we included language that protected rights of officers to include the reporting of suspected violations of the meet and confer agreement so in essence uh it's the if they believe that the city uh or if someone is making doing something that is in violation of the meeting for confer agreement they can bring that forward and it protects them and we also clarified that um because an officer makes that type of uh a suspects a violation of the of the provision this will not interfere with any kind of discipline that's going on with their work duties so uh the situation because they're an officer is maybe being disciplined for some reason and they bring up uh they believe that a meet and confer violation has occurred in that process the discipline piece will still go forward so it can't interfere with that article 18 maintenance of standards um this basically provides that certain specific items except for certain specific items special pays and leave allowances that existed in writing as of the effective date of this approved agreement shall remain unchanged so basically um it just lays out that these things will continue as you go forward the changes that are being recommended in that area is that um the city will provide the poa 180 day advance notice prior to making any additional changes to our pension uh system as most people know that the pension system was changed recently in the last year basically it included increases of both the membership employees of the city's contribution to the pension and the city's contribution to the pension those are set currently if additional changes need to be made this basically just calls out that the city needs to give the poa 180 days advance notice before that was going to occur that a similar notice is is required in the firefighters agreement as well the firefighter association and also in any situation where the police department or the police department or the city overpays wrongfully or or um overpays an employee a police officer uh because of the way the wages were calculated the number of hours per week and it was incorrect uh that the city will work with the police office association to um with the with the actual officer that's impacted to collect those dollars back instead of just going directly to the police officer that will include the police association in those discussions and then article 27 basically lays out when the agreement ends which is uh september 30th 24th it begins um and then has the one year um evergreen period after that if a negotiation is not successful during that time article 28 is a new provision um that was brought forward uh by the police officer association and as I mentioned earlier the city management laid out a overall cost of contract not to exceed three percent per year and any of the different types of pays that are available that would be covered under that uh so the police office association's request was to increase the number of hours that a police uh a person that retires from the city or leaves the city could receive upon retirement so officers currently under state law are able to receive 720 hours of accrued sick leave so that basically they're able to accrue sick leave and if they leave and they have up to 120 hours the city is required to pay that upon separation so they get paid for the sick leave only up to 720 hours uh they requested to increase that amount um we neglected uh back and forth negotiations and the impacts that would have on the overall wages uh we came to a negotiated number of a thousand so starting next year with this new agreement when an officer separates from the city of Fort Worth if they have up to a thousand hours they would be able to receive that in compensation as they leave the city uh that did have an impact to uh what the officers would receive and across the board pay uh and that was included in those numbers um spell out and what was shown earlier on the payments and so that basically wraps up the overall agreement um as we went into this whole process for the meet and confer agreement we wanted to to uh we had a few goals in mind and we believe that we've we've basically achieved those goals through this agreement as I mentioned we're going to go through a q and a here in a minute to to answer questions that came in but the goals of the overall agreement were to maintain the appropriate management rights for the chief under state law uh the chief of police of any police department is the one that has the discipline higher and firing um power and we want to make sure those are were kept and are improved in some cases uh it increases the department's professionalism by implementing educational requirements uh for appointed positions and uh adds adds the ability for folks of bachelor's degrees to come in have additional points that's something that the poa has been pushing significantly they'd like to make sure that the as we go along that the overall department becomes more professional and has um as stronger as they go forward it provides flexible and fair compensation in light of economic impact of the current COVID-19 pandemic on the city's revenues as I mentioned uh the actual compensation piece was already negotiated uh before uh the pandemic hit and we were able to include some provisions to be able to to sidestep that issue uh if we need to um it constraints the wage increases to reflect the current fiscal challenges it does provide officers appropriate protections during this plenary process and it also guarantees what the wages will look like it helps us in our recruitment of officers by doing that uh people know what they're coming into and what the situation is in a very difficult environment for police officers and um it continues to provide the city council control over over pension benefits as we go forward so will that we will move into the question and answer so after this overview some of the questions um that we received from residents some of these questions do not deal directly with the contract but other police issues we're going to do our best to answer as many questions as possible during our program tonight the first person I'm joined uh here with is uh chief ed krauss he is going to help answer some of these questions thank you chief for for coming uh the first question that we have has to do with scheduling of officers jerry waller the question is jerry waller and atatiana jefferson were killed by rookie police officers where is the provision outlining that seniority will not impact scheduling to ensure rookies are no longer paired together and when I say the question asks rookies um some of these officers were there for two or three years so it's definition of rookies could be called into question but I'll turn it over to you okay so all rookies are paired with a more senior officer during the field training phase which occurs immediately upon a graduation from the police academy during the field training phase the rookie rides with learns from and is evaluated by a senior officer that officer is recommended through their chain of command up through the commander based on their performance history and then they go through a training course to become a field training officer once the officer successfully completes the field training phase that officers release to solo patrol status uh fourth pd operates on a solo patrol philosophy uh we typically do not pair up officers of any