 Good afternoon. You are with the House Government Operations and Judiciary Committees. We are on our second joint meeting of the day to consider the current language that is contained in two Senate bills, Senate 219 and Senate 119. This morning during our joint committee time, we were able to do a walkthrough on the bill language for 219. And so what I'd like to do now is start off first with the bill language on 119 in its current format. And then we can start to hear from some of the witnesses who are with us. So, Bryn, why don't you take it away? Okay, good afternoon committee for the record. Bryn here from Legislative Council. Everybody can hear me okay? Okay, great. So as the chair said, I'm here to talk about S119 as it passed out of Senate Judiciary Committee. Second reading on the Senate floor was today. So this bill should be coming over tomorrow, I believe. So draft 2.1 is the version that came out of Senate Judiciary. And this bill is gonna look familiar to the House Government Operations Committee because it is substantially similar to H-808 which you heard testimony about earlier this session. So what it does is it creates, am I muted? No, okay. I'm getting a message that I'm muted. Okay. So what it does is it creates a statutory statewide policy regarding the use of deadly force by law enforcement. And as these two committees have heard this legislation was sort of modeled after the California legislation that passed in 2019. And specifically it provides that the use of deadly force is only allowed in situations when that force is necessary in defense of human life. So I'm gonna go through the bill quickly. I know you have a lot of witnesses to hear from. So page one subsection A in this new policy in 2368 sets forth some definitions that will apply throughout the model policy or throughout the policy. The first is deadly force. Means any force that creates a substantial risk of causing death or serious bodily injury. Defines eminent threat of death or serious bodily injury. And that's a definition that's based on the totality of the circumstances and the reasonable person standard. I'm not gonna read that, but please let me know if there are questions. Law enforcement officer, this is the same definition that you saw in S219 in the general provisions of the criminal justice training council chapter of title 20. Prohibited restraint, you saw this in S219 as well. This is the same definition that was in S219. So I won't go over it again. Totality of the circumstances means all facts that are known to law enforcement at the time, including the conduct of the officer and the words and conduct of the subject leading up to the use of deadly force. So that definition looks a little different from what you reviewed in H-808. There were some changes made there to include the words and conduct of the subject that are leading up to the use of deadly force. So I'm gonna move on to subdivision B. I'm moving quickly. Please stop me if there are questions. This is the subdivision that sets out the statewide policy. These are pretty general parameters on the use of force more generally. And specifically deadly force. So one talks about how the use of deadly force or the authority to use physical force as a serious responsibility should be exercised judiciously and with respect for human rights and dignity. And just a general policy statement that every person should be free from excessive use of force by officers acting under the authority of the state. Subdivision two provides that law enforcement may only use deadly force when necessary in defensive human life and when determining when that deadly force is necessary, officers that shall evaluate the situation in light of the particular circumstances of each case and use other available resources and techniques if reasonably safe and feasible to do so. Subdivision three, similar sort of broad statement that law enforcement officers shall use force only when evaluated carefully and thoroughly in a manner that reflects the gravity of that authority to use force. Subdivision four provides that the decision to by law enforcement to use force should be evaluated from the perspective of a reasonable officer in the same situation based on the totality of the circumstances. Again, that refers to that definition that we talked about earlier. And five, subdivision five, I'm on page three now lines eight to 11. This provides that a law enforcement officer who has reasonable cause to believe that the person to be arrested has committed a crime may use proportional force if necessary to affect the arrest to prevent escape or to overcome resistance. So this language also looks a little different than the language that you reviewed in H808. It specifically provides that any use of force has to be proportional and necessary for the law enforcement officer to do with a law enforcement officer needs to do to affect the arrest or to prevent escape. So I'm going to move on to subdivision C now. This is- Can I interrupt you? Because I see a hand up. Go ahead and order. Fran, I just have a quick question for section five right there. Should it be either reasonable suspicion or probable cause? Or were those accidentally mixed up or am I missing something? No. So this is really based on the California legislation. I think that you could change that to be more consistent with the way those terms are used in Vermont state law to say reasonable suspicion. Okay. I just wanted to check, thank you. So I'm going to move on to subsection C. So this is the use of deadly force. And C1 is sort of the heart of the policy here. It provides, this sets out the specific circumstances under which it is allowed for a law enforcement officer to use deadly force. So it provides that officers are justified in using deadly force, only when the officer reasonably believes based on the totality of the circumstances that such force is necessary to do one of two things. Either A, defend against an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to either the officer or another person. Or to apprehend a fleeing person for any felony that threatened or resulted in death or serious bodily injury. If that officer reasonably believes that the person will cause death or serious bodily injury to another person, unless that person knows immediately apprehended. So those are the two sets of circumstances under which law enforcement is authorized to use deadly force. Keep going to page four, subdivision two. This provides that when it's feasible, law enforcement shall, prior to using force, make reasonable efforts to notify or identify themselves as law enforcement to the person and to warn that deadly force may be used. Subdivision three provides that law enforcement shall not use deadly force against a person based on the danger that that person uses themselves. If that officer, if a reasonably, a reasonable officer, we believe that the person doesn't pose a risk of immediate injury or death to the law enforcement officer or another person. So as long as the law enforcement officer and others are safe, they are not authorized to use deadly force upon a person to protect that person from themselves. Bren, I see a hand up representative, Jim Harrison. Go right ahead. So, Bren, thank you. I keep hearing the reference to, this is based on a new California law, which some say we don't have