seniority in a car although there are some exceptions uh solo patrols provide more coverage for our geographically large city pairing two officers in one vehicle reduces in half the number of cars that are available to respond to calls and the number of beats that can be covered uh response times would suffer so an example would be if you have a division that has nine beats on a shift and you have eight officers show up to work if you double those officers up you're only going to be able to cover four beats um whereas if each officer's out in their own car they can cover eight beats um additionally calls that could be handled by one officer such as uh tagging property uh stranded motorists guard duty at a hospital would then take two officers out of service so we typically do not pair up officers um the staffing situation in fortworth pd right now is that we're in a time of high attrition a lot of officers are retiring we currently have over 50 vacancies in the officer rank and we've been holding several academy classes over the past year and a half just to catch up one of the classes just graduated in april and three other are currently in session but by the time that last class graduates we're going to have about 140 officers with less than two years experience out in patrol um and so ensuring that multiple officers with less experience won't be the first to respond to any particular call can't really be guaranteed based purely on the makeup of the workforce however to address that many months ago we went ahead and started rotating more senior officers that work in specialized units into the patrol bureau so that interaction between veteran and rookie officers could occur um to be honest the the covid pandemic has has hurt that effort because some of specialized services officers have been tasked with covid related duties and um there's also concerns about cross-contamination between different work groups thank you for that answer now chief well higher education is not necessarily a bad requirement how will officers be educated to be street wise about the people and neighbors that they'll that they all vow to protect and serve okay so um this this question was asked by a community member a little over a year ago at a forum we read in the east division and i remember specifically the example he gave he said how do you expect an uh an individual who grew up in a town like pester where there's nobody that looks like me and he spent his whole life there how do you expect him to come out and police my community and it very valid point so what we started doing with the class that graduated in april uh it was the first class we had since that conversation was we started bringing community members into the police academy to speak with the recruits about their experiences especially negative experiences they've had with fortwith police officers that way our recruits can see how their actions or inactions can have a negative impact on the community they're sworn to serve um and we went a step further we said you know what we want to use those individuals also as role players in our scenario based training so our officers get an authentic reaction to their actions there in the training environment and if they're gonna fail we want them to fail there and not fail out on the street where somebody could be harmed either emotionally or physically so those are two initiatives we started they're going to continue through these next academy classes we actually help to bolster the number of people that are participating in that um the the uh rookie officers when they get out of training they also do that field training phase we talked about for several months including the first week of field training which is spent with the neighborhood police officer and the last week of field training is spent with the neighborhood police officer to emphasize the the role that those individuals have and if you're not familiar with the neighborhood police officer program the npo's as they're called are beat coordinators they serve on that beat but they're not subject to calls for service although they answer many but their job is to create a safe environment crime prevention not necessarily crime reaction and to help with some of the broken windows theories where they clean up the beat and make a neighborhood look nicer and crime reduces that way but they also deal with neighborhood disputes and problems and businesses and and those so getting that those officers out in the areas where they're going to work and actually get to interact with people on the beat is uh how we address that well it sounds like there's a good opportunity for community members to participate in the training of police officers if they'd like and absolutely i'm sure you'd be open to having those folks contact the police department and see how they could do that i think it's a good opportunity uh is it really necessary next question is it really necessary to allow certain lateral entry officers to end training early would it not be best to allow every officer adequate time to get familiar with fault worth in our community i think there's an assumption here that that occurs so okay so there might be exceptions where that occurs for instance a lateral entry officer is an officer we've hired from another department many of those officers that we hire from other departments apply to us because they live here in fort worth so they have that familiarity already but they didn't originally work for us because of different reasons maybe we weren't hiring at the time maybe they applied to several departments and another one called them first but no officer including lateral entry officers are allowed to end their training phase until both that officer and their field training officer feel that officers adequately prepared to serve our community all right thank you now when it comes time to reinstatement following a demotion are there not extenuating circumstances where reinstatement is inappropriate such as a bodily injury or harm to other individuals or community members should shut such provisions be included in this agreement okay so that article 13 deals with a very specific situation and you alluded to it as you went through the articles in the presentation but that that situation is when say i as a police chief decide to remove one of my assistant chiefs or deputy chiefs or commander one of the appointed ranks and return them to their last civil service rank so most of that most of time it's going to be a captain so if i were to take an assistant chief and remove them from the appointed ranks they would go back to their last civil service tested rank a captain we only have 17 captain positions on the department which means if i'm going to put that one back in there the last one who promoted into that captain rank has to be demoted so that individual gets demoted they get put on a reinstatement list and then the next time we have a vacancy in the captain rank that person is repromoted they've already shown that they you know scored well excuse me so scored well on the test and the assessment that they have earned that position so they get that position so that's the very specific instance that that deals with however we do demote have other demotions and those demotions is when somebody has shown a propensity that they cannot handle that rank that almost always a to my knowledge it always is accompanied