any good experience with, but can you, I mean, what's the real difference? I mean, obviously no one wants to use force if it's not necessary, but can you put that in lay person's term as to what is this standard? How does this compare to what we currently have in law? Sure. So the current standard is an objective reasonableness standard. And the committee may recall that in the context of H808, I provided a memo that sort of compares the way this necessary standard differs from the reasonable person standard that exists in Supreme Court jurisprudence currently. So I would be happy to talk about that memo now or just refer to, if I don't know the time constraints that the committee is under, so I can, I'm happy to talk about that now or just refer the committee to that memo, which I can send to Andrea again for posting. Yeah, I would be helpful to get the memo again and refresh us. It's been a little while since we looked at that. So thank you, Brian. Sure. And I'm happy to talk about it now. It may just be a longer answer than you have time for now. I'm just not sure about time constraints. So I'll take my key from here. I'll leave that to the powers to be. And just for the record, it seems the chair of House Judiciary lowers our hands, which is a really nice service. Don't get used to it. Sorry, I couldn't resist. Martin. So without necessarily going in depth in that memo, I know that you conclude in the memo that the bill may represent an incremental shift away from our current objective, reasonableness standard. Can you just address that kind of conclusion without going through the memo entirely? And if not, then maybe we wait, but. Yes, I would say that the reason I say that is because if you look at the definitions of the bill or the definitions in the new policy, there are many references to the objectively reasonable officer. So it's described what the necessary standard is described as in the bill is very similar to the way that the US Supreme Court has described what constitutes reasonable law enforcement action. So I'll give an example that in B2, it provides that in determining whether deadly force is necessary, officers have to evaluate each situation in light of the particular circumstances of each case. And that is one of the parameters that the Graham Court puts on the reasonable officer standard is when determining whether or not an officer behaved reasonably, they look at the totality of the circumstances and the particular facts of the case. B4 provides that the decision to use force has to be evaluated from the perspective of a reasonable officer in the same situation based on the totality of the circumstances known to or perceived by the officer at the time. So because of that definition of totality of the circumstances, that means all facts that are known to that law enforcement officer at the time, including the conduct of the officer and the conduct of the subject leading up to that use of deadly force. It sort of directs, it puts some similar parameters on the necessary standard as the existing objectively reasonable standard. So I wouldn't say that the standard, the necessary standard is a total departure from what exists now in determining whether or not an officer behaved reasonably. And I guess my issue is I don't see how it really changes underlying standard at all. It throws an extra word in there, but it seems like it's the necessary, but it seems to be very close to what's already the law. But I can ask other people about that as well. But I had another question as well, which is what is the consequence if this policy is not followed by a law enforcement officer? So if it is the statewide policy, a departure from the policy could be considered category B conduct and in the unprofessional conduct chapter as we talked about before, which could lead to sanctions by the criminal justice training council. In addition, if a person filed a civil rights case that their article 11 rights were violated by a law enforcement officer, the court would look to this policy in making a determination about whether or not the officer behaved appropriately in that situation. So with that effect, does that mean they don't get qualified immunity? So no, I would say I don't necessarily think that changing the standard from an objectively reasonable standard to a necessary standard would eliminate qualified immunity for state actors, for law enforcement specifically. To go in, we could wave qualified immunity if there's a violation of a particular policy. Is that something the legislature can do? Yes, I mean, of course, you can, what you may be interested in doing is doing something similar to what Colorado has recently done, which has passed a law that permits individuals to bring claims against law enforcement officers who violate their constitutional rights. It can kind of be like a state analog to the section 1983 federal civil rights statute. And as I'm not sure we know, I'm happy to talk about 1983, which allows for a cause of action, allowing people to bring suit under the federal constitution for damages in federal court. So the state could create sort of a state analog, a state version of that civil rights statute, which would allow a person to bring suit under the Vermont constitution. Could it be brought pursuant to a violation of a policy, though, if the legislature said so? Does it have to be just a violation of a constitutional right? It has to be a violation. I mean, when I'm talking about the Colorado statute, that really set up a state analog to the 1983 section 1983. So it would be a constitutional claim. And again, the court would look to the policy in determining whether or not the officer acted in accordance with the policy and making a determination under that claim. Thanks. So we're near the end here. We've just got a couple more subdivisions here. Subdivision four essentially provides that law enforcement that nothing about the policy removes the right to self-defense of a law enforcement. The cover many times. And subdivision five provides that law enforcement shall not use a prohibited restraint on a person for any reason. And that prohibited restraint is defined earlier in the bill. And as I mentioned earlier, it's the same prohibited restraint definition that you saw in 2019. And then the second sentence of that subdivision five that's out that it's a requirement, the law enforcement has a duty to intervene when the officer observes another officer using a prohibited restraint. And the policy would take effect in October of this year. Thank you, Bryn. So any other clarifying questions from either committees on the words on the page? And then if there are no questions, we will move to hear from witnesses. All right, I don't see anybody diving for their hand. Thank you, Bryn, for the walkthrough on that. We have a couple of witnesses who have time constraints. And so the one who has the earliest departure time is Commissioner Shirling. So I'm gonna invite him to take a few minutes now to react to 119. And then Susanna Davis also has a time constraint. So I will ask her to go directly after Commissioner Shirling. So Commissioner Shirling, go ahead. Thank you. Thanks for working with the time constraint. The other body has me encumbered later this afternoon. We testified earlier in the session on 808. This has evolved a bit since 808, but at the time we testified that exploring a statewide use of force policy along with a variety of other policies that we believe should be not just models but uniformly adopted across the state was a good way to go. And thought that taking some time over the summer and working on some version of that, whether it be statutory or a statewide policy that would be adopted by law enforcement agencies was a worthy way to go. COVID then interrupted those conversations. Now we're back under different circumstances with an evolution to the language. And I think the original assessment holds that there's work to be done here, particularly in adopting a statewide standard. But again, as I testified to in 219 or a couple of components of 219, doing that with a mandate to develop the policy to be adopted without codifying the policy in statute has a variety of advantages, not the least of which is the ability to have that evolve over time. But in this particular instance, you're also dealing with an area of the law that has evolved over several decades with the courts creating all due respect to our compadres and ledged counsel to do a great job. But a memo on the constitutional overlay of use of force falls far short of the treatises that have been written on the constitutional application of force that are out there that ultimately guide how these operations work on the street on a day-to-day basis. And it is an incredibly complicated area of the law that has been well-formed over the years and now has a, at least in Vermont, has a requisite body of training and at least policy in many places that meets best practice on both a national and an international level. That is not to say, as I indicated before, that we should not adopt a statewide best practice because I don't believe that is universal everywhere in Vermont. So with that said, a quick note before I forget, I do believe that qualified immunity in the event that there is a, one of the legs of qualified immunity as I understand it is that you've got to be operating based on the reasonably adopted parameters of practice. So if you fall outside those parameters of practice, whether that is the case law or the adopted policy, then qualified immunity does not apply. So if an officer goes out and does something that is clearly against the constitutional constructs that govern the use of force and or it violates their policy, they can be found outside the bubble of qualified immunity. Qualified immunity is designed as a legal construct that's designed to insulate government officials, not just law enforcement officers from litigation in the event that they're operating within the bubble of their prescribed practice. And I'm not describing that perfectly, but that is my understanding of the way that that works. So a couple of specific observations relative to the way that 119 is crafted. Sarah, can I, excuse me, commissioner, Sarah, can I just ask a quick question just on that point that commissioner just made? I see you shaking your head even though you're on mute. So does it make a difference as far as what you just said with respect to qualified immunity on whether the policy is something that's codified in law, that it's in statutory law, as opposed to if there was a model policy that had to be adopted statewide, is there a difference in how that works as far as qualified immunity and working inside or outside the policy? Are you with us? I'm sorry, is that a, I'm not sure the question. Yeah, that was a question for you, commissioner, if, or if it's not a question for you, if it's a question for, and one of you two, I'm just kind of trying to understand, you're saying model policy, but I'm just wondering if that makes a difference as far as how the consequences of not following the policy. It would make a difference if the policy was in conflict with the legal construct. So if you had a policy that was more permissive, for example, than a, then what the fourth amendment case law says we're allowed to do, or the article 11 case law, the parameters that they set forth, then you could have differences there, I think, but as long as one flows from the other, as they're supposed to, that's the way the system is supposed to work. We are typically more restrictive in policy than the case law allows. And again, that's based on community standard, specific to Vermont. So I'm hearing that it doesn't have to be codified and statute for it to apply. I don't believe so, because if we've adopted, again, so then I'll skip to the end and say, I strongly suggest that if you're gonna continue to debate this particular bill, that you bring in a couple of very specific experts on the application of constitutional law to the use of force, not a constitutional on making air quotes, a general constitutional expert talking to someone that understands and has unpacked these various treatises on this topic in a very nuanced way. So take everything I'm saying with a grain of salt and go to one of those experts to be able to walk you through these things in greater detail if this is a direction you continue to explore. All right, Robert Clare has a question. Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Schirling, I've got a question. If you go on page two, section four about the prohibited restraint, is there any policy out there now that guides law enforcement in the use of those particular maneuvers? Yes, they're prohibited. Well, I can't speak to every, and this is a reason to go to a statewide policy. I can't speak to every policy in Vermont. I can tell you that within the Department of Public Safety and the state police that these kinds of restraints are prohibited unless a situation where lethal force was appropriate existed. And I should also take you back. I noticed in my notes, I skipped over in 219, describing what lethal force actually is because most people think of it as what you see on television, the quote unquote, we shoot to kill. Nowhere in the world does, except on television and in the movies, does shoot to kill exist. You are applying force to stop an action. In the case of lethal force, you're stopping an action that would reasonably, could reasonably create a risk of serious bodily injury or death to a person. And the force that you apply is to stop that action. The level that you are permitted to apply under the constitution, if death or serious bodily injury is a real risk, is force that could reasonably result in death or serious bodily injury to the actor you're applying the force to. So that doesn't necessarily have to be a firearm. It can be anything that is stopping that action that could reasonably end in that outcome. A use of force instructor would be able to be more articulate on that point. But so that's what we're talking about. This is, so I have to sort of disavow everything you've seen in every movie and television show for the last 50 years, because none of them come close to being accurate about what's actually permitted and under what circumstances. Okay. So if I've answered that question, I have a number of still pending points in the walkthrough. You have, thank you. I have Bob Hooper with the question and then we'll let you get back to your comments. Thank you. Sorry, Mike. Unfortunately, we have a lot of instances on the news where we see where it's not applicable to be applied. When you talk about a statewide model policing, which I