by an administrative investigation that usually results in discipline as well as the demotion so the language in the contract basically that talks about reinstatement is specific to some when someone's demoted because of a chain of command or domino impact not because of anything they did or didn't do deal doing with discipline not not through any fault of their own right okay that's a good explanation thank you um next question if an officer resigns from duty in an attempt to avoid disciplinary action regarding a serious infraction infraction are there any circumstances where they would be inappropriate to allow them to be reinstated and keep their original tenure on the police force yes so um the a lot of the the narrative you may have heard nationally and even locally um one of the the reform measures that's being called for is a national database of officers who have been terminated um for excessive force or you know terminated from a police department for cause um so that person can't then be hired by someone else um texas has that in place through the texas commission on law enforcement so anytime an officer separates from a police department um they're that agency is required to fill out a form characterizing that separation as either honorable general or dishonorable so if somebody resigns from a police department to avoid a disciplinary action that person cannot get an honorable discharge it is uh put on that form and that form is accessible to any other agency that's looking to hire that individual in fort worth with even if we're reappointing someone that that has left our agency we conduct a background check on that person so we will look at the circumstances surrounding the separation in the first place and somebody who would left to avoid a disciplinary case would not be rehired okay thank you next question is if an officer is indicted for a felony or officially charged with a commission of a class a or b misdemeanor the chief may temporarily suspend that person with or without pay for a period not to exceed 45 calendar days after the date of the final disposition of the indictment or complaint why is the chief given this discretion okay so this provision here mirrors uh the texas state civil service law i think it's 143056 and it's so that's the same language that allows the chief to suspend this officer um with or without pay while the criminal case is proceeding and the reason for that that is in there is because uh tico the texas commission on law enforcement isn't going to pull an officer's license until there is a conviction so this provision allows the chief to suspend the officer so that officer doesn't have to continue working and for the department while this case is ongoing if the chief believes there's enough there that they don't want to do that um since i took over those suspensions are always without pay um but the difference between the texas local government code the state civil service law and this article in this agreement is the number of days after final conviction or after final uh disposition of the case in which the department has to act so the state civil service law gives the department 30 days after the final disposition to go ahead and complete the administrative investigation and take any disciplinary action this article gives us an additional 15 days to conduct that what we didn't want to happen was it this final disposition of a criminal case happens around the holidays or while someone's on vacation in the chain of command and it sits on somebody's desk for a week or two and then we're hard pressed to get it done within the statute time frame so this gives us a 15 day safety net basically and so in essence in this case is that somebody is found not guilty and they didn't it allows you more time to ensure whatever administrative action you're going to have to be investigated and and bring that forward oftentimes that helps to have a full investigation if there's an appeal by the officer involved so there's less chance for it to be appealed what the actual discipline is done that's correct and in situations like this our investigation is complete by the time the criminal case is done but the chain of command review is not because we're waiting to see what the court ruled on that okay thank you um the next question or issue the chief is permitted to hire officers from other agencies can you give information on how you make the lateral hires and provide the criteria and procedures for the modified hiring process yeah so these lateral entry candidates what we talked about earlier hiring from other departments both them the reappointed officers and new recruit officers are all required to pass the identical steps in the hiring process um including but not limited to like the medical examination the drug screen the physical agility test psychological exam before they can be considered for employment as a police officer and any candidate who fails is is removed from the process at that point in addition we do background checks on all these all the applicants as well so a lateral entry officer that's that's applying would still be assigned to a background investigator who would then contact the other agency or agencies where that individual worked and see what kind of disciplinary act uh history that individual has and um also reach out to people in the department to find out what kind of officer he was while he was working there and so basically all the same steps except they when they come into the academy for their part part of the training they come in as police officers versus cadets yes so they will be commissioned police officers so they don't have to go through some of the Texas Commission on law enforcement requirements to become a police officer but they still have to go through many weeks of training to see how we want things done in Fort Worth to learn our values and and our procedures and our training um and then they still upon completion of the academy they go out into field training phase um just like the other recruits do and and they will also do at least a week with the one of the neighborhood police officers so really the big difference is just not having to go through the process of becoming licensed peace officers in in Texas yes and learning all the have that and learning all the basic um roles and responsibilities of a police officer they are learning Fort Worth specific um issues um that's why their academy is abbreviated compared to the almost nine month new recruit academy and and their field training is abbreviated also thank you um next question is why do officers with military experience now get an additional point toward their corporal exam okay well the there are many benefits of of military service and training that prepare an individual to continue serving their community as a police officer uh leadership training uh discipline um the ability learning the ability to follow direction but also to think creatively and independently to solve problems that's something that the military is very good at that's why so many leadership books uh out there are written by military veterans um so that's the value in in in adding that point there to show our appreciation for their service um but if you know when they're in the academy they're learning that guardianship and servant mindset if we have an individual who can't get off the warrior mindset or that doesn't