assume can only be the policy statewide. And then you get down to what the reasonable officer is gonna be doing in the field. The unspoken part here is that there's a, something developed at the academy or any academy that instills that. So training is an integral part of anything we're talking about here. Yes. If you look at our, the 10 key areas of focus that we've put forth, it starts with hiring. So that's the most important thing we do. Hiring, training, policy, supervision, the selection of supervisors, oversight, community oversight, community accountability, all those things we've together to create this policy is one piece of the puzzle. It seems to be lightly covered here in this statute. Thank you very much. It does go up. So I'll skip ahead to one of my points, which is that if we change to a statutory construct, all the training that we have now will be, all is an overstatement. Much of the training that we have now will be rendered questionable because we will not actually know how the courts will apply the standard that gets adopted in statute for some period of years. It will take multiple cases on multiple different topics with multiple circumstances before we have a full body of law that allows guidance and training to really be fully flushed out. And that's the advantage to the construct we have now, which is the Fourth Amendment in Article 11 and treating any use of force as a seizure of a person under those constitutional constructs. And then if you use that as the basis, we know how to train. Then we evolve policy on top of that, that meets our current societal standard in Vermont. And so we're trying to, I think we're trying to go to the same place. We're trying to get there on a parallel path. So that was in the middle of my notes on the sort of line by line assessment. A couple of other things, just to flag and again, I would suggest getting a constitutional use of force expert to explain these in greater detail, but essentially the act as drafted summarizes the two core decisions around use of force, Graham and Gardner, but then complicates them and creates additional complexity by adding language that doesn't appear to change the outcomes, but changes the legal constructs enough that it will create havoc in training and havoc in frankly an exposure to taxpayers. It'll be a boon for trial lawyers to just have essentially create an interesting area of new litigation without any substantive changes to the outcomes of these events, which is what we're trying to get to is better outcomes, smaller numbers of use of force, fewer injuries to officers and people that we interact with and ultimately better outcomes. I don't see that the way this is constructed is going to do that, nor do I see where California is substantively going to do that either, but it remains to be seen. If the California experience does substantively change in a positive way, then I think we would be all in and say, let's mirror the good parts of what they're doing once we have some case law to go with it and we know exactly where they're headed. Additional areas of conflict, it will create confusion between some civil liability that's created here in the statute and the constitutional constructs again, because they'll be partially incongruent, but partially they'll be overlap and it will take time to flush out in the courts exactly what that means. So then creating training and creating an operational rubric for officers will be difficult to accommodate. Another area of conflict is there are two different words used in various sections immediately and imminently. They mean different things, they mean different things in courts. So there's an incongruity there. This statute appears to try to take on a sanctity of life standard versus a civil rights standard. And this is one where you'll definitely need a constitutional person to unpack further because my knowledge will be expended after the following two sentences, but the United States is a civil rights standard country. There are other countries that have adopted sanctity of human life standards, but we haven't done that. So we will have an in-state incongruity between the national standard and the state standard on how we're approaching this at kind of a macro level. And then finally, proportionality, that particular section is completely unworkable because there's no definition of proportionality and there is no way to define proportionality. It depends on an innumerable number of fact patterns and circumstances that you could not possibly flush out in a piece of legislation. That's why the courts have done such a masterful and nuanced job at giving us the case law that guides the seizure of people, the use of force, in both the Fourth Amendment case law and Article 11 case law. It's been very thoughtfully created by very thoughtful and smart jurists to be able to be applicable under a myriad of evolving circumstances. And that, if there's one piece of this puzzle that a statutory construct misses is that, is that the case law is thoughtfully delivered in a way that can be applied over literally thousands of different circumstances. And there are many components of this as drafted that don't allow for that and make it impossible for us to try to ascertain what to do under certain circumstances. So, and then by extension, train that. So, applaud the direction. The direction's absolutely right. Uniform modernized policy that meets our current community and societal standards. The mechanism, again, I believe should be a directive by the General Assembly to adopt a statewide policy, not a model that can be tweaked, but a statewide uniform use of force policy that meets certain standards. And then in the absence of doing that, pull the funding, pull the ability to go to the Academy, make an agency unable to function. I think that's a better way to go than a rigid statutory construct that's gonna give us more operational difficulty than positive outcome. Martin Lalonde has a question. Couple of questions. So how often is the state police use of force policy updated or modified given developments in the Fourth Amendment law? Multiple times per year. We engage not only legal experts here in Vermont, but we have under contract legal experts that work on a national level and they bring back things that we don't even see in the news that are happening in other places, court decisions that are happening in other places, and we tweak that on an ongoing basis. And others, if I know that you sent us the list of 10 points, if you could send or have somebody send our folks the latest use of force policy of the state police, I think that would be helpful to take a look at. One other question I have is I don't know how familiar you are with the Campaign Zero Organization, which has kind of gotten a lot of attention lately. And I don't know if that's something that you've looked at, but I've just kind of compared, for instance, South Burlington's use of force with their model policy. And it seems like, at least in South Burlington, and I assume the state police and that's why I want to look at yours as well, seems to be hitting a lot of these points in those. And I don't know if you have a, I guess I'm looking for a comment as far as how you've determined what should be part of that use of force policy. That's a great point. I am familiar with Campaign Zero. I do believe that the state police use of force policy, if not matches in every area in most it will match. And important to note, we're not just looking at legal scholars and specialists in this area, but also best practice and things that are happening with in communities, community activism, things like Campaign Zero that are bringing forward new ideas about how to conduct business and really scanning a landscape all over to find best practice. It's not, it is often not coming from inside law enforcement agencies in other places around the country. We look at other training models, like how we train doctors in trying to come up with some of the strategies for how in the future we hope to train police officers. It's really getting, we've done a much better job in the last decade or so, getting out of the bubble of this is the way policing and law enforcement works. Let's figure out, we've found ways to embrace a variety of other ways to do modernization. And this inflection point gives us the opportunity to accelerate that work and really frankly force it throughout the state. And I don't say that to disparage other agencies. Most of our agencies are relatively small. They don't have the resources to scan the landscape like the state police or Burlington or South Burlington, some of our larger size agencies. So creating a construct where there's a necessity to adopt a unified best practice, not only in use of force, but in a number of other areas is an opportunity, not a challenge. Thank you, Commissioner Scherling. I appreciate you making time to join us again this afternoon. And so at this point, we've heard walkthroughs of both 219 and 119. And so I wanna invite the next witnesses to feel free to comment on both bills, but just keeping in mind that for the purposes of legislators who are considering language, if you can just help guide us through which bill you're talking about at which time. So I'd like to invite Susanna Davis to join us now and help us understand her perspective on both of the bills that we've now heard walked through. Thank you all for having me. Thank you, Madam Chair. I would first, I have to apologize for the construction sounds that you might hear in the background. They're doing construction right across like that. So I hope that that's not too much of a distraction for you all. Second, what I have discovered in some of these conversations around public safety is that with the long list of witnesses and particularly witnesses who have deep knowledge and are able to go through the bills with you with very fine points, I find it easy to ask the members of the committees to guide my comments with questions instead of rehashing things that you've already heard. I'm happy to speak to how it impacts people of color or other related topics in that way. Thank you. Are there questions from committees, either of the committees on, okay, Martin. Of course I have questions. It seems constantly. Thanks, Susanna, for helping out. A question just on the S119, if you have any viewpoint on the approach of codifying something in statute as opposed to this concept that we've heard from the commissioner of having a unified, how did he put it, a unified statewide uniform policy? If you have any viewpoint of those two competing approaches? Yeah, I do. I have to say my answer to this is going to be highly unsatisfactory because I'm going to come down in the middle, as I tend to do. I take the commissioner's point and I respect it a lot because oftentimes we do feel constrained by the legislative process or by statutory language and it doesn't necessarily, sometimes impedes our ability to be flexible, to make needed changes, nimbly. And so I recognize that. And yet speaking from the perspective of someone who's doing racial equity work in America, I find that sometimes codifying things is a good way to make sure that they happen and give certain recourse when those bills or when those statutes are not adhered to. So I think it really depends on how much trust we have in our institutions. If we have law enforcement agencies around the state who say we will act in good faith and implement our own policies that meet the certain standards, et cetera, and if we're confident that they can do that with enough community input and with enough of an eye towards equity, then I would say personally that I would be fine with that. There are some jurisdictions around the country that I would never trust that. Those jurisdictions that I'm coming from is a perfect example. We made deals with our NYPD when they said to us, please don't force our hand with a bill. Let us do it internally and it didn't happen. And people kept getting murdered in the street by the police. So in some jurisdictions, I would say absolutely not let's codify this. I would like to believe that Vermont is different and that we can have more faith in a nimble ability by law enforcement to do that. So I guess the short answer is if we can make good on it, then I would support a non for a semi legislative response. So it seems kind of a, I mean, I agree that we should be trust but verify at a minimum looking at the approach of the commissioner having a statewide policy. Mike, I think you're need to be muted, Mike Bailey. Any event, yeah, I'm not suggesting either or either. It's kind of along the lines of having a requirement that we have in legislature of having a uniform policy and having consequences if agencies don't apply it. And then the third thing that I've been kind of poking around on if you have any input on this is making law enforcement accountable to that policy. And that's why I was talking about qualified immunity if there's some other ways to make sure that once a model or not model but statewide uniform policies put in place, it is enforceable in some manner by those affected by it. And certainly I think if this is another approach, and I'm just kind of thrown out because we don't have a whole lot of time that we're talking about these things, certainly in requiring a uniform policy, we can make sure that whoever's putting that together has the appropriate strength stakeholders and involved as well. I'm sorry, there wasn't really a question in there. I guess you... That's all right. I completely agree with everything that you've said. It is important not just that we mandate the existence of the unified policy, that it be a good policy, that it be cohesive, but that it be adhered to and that like you say, we hold those people accountable in the event that they violate such a policy and that they have the right stakeholders present in its development and reevaluation. And that's a key part I think that matters a lot here is the reevaluation. We're gonna develop solutions that feel right for us now, but in a year, in two years and five years, we might discover that it's still not quite hitting the mark. I know that the commissioner said that they revised their policy multiple times a year. And so not only implementing a good policy on the front end, but also having a system by which we can reevaluate it, I think is really important. So I would agree with you 100%. The topic of qualified immunity is a very tricky one. My part and my brain say that it's something that needs to be gotten rid of. And there's a very tiny part somewhere in here that says, well, the answer that we often hear from law enforcement is