embrace the training and the values that we're we're trying to teach then they'll be recommended for termination thank you next question is what is the incentive for mental health what training will will they receive on how to handle stress okay so we don't really have an incentive for mental health or requirement for mental health screening beyond the uh entry level psychological examination that we give but all recruits receive training on stressors and healthy ways to deal with stress fitness wellness and stress management is one of the classes alcohol and stress management is another class peer support is a is a third course of instruction and all of our officers are also that those courses are also open to them as well and then the city has the employee assistance program to help with any mental well-being or counseling concerns an officer has and we have also partnered with the police officers association and a private group that offers mental wellness for first responders specific okay and one final question for the chief before we move on this isn't directly related to mean conferring but it's an important question based on some of the recent incidents in the city what will you do to to rebuild the trust in our communities of color in the city okay so the the national discussion on police reform going on and and even locally as has actually produced a lot of really good ideas stuff that we are interested in pursuing with the passage of the crime control and prevention district sales tax gives us the opportunity to do some of these things one of the uh ever since we had the ccpd there's been a community based programs component of that we're different nonprofit or private entities can apply for ccpd funding to push certain crime prevention or crime reduction measures out there and we've been funding a lot of these programs but we've what we've noticed as we take this critical look at ccpd is the funding for a lot of those programs has remained stagnant even though the dollars raised by ccpd have gone up exponentially so we're looking at actually offering more of those dollars towards some of these initiatives after they've been properly vetted as you know and shown that they can be something that is good for the community what the other things we're looking at is expanding our crisis intervention teams our cit teams as we call them those are teams where we have an officer who is certified as the mental health peace officer so they've gone through additional training and certification they're paired with a mental health worker and they answer calls dealing with the individuals suffering mental crises or chronic substance abuse we started with a group of eight a sergeant corporal and six officers and they were very successful they showed a significant decrease the number of calls coming in because they also work proactively to address people they know who have had mental crises and they proactively go out and make sure they have their medications see if they need any referrals see if they need anything else and so that proactivity reduces some of the calls to 911 so we want to increase that unit to where we now can staff two shifts instead of just the one shift and just increase the number of calls that group takes to lessen the the patrol officer's time that they spend dealing with that since the patrol officer doesn't quite have all the same resources or training as that somebody certified at the mhpo level as we did a review on uses of force we found that that cit team used very few incidents of use of force even though they dealt with population that you might think would have more uses of force involved in that so it's something we want to look at further and and see if we can if that plays out as we expand the unit we also want to create what we're calling tentatively a community services division and you may have seen operations like this in cities like denver or fort collins colorado locally north virgin hills has a division like this arlington pd does and this is a group of non-sworn individuals so they're not police officers they're not in a uniform like i'm in they don't have a gun they're not in a police car although they'll be in a vehicle and they are tasked with responding to calls that really don't need a police officer calls that police officers never used to respond to but because people call 911 and want a response and police were always on 24 seven the police officers got tasked with dealing with some of this stuff so um you know they can help with accident scenes they can help with parking violations um animal calls when animal controls not around um it just looking at a at a quick blush we we look at there could be up to 50 000 calls a year that this group could take off patrol allowing those officers to be available yeah allow those officers to be available for real emergency situations and to go back to being the beat officers that they they were asked to be well those are those are great sound like great ideas that you know to take forward before i move to our next speaker uh there is one question that came in are there uh programs with fortworth isd encouraging students to become officers yeah so um fortwith isd has one campus it's eastern hills high school that actually has a criminal justice club and i've been out there a couple times our officers interact with that group um quite regularly um they've come to the police headquarters um we've given them tours of both the academy and the headquarters um and that is the the one group in fortworth isd that i'm aware of um some of the other isd's also have law enforcement clubs i think there may be other clubs within fortworth isd as well but the criminal justice class in eastern hills i believe is the biggest one but um yeah so there are several is it our cadet class primarily made up of fortworth isd students and and crowley mostly uh students and graduates of those isd's so we also have the explorer program and we have explorers go into the schools and recruit for that program as well and then we bring those students down to our training facility for the for the training they take them on competitions and and stuff like that and we've had several of our explorers uh progress into being police officers that's great well chief thank you for your time thanks for coming our next speaker uh regarding the meeting confer agreement will be many ramirez the president of the uh fortworth police officers association he will uh answer questions from his perspective that we received um thank you mani for joining us hey jay thank you for having me um the first question i have for you is one that i asked chief kraus but i would like to get your response and from the perspective of the police association is why do officers with military experience now get an should get an additional point toward their corporal exam well you know the the training value structure uh in leadership experience that's acquired um through military service i mean that provides a direct benefit to the citizens of fort worth and to the fort worth pd um and the members of the fort worth poa will always value and respect um those who sacrifice to serve our nation and so we felt like um you know civil service already incentivizes it through the entrance exam um but we felt like those qualifications those leadership qualifications are important um when they're promoting through the ranks as well so