then nobody would do the job. And that is true. And yet it doesn't really feel like a good enough reason. That's my personal assessment, but I'm not in that industry. I'm not the one who's faced with the challenges of recruiting for them. So to some extent, my opinion on that is limited, but I will say that what we've seen in different jurisdictions around the country is that it has served as a barrier to real justice and it has in some way given law enforcement personnel a sense of entitlement to certain behaviors that the people they serve consider unacceptable. And having more skin in the game might remind some of those personnel that if this isn't how, you'd better be sure that this is the right way to act because you have as much writing on it as the person you're dealing with does. I hope that made sense. No, no, that did. I appreciate that. I did have a couple of other questions, but I see other people have their hands raised. So if there's still time after they're done, I'll ask those. Thank you, Martin. Jim Harrison. Thank you, Madam Chair. I can't even begin to keep up with the member from South Burlington with questions, but Suzanne, thank you for joining us. This is sort of the same line of questioning that last week, I think it was or the week before you were quoted in one of the media reports on the policing issue about it was important to go slow and get it right, not just do it for the sake of expediency, but so my question to you is, were you talking about one of the specific bills or a specific section of one of the bills that we're looking at? As you probably know, we're looking at three simultaneously here. Correct. I was speaking very generally about the approach that I have noticed, particularly since the murder of George Floyd, where a lot of white people, particularly people in positions of leadership have been mobilized and are extremely energized and wanting to act. And for a lot of people, for a lot of communities of color and their activists and allies, it feels like we're being rushed through something that we've spent so many years calling for. And so I think the concern that I and a lot of others share in that space is, are we pumping out policy to say we did it and did it quickly without getting enough input from people who don't necessarily have a direct line to government and don't necessarily find themselves in traditionally in the spaces where these decisions get made. So I wasn't speaking necessarily about any of the particular bills in this slate or any of the sections of those bills. I was speaking very generally about the approach, because another one thing that's really important, of course, is outcomes of equity, but the other part is process equity and making sure not only that we're doing something about racial inequity, but that we're doing it in a way that is inclusive of the very people on whose behalf we say we're working. Thank you very much. That's an interesting perspective. I guess sometimes politicians are like to pat themselves on the back that they did something. So I appreciate your caution. Thank you. Al Colston. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you so much, Susanna, for weighing in on this. The commissioner of Public Safety shared his thoughts about pursuing a policy such as this will create a lot of challenge to our current way of training law enforcement officers. So what would you offer? What kind of process should we consider in order to overcome that challenge so that we have effective training? You know, I like many other justice advocates have often called for better and or more training of law enforcement, but that comes with the big caveat that we can't train our way out of systemic racism. I mean, the officers who had just murdered Ray Shard Brooks had just completed a de-escalation and a use of force training this year, very recently. So, you know, to some extent, this is really important to make sure that we're able to train effectively on these new policies. And yet I think that a lot of the real change comes from creating an understanding in law enforcement that the behavior is not gonna be tolerated through clear and tangible action when it does happen. I will explain further. What I mean by that is it's one thing to train people for, you know, four hours and say, please don't do these things. And it's another thing to say, all right, you did these things and this is how seriously we take it. And to make an example, so that we can demonstrate to everybody else in the field, we really mean business. I'm not sure if this directly answers your question. I think that perhaps what you were getting at was a resourcing of training and just being able to fit in this as part of the training curriculum. Is that closer to what you were getting at? Yes, yes. Okay. Well, then I would say we should reevaluate all of our training and make sure that it's all still needed, right? I think sometimes we have a tendency to pile more training onto law enforcement. And it's important that we add for them things that they also need to learn, but also that we consider modifying, shortening or otherwise reconsidering the stuff that they're already expected to be trained on. It might mean staggering training. It might mean that academy should last longer. I mean, we point to other countries where officers have to go through two years of training, including psychology classes and other things before they can even set foot in the field, right? So I know that's not, that has not traditionally been considered feasible here in the United States, but it might be time to reconsider that because there's a big difference between outcomes in the United States around things like law enforcement and gun violence and you name it versus in other places. And I think it requires that we question the things that we have assumed were immovable objects. Thank you. One more, if I may, one more statement on that, which is again, I think that in the United States we tend to overuse law enforcement for circumstances where law enforcement is not needed. And I think that our leaders in law enforcement would agree with that. And so perhaps instead of considering how are we going to add all of these new training modules to the existing body of work for law enforcement, it might make sense to say, how can we take some of these things off of the, take this load off of law enforcement, route it to the correct professionals so that they don't have to be our everything. And I think that way we can allow for that specialization and minimize the number, minimize the risk that law enforcement is going to be deployed to a situation where they don't necessarily need to be. Thank you. I've got Barbara Rachelson and then Coach Christ. Go ahead, Barbara. Okay, maybe Barbara's having trouble getting her mutes unmuted. So coach, why don't you go ahead and unmute and ask your question and we'll come back to Barbara in a moment. Thanks, Susanna for joining us today. And our other witnesses as well. I think Susanna has raised a real critical question and flushing that out a little longer is, although we like to think we look at a broad array of ideas around changing a particular practice, sometimes we don't avail ourselves of what is real and practical, such as the notes you mentioned about progressive techniques to improving the quality of delivery of law enforcement around the world. That being said, now that you've had a chance to be with us here in Vermont for a while, if you were queen of the world, what would be your recommendation around moving forward with 219, 119 and possibly 478? Well, coach, if I were queen of the world, then, if I were queen of the world and we weren't in the middle of a major health crisis and we didn't still have black people getting murdered in the street by the government and we had infinite funds, then I would say, let's take this energy and we weren't worried about session end dates and all of that. Then I would say, let's take a little more time and for example, we're talking about whether to codify in statute versus to set guidelines and let the agencies deal with it themselves. Well, perhaps we can make this comparison more easy if we could compare an actual draft of what the policy would be instead of having a bit of a question mark in that arena, but that takes time and the kind of change that we are looking for is centuries overdue and what we don't want is to get swept up in the momentum because the rest of America is ready now. That's if I were queen of the world and all of those other things were in place. However, this is where we are and so what I would recommend is that if the legislature sees fit to pass these bills, I would ask that it remain open and ready to make needed modifications if it is shortly determined that we missed something. In other words, please don't consider the work done just because they passed. That's what I would say. And again, back to data collection, the data will tell us whether we are on the right track and so as you receive your reports from various committees, please do read them, please do assess the numbers and then recognize that if the numbers aren't trending in the direction we want, we may have to change our approach and that's gonna require more work on the backend, but it's worth it. So I guess my final part of the question then would be to our Ledge Council in a way. And with your help and the help of others is the intent wording in such a way that it is clear that this is not one and done, that there is an expectation for continued work. And so that could be that bridge that you're talking about as far as getting the depth that we need. So that's kind of back towards, it's a Bryn question and I know we have a lot of attorneys in the room and that's not a bad thing at this point. I agree, Coach, thank you for that. And I would say looking at what I think is a version of the intent wording, it does speak to this being one step. I'm looking at a particular document that's headed draft 2.1 as 219 and I'm on the second page at the top that says therefore this act represents one step in the legislature's ongoing effort to combat racial bias and increased accountability and policing. And I think that that does get at the fact that this is slow work and this is ongoing work. And again, I would defer to counsel on this but I would say that we could go further there and say this is one step and that the legislature doesn't consider this work done with the passage of this act but is committed to reviewing and reassessing our progress, et cetera. Thank you. Thank you, Barbara Rachelson. I am going to attempt to unmute you since I know that you are operating on two devices and before I go to you for your question, I just wanna remind all of the folks who are with us right now that we're gonna keep plugging through here to hear from maybe different perspectives but I also wanna make sure that you are all invited to come back and be with the committee again tomorrow from 12 to two because we know that we have other perspectives that we won't get to today. So Barbara, go ahead. Oh, now I can hear you. Oh, good. Okay, sorry. So, Susanna, I'm hearing both from you and commissioner Sherling or secretary Sherling that we might need time to develop this body camera policy. And so I'm wondering, well, one thing that may make sense is to say we're gonna put a moratorium on excessive use of force now and not have everything sort of held back by waiting until we have the body camera policy adopted. But there were two things that I think seem important to me from my life experience professionally. One is our culture will only be as good as the worst behavior we tolerate. And I think as a state and as a legislature, the clearer we can be of what behavior we will tolerate, the better it will be. To your point about, this is Vermont and we can hope for better here, sort of the other piece of wisdom that keeps coming back to me is as great as the people we get to work with right now, we should make laws based not on the people because we'll all change, but on the principle so that if the circumstances are such that we don't have that same availability to work closely together and work it out, that we've been able to put pretty clearly on what will or won't be tolerated. And I'm thinking we want law enforcement to be successful. I get the point about hiring versus training, but we already have a bunch of people hired. So unless we said, we're gonna start from scratch and we're gonna interview everybody to make sure they have that the attitude and the values that we think are so important, we're not gonna be able to do that. We can do it moving forward. But why not make it really clear about what we value and when deadly force is inappropriate, like if someone's running away and not a risk or if somebody is engaged in self-harm and when hurt somebody else. And I guess my last part of it is, does it make sense for us to spell out that we expect law enforcement to also have a duty to render medical assistance, to intervene and report. I know this bill touches on it. And to prevent provoking these kinds of situations, I just looked at the data and we had 17 police police resulted in 17 people's deaths from the year 2010 to 2020. And while that doesn't sound like a lot, it certainly is up and we don't want any of them. So it is happening in Vermont and we do need to do something now and I know it won't be perfect and just like every other law we work on, we'll tweak it. But I'm just wondering about your thoughts of my random thoughts here. Yeah, there's a lot there. I thank you for your comments. I think first you mentioned body cameras and I am just very speaking personally, not in my professional opinion, but in my personal opinion, I have extremely strong feelings about surveillance and how life in the United States has changed post 9-11 and the police state and the Nandy state. And so personally, I don't favor more cameras from the perspective of someone concerned with civil liberties. Now that aside, in a professional opinion, having to do with racial equity, it is video footage often coming from body cameras that has helped the rest of America witness atrocious behavior on the part of government actors toward people of color who otherwise would not have been believed or even known about. So for that reason, although I do have strong personal feelings about body cameras, I do think that as a measure of accountability for racial equity and policing in the country, they are at least for now, if not necessary, then at least extremely helpful in helping us to see what really happened at the time of an incident. So do I think that we should hold up other bills to wait for body cam policy? I would