that additional point is is a uh basically a reward for their service to our nation thank you so in the meeting confer agreement we talk about peer representatives and association representatives are their requirements uh for someone to become a peer representative or a representative an officer from the association absolutely so peer representatives and association representatives uh they take training through a uh a legal representative um and they learn their role in the administrative process uh they adhere to strict guidelines set by internal affairs investigators and they don't participate or interfere with uh the interview in any form or fashion their role is to observe and ensure that an officer's due process rights are protected okay um the agreement also states that there's no privilege to protect statements or disclosures to uh officers representatives in any way in any criminal manner why would a representative not be able to testify about knowledge acquired through the representative's role as the officer's representative in the absence of a privilege you know i think that might be a little bit of a misconception um one criterion for selection as a peer representative or an association representative is that the representative has no personal knowledge of the the case or or um you know the the uh the violation in question uh the peer representative is instructed uh not to interview counsel uh otherwise discuss the case with the involved officer um the peer representative should never have knowledge uh outside of what is observed through their role as a peer representative um observer in the internal affairs interview um and if they do learn or discover any any information outside of that uh role um they are subject to being called to testify about that knowledge so we're very specific when we instruct our our peer representatives uh how to conduct themselves um in the process and and they know that they're strictly uh advocates for due process and that they they should not be uh interfering with the investigation if they do they themselves can become subjects of the investigation so as it's they're just there to ensure that the steps required under the agreement are followed uh and due process for that that individual that's being investigated absolutely that's it so tell us how the do across the board increases impact job performance what wouldn't increases be more effective they were incentivized based on one's merit you know i think merit pay would be great um i think i think you know efficient companies uh that can offer bonuses and rewards for for good pay is uh is a great thing however in a public service career you know ems fire police services um there really is no objective absolute objective way to measure that performance in the public safety career um objective standards are the best practice to protect against a good old boy system um and that makes compensation relying on subjective criteria so the entire civil service framework uh in contract framework exists to set objective standards um so that everything is on a level playing field and yeah merit pay would be great um but there is no uh way we can you know basically incentivize production or quotas or anything like that those are all things we hope to avoid all right so tell us how the Fort Worth POA work with the black and latino POAs when it comes to the agreement and other issues that face the department and the officers themselves yeah so the black POA and the latino POA actually it's the BLLEOA and the NLEOA um they're fraternal organizations they're not labor organizations um the presidents of each of these organizations is appointed uh as a member of my um 18 member board of directors and they have direct involvement in the labor management process and in the uh in setting the contract priorities before we go to bargain this contract um now these organizations are tremendous in that uh they provide value to the community they provide services in the community um from their membership perspective uh and I'm actually a member of all three organizations uh in the bulk majority of BPOA and OPOA members are POA members um we found that as a labor group um we're very unique and that we're not separate we're all together and so uh we appoint those presidents to our board of directors so that their viewpoints may be heard um every single week I'm speaking to those presidents to ask them if there's any unique challenges facing their membership and if there's anything they would like to see uh from the Fort Worth POA as far as advocacy is concerned um and so we work very closely together and so as they as it pretends to the contract uh they have direct input whenever we're setting our priorities all right thank you next question is why is the POA so involved in the hiring process of the Fort Worth police department you know as I mentioned the the civil service system is a objective standard system and uh maintaining fair equitable and objective hiring standards are fundamental to establishing a professional police department now in order to ensure that the city of Fort Worth can recruit retain uh the highest caliber of trainee uh we have to ensure that those standards are never compromised um we've seen uh examples around the country um where for political reasons sometimes hiring standards were lowered uh to increase the number of recruits uh the results are you know subjective and unfair hiring practices and um you know minimum minimum standards exist uh to make the hiring process fair and equitable um and you know our brothers and sisters with with the fire department um they're equally involved in the in the hiring process um and like I said it really is for to set those objective standards to make sure we can recruit and retain uh the top applicants out there because uh as the chief covered earlier we're in a very tough environment for recruiting and retaining and I think that the minimum standards there we can't we can't cut those just because you know it's tough well thanks for coming tonight to help and provide the POA's perspective on some of this on the meeting conferment agreement um the the final guest tonight um and hopefully we've been able to shed some light and provide uh information from your perspective uh is our senior assistant city attorney uh that was involved in in the negotiations and he specializes in employment and pension and human resources uh site of the law for the city uh chris trout thank you for joining us chris uh i'll be asking you to provide us some information from uh legal questions that we received from the public and our residents um the first question has to do with article seven section two and the 48 hour waiting period can you explain why this waiting period is in the agreement why it exists and I think oftentimes people confuse that uh with how quick we the police force or the police department can react to criminal complaint regarding a police officer okay so if you could touch on that sure thing well first of all you know we've given everyone a lot of information about uh what's in chapter 143 and what we're talking about is the Texas local government code and since 1947 police officers and firefighters in Fort Worth have been under civil service which means that the terms and conditions of their employment are largely set out in chapter 143 of the local government code and anytime a city is under civil service uh if if the city or the officers or firefighters want to change anything uh that's in chapter 143 the only way to do that is through a meet and confer agreement and that's what this meet and confer agreement is all about that is there are things in chapter 143 that we felt don't work for us that we want to change and other other information that we want to want to provide so the 48 48 hour requirement only applies in administrative investigations and what we're talking about there is an investigation that might lead to a disciplinary action in the officer's employment not a criminal not a criminal matter and um a concern has been raised about whether an officer might use that 48 hours to try to change the facts or change the evidence or influence witnesses well if an officer is found to have done that to change facts or evidence or improperly influence an investigation they would certainly face disciplinary consequences because of that that might be even more severe than the conduct they're being investigated for uh originally now let me mention one other thing typically an investigation involving an allegation of officer misconduct the involved officer is the last person that the investigator uh talks to and the reason for that is the investigator likes to gather the information that's relevant to the matter and then have that all available to confront the officer and and talk about the allegations of misconduct when the investigator knows all the facts already so basically the 48 hours lots of times is it's going to take that long to get to the actual and oh yeah questioning of the officer anyway and so it doesn't have a big impact the officer may not be questioned for several weeks after the incident so that 48 hours typically doesn't um pose any kind of problem for the investigators okay thank you now that same article allows officers to review videos uh or other material but only the officer's association or peer representative or attorney is allowed to in the room while the officer's doing that can you provide a situation or illustrate a situation that requires this clause sure um you can imagine the situation where an officer's being investigated for something that's been captured on their body camera um well the officer gets an opportunity to review what the body camera shows before they're questioned about it and they can have that review in the presence of their peer or association representative and their legal counsel if they want but as i think you touched on earlier uh no one is allowed to make a copy of the video they're not allowed to discuss what's in in the video outside of that room and only the peer representative the officer and uh the officer's legal counsel is allowed to be in the room during that time and so in essence the ability for them to review is because nobody's memory is 100 percent yes and one of the things we want to make sure is that the officer doesn't necessarily provide some kind of information that wasn't doesn't tie to the video itself and and creates another issue that may not be there sure the investigation is designed to to um find the truth right and the best way to do that in this situation is for the officer to have an opportunity to look at something like a body camera video before having to answer questions about what happened thank you now um can you explain to us why it's beneficial and necessary to provide back pay to an officer who is on leave due to a commission of a felony or class b or a misdemeanor sure well one thing you have to remember is that as a public employee with civil service protection an officer's job and pay cannot be taken from them without due process of law those protections are in the united states constitution and also in state law chapter 143 that we've been talking about um in the situation um that you're speaking of where an officer is temporarily suspended without pay and then is acquitted of the charge brought against them well after that acquittal the officer can request that the civil service commission uh require the city to pay him back pay and in that situation the commission can then decide to agree or reject the officer's request so the officer may or may not get back pay and if the officer is not acquitted then they don't recover back pay if they've been temporarily temporarily suspended without pay while the criminal case is pending and typically if they are not if they are acquitted i mean if they're not acquitted and they're found guilty they typically are no longer with the police department anyway that's true so tell us um how hearing examiners are chosen when it comes to appeals sure um the list of hearing examiners um are the list of people are typically lawyers uh in this area and they um under the meeting confer agreement uh they are required to have some experience handling police civil service disciplinary appeals now there are not a lot of people in texas not a lot of lawyers in texas who have that kind of experience so the pool that we are drawing from is is kind of small and the reason for that requirement is that many of the rules and procedures that apply in civil service appeals are unique to civil service an arbitrator who doesn't have um that prior experience would have to be educated by the parties about the process and that would unnecessarily prolong the the proceedings now um the meet confer agreement requires the city and the police officers association to agree on a list of eight people with three alternates to serve it serve as hearing examiners or arbitrators to hear the disciplinary appeals and grievances that are brought because of alleged violation of the meet confer agreement now the people on the current list of hearing examiners are mostly from the dallas fort worth austin and houston areas and they all have the required experience and backgrounds needed and uh i will say that um uh two two more points on that when it comes time to actually choose someone to hear a disciplinary appeal the meet confer agreement requires that the parties either agree on someone on that list or if they can't reach an agreement then the first person at the top of the list it's a rotating list the first person on the list is chosen by default and the arbitrator's decision is final if anyone wants to look at the list of arbitrators uh that list is public and it is displayed at city hall i think on the north entrance so um while we're on the hearing examiners the one-year term it term limit uh in the agreement was removed um why was this done well we found that there really was no need for it because any hearing examiner can be removed from the list by agreement of the parties so if we found that a hearing examiner was not doing their job well they could be removed from the list without having to wait for the year uh to end to remove them so in essence we're taking out a clause from the agreement that really didn't serve a purpose yeah that's right um but one of the questions that we got in tonight is why does an officer that commits a crime get to review evidence that's the the question i think there's a presumption uh that an officer that commit that's being investigated for a crime not for administrative they get to review evidence uh of the investigation related to that crime and i think there's uh and you can correct me but i believe there's a uh uh misinterpretation the the review of the body cam video or anything like that has to do with an administrative investigation not a criminal investigation so that's right and the officer does not have the ability to to review evidence and a criminal case against them yeah that's my understanding and and criminal investigations are typically done by the special investigations unit or siu whereas administrative investigations that is an investigation that might affect the officer's employment whether they might be fired or um given a suspension without pay those investigations are done by internal affairs and they're what we call administrative investigations um back to the we just got a question in and i don't know if you know the exact answer but how diverse are the hearing examiners i'm thinking they're they're talking diversity and sex you know female male and or ethnicity my my memory of that is that uh most of them are male uh most of them are over 50 a lot of those that are uh older are no longer taking cases so i think our new list is going to look a lot different than our current list we try very hard to find um people with the experience that are that's required who are members of the minority community or persons of color or or female and we have it i think two of the eight are our female all right thank you but we'll work hard to get that list a little bit more representative of the community so when it comes to scheduling a hearing what's the time frame uh for the hearing to to follow for to the conclusion of the criminal investigation or criminal prosecution so after um after a criminal investigation or criminal case is completed typically the department will make a decision about whether to impose discipline within 30 or 45 days after the final disposition of that case then if the offer officer appeals that discipline then the 180 day period that we provided in article seven uh would be followed that is we try to have that hearing accomplished and finished within 180 days and keep in mind the department can impose discipline on an officer regardless of whether the officer was convicted or acquitted uh and a felony conviction i think as chief krauss mentioned earlier uh is the equivalent of a termination is there a clause that disallows the chief from negotiating with other labor organizations does can the chief for instance negotiate with the the black police association or the latino police officer association well the chief is prohibited from um bargaining with anyone other than the fort worth police officers association and that's because that is the organization that the fort worth police officers have chosen to represent them uh there was an election by the fort worth police officer i think back in 2006 maybe maybe earlier earlier than that um that they wanted the police officers association to represent them and at that point the city could only negotiate with the police officers association regarding terms and conditions of employment for fort worth police officers now that doesn't prevent the chief from meeting with organizations like the black law enforcement officers or the national latino law enforcement organization to hear their concerns discuss anything but he cannot negotiate with anyone other than the fort worth police officers association and it's my understanding that chief krauss does meet with those organizations regularly and and that requirement or inability to do that is set out in state law when a meet and confer situation is set up by through the vote of the citizens that's right yeah the fort worth police officers association is the sole and exclusive bargaining agent for police officers by law so um our fort worth pd employees allowed to file grievances that pertain to discrimination um yes any police officer who believes they've experienced discrimination based on any protected class such as race color age sex disability national origin sexual orientation gender identity gender expression they can file an internal complaint with human resources or they can go to the equal employment opportunity commission and potentially file a lawsuit against the city the purpose of the provision in the meet and confer agreement that says that discrimination complaints cannot be heard as a grievance is so that um any complaint a person an officer has about discrimination is decided in the proper form the form the law requires um such as the eoc and a court of law rather than a as a grievance that an arbitrator gets to decide rather than a court or jury thank you so one of the questions that came in is can negotiations be reopened and i'll start off by answering that with the negotiations negotiations can be reopened um at this point the city manager is recommending uh this agreement it's been ratified by the police officer association and the city manager is recommending that this agreement be put forward and is going to be put forward to the city council on august 4th it could be reopened if the city council chooses to provide staff direction that they would like the agreement to be reopened for additional negotiations and it would really help in that case from city staff and what portions of the agreement they would like for us to to really look into and try to renegotiate so at this point the city manager is recommending that this agreement go forward and that it be adopted so the city council could really could deny approving this agreement which would then require any any negotiations to occur that they deem we we need to follow so that's really the process there's not nothing magic about it the current agreement continues through september 30th and then as we said earlier there's an evergreen period for another year if negotiations would would continue yeah and you touched on earlier the agreement doesn't exist until two things happen the poa membership ratifies it and then the city council approves it if either those two things don't happen then there is no agreement that's correct so city council could choose not to vote on it not do anything and it would not the current agreement would just continue in place that's right our next question we have is what's the difference between a chain of custody investigation and administration administrative investigation all right and and we're talking again about investigations involving an employment issue an administrative investigation is one that's conducted by an internal affairs investigator and that's a detective who is specifically trained in conducting investigations of officers for allegations of misconduct a chain of command investigation is one conducted by someone in an officer's supervisory chain of command in other words the officer's boss or his boss's boss now internal affairs typically handles more serious complicated investigations and the chain of command typically investigates less serious less complicated allegations of misconduct now remember investigators find facts they don't make judgment calls as to whether misconduct actually occurred and they don't make recommendations for disciplinary action either type of investigation through internal affairs or chain of command can result in any level of discipline from a temporary suspension of one to 15 days without pay to an indefinite suspension or termination of employment um the proposed meet confer agreement um as you i think you pointed out earlier allows both officers and investigators to record interviews whether it's a chain of command investigation or one by eternal affairs so chris tell us when major case unit turns over the product of its investigation to internal affairs this will not include any interview by the involved officer please provide an explanation as to why the interview would not be included okay now this goes back to the difference between criminal investigations and administrative ones and we talked about s i u a while ago now s i u special investigations unit investigates allegations of criminal misconduct by officers now major case unit investigates more high-profile incidents including critical police incidents and officer-involved shootings and those matters can lead to criminal charges against an involved officer so when an officer gives an interview with major case that's a voluntary statement the voluntary interview given by the uh by the officer and just like any member of the pollock an officer has a fifth amendment right to not give a statement that could be used used later to incriminate him the officer cannot be threatened with losing their job for not giving a statement a major case however an officer can be compelled under threat of losing their job to give an interview or statement to internal affairs or a chain of command investigation because that's not a criminal investigation but anything that's the officer says in that compelled interview or statement cannot be used in the criminal case against the officer and that's known as what's called a garrity right and it's required by law now there's a concern that officers will refuse to cooperate in major case investigations which is they're right if their statement or or interview could be used to impose discipline and that could then make major case investigations less effective now an officer who gives voluntarily uh an interview or statement to major case is entitled to request a copy of that interview or statement and that's how the officer might have a copy of the internal of the of the statement when internal affairs would not the solution to that is internal affairs just interviews the officer again okay thank you for that now if additional violations are found during an investigation are they required to be reported the Texas local government code there's chapter 143 we've been talking about has specific requirements about how a complaint of misconduct against an officer has to be documented and by whom usually the complaint must be signed by the person who's harmed by the alleged misconduct and the purpose of the provision in the meet and confer agreement that we're talking about here is to clarify another way that a complaint of misconduct can be presented to the officer and further allows the investigator who learned of the alleged misconduct to be the one who investigates the allegations usually that's not the case usually the person who reports allegations doesn't get to investigate them but you have to understand that an investigator who's conducting investigation has to have discretion to choose what allegations merit additional investigation and which for a variety of reasons do not present a credible or significant allegation of misconduct and if we had a requirement that every single allegation of any type of misconduct no matter how small had to be investigated that would unnecessarily prolong investigations and make it harder to defend the resulting disciplinary action again defend the defend the disciplinary action if there's an appeal and secondly we distract the investigator from investigating the the serious allegations of misconduct that he will he or she was asked to investigate to begin with all right thank you now can you uh one of the questions came in is has to do with working day can you explain the definition of working day and what happens if an officer is assigned to a work shift that is longer many police officers work four 10 hour shifts per week others work five eight hour shifts per week and the provision that you're talking about in the meet and confer agreement deals mostly with holiday pay and it's intended to allow officers who work a 10 hour shift to have a full day off on a holiday because the city only gives employees eight hours for holiday for instance when i don't work on a holiday i work five eight hour shifts so i get eight hours of leave on that day well that covers my time a police officer who has a 10 hour schedule well that eight hours doesn't cover his entire scheduled shift so we could have them come in and work two hours on Christmas day or we could have them required require them to use their own leave for that two hours that didn't seem fair so it seemed fair to allow the officer to use 10 hours of leave or get credit for 10 hours on a holiday rather than just eight hours and let me mention this a question has come up about somebody who might be under temporary suspension if that happens can they work those extra two hours no they can't if someone's on a temporary suspension they've been suspended without pay they're considered to be on an eight hour shift at that time so that eight hours it covers their time and they're not allowed to work the additional time while they're on suspension so in essence it's a very technical and minute situation or a specific situation having to do with labor the labor contract and how a police officer who like you mentioned works 10 hours a day under the regular city process would only get eight hours of holiday even though they would be shortened two hours of their pay that week so these are the type of of of issues that this meeting confer agreement cover and it really intended to provide clarity so that there's not and provide guides to both management and to the officers themselves so that we have steps and processes to clear those things up so they don't come up all the time and they're and they're done in a uniform way I just wanted to point that out that really the meeting confer agreement is a labor agreement specifically between the city and the police officers association and the police officers themselves so with that Chris thank you for your time the we do have a couple of questions that are coming in from the internet or phone calls you might want to come back here Chris one of the questions is why are work days defined when discussing disciplinary action or the chief might be a better well work work days are defined so that when someone is suspended for three days without pay we we know what that means for for a person who works at eight hour shift or maybe a 10 hour shift it it when you say a day you have to you have to decide how long that is and that's why that's why a definition has to be in that agreement so it clarifies that it's work days days that they would actually be paid not just calendar days you're going to be off for three days and maybe they were only scheduled to work one day of those three days a person who's suspended for a one calendar day that happens to be their day off right isn't really suspended so this is really clearing up that language so that folks understand it that's right thank you well unfortunately we run out of time here this evening and that's all the time we have for questions so we'll be putting this recording on youtube and in our video library at Fort Worth Texas dot go thank you for watching and we will strive to provide answers to all the questions that we did not get to if we if we have any that came in tonight thank you again for your time and for watching