say no. I mean, again, my overall advice is let's get this right regardless of how long it takes. However, if we have good reforms that we can implement if the community feels good about them, if the community has been heard on them and if you all feel that it's worth going forward with them even while waiting for body cams to be fleshed out, then I would say that's appropriate in those circumstances and not to let it hold it up. You also talked a lot about setting expectations and about communicating values regardless of who is in positions of authority at any given time in the state. And I agree with all of that. It's important that we communicate our values as a state and that the intent and the spirit of legislation is maintained through the details of that legislation and that it endures. I apologize. I hope I've answered most of what you got at and I'm apologizing to both committees, but I do have to run them late for another engagement. But of course I am here at your disposal for any follow-up that you may have. I would love if you could come and join us again tomorrow from 12 to two, because I know there were a few other people who had questions. Okay, thank you. No problem, thank you. Great. So I think what I'd like to do is invite Bo Yang to join us at this point. And again, feel free to comment on both bills that we have seen a walkthrough of today. Thank you so much for the record. My name is Bo Yang and I'm the Executive Director of the Roman Human Rights Commission. And I wanna start off today by thanking all of you and just sharing how incredibly proud and grateful I am to work with the legislature that is introspective, responsive, and forward-thinking. I'd like to remind all of us that the Fair Housing Act, which is one of the most robust and comprehensive civil rights laws ever enacted happened days after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. So good laws can pass quickly. And oftentimes we are motivated to pass those good laws when a tragedy and a traumatic situation has occurred. There is no denying that the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis jilted many Americans awake to the disparate treatment that African Americans have experienced at the hands of law enforcement for generations. What is particularly compelling about that case is that Mr. Floyd was being arrested for allegedly using a $20 counterfeit bill that he didn't resist, that he didn't have any firearms on him or anything that looked like a firearm, that many individuals at the scene, including Mr. Floyd himself, asked for his life to be spared and that these officers ignored those pleas. Even more, everything was caught on video. This is what we lawyers sometimes callously refer to as the perfect plaintiff. Someone who is able to demonstrate the wrongness of the defendant's actions without being called into question himself. But you see, the wrongness of the defendant's actions is and always has been the real issue. For years when African Americans have been killed, those killings have been justified in one way or another without question. We fail to honor the dignity and humanity of the victim. We criminalize those victims before they were charged and convicted. And then we argue that they deserved what they received because they were carrying a toy that looked like a gun because they wore a hoodie, because their hands were not immediately visible, because they didn't immediately comply or follow every instruction without question. We never asked why the officer felt the need to pull the gun out in the first place. If you read the criminal complaint against the four police officers from South Minneapolis, you would find that when two of those officers first arrived on the scene, they found Mr. Floyd sitting in his vehicle and immediately they pulled out a gun on him. Now, this had not been a robbery. There was no reason to believe Mr. Floyd was armed or dangerous or violent. The first officers that appeared on the scene did not know him. So you tell me why and what reason they would have had to have pulled out a gun on a man sitting in his car for allegedly using a $20 counterfeit bill, except that he was black. Until now, we never truly examined whether use of force was necessary or excessive and if the officers were motivated by hate or bias against the victim. This is why this is a momentous occasion. Today, we begin the journey to recognize and honor the life of George Floyd and the thousands others who were also murdered but whose steps were not recorded. Through this bill and these bills, this committee and this legislature acknowledges that our standard for use of force is inadequate, that body cameras are necessary to hold officers accountable, that our criminal justice system is not just flawed but perhaps has perpetuated violence against African Americans for generations. And for all of these reasons, we support these bills and encourage you to do the same. But having said that, it is my obligation as the Executive Director of the Human Rights Commission to share that these bills fall short of the systemic changes we need to see. First, it's important to highlight that these changes to our laws presume two things. First, the presumption here is that these are preventative measures because excessive use of force has not or somehow does not occur in Vermont. And two, that the reason law enforcement officers in Vermont do not typically get charged or convicted or even terminated for excessive use of force is because the statute is somewhat unclear or too last. I wanna share something I read many years ago. It was a report by the Mullen Commission in 1994 and was concerning a police corruption in the New York City Police Department. In previous eras, police corruption often involved officers who turned a blind eye to crime. But in the 80s and 90s, those police officers in the New York City Police Department were actually committing the crimes themselves. They were stealing drugs. They were offering protection to narcotic traffickers. They were planting evidence and raiding houses. And after years and years of reports from community members, these officers were finally charged and convicted. The Mullen Commission did a two-year investigation and they published a report. And two of the things that I remember most from that report is this. The first is that they found that there was a deep rooted institutional reluctance to uncover corruption in the department. There was no accountability. The Mullen Commission recommended a special prosecutor or inspector general. And that's because you cannot rely on law enforcement to investigate and regulate themselves. There is a natural conflict of interest there. If we look at every single task force panel and council that has ever been created in Vermont to address police action, they have always involved police and law enforcement. So while I have heard and read and appreciate the 10-point plan provided by law enforcement, it does not substitute for necessary legal action and true oversight. You cannot rely on the police to watch themselves. And this is not about trust. This is about conflicts of interest. Here in Vermont, we need a civilian oversight board made up of people selected by the people, the NAACP, disability rights, migrant justice, more, with the power to review police use of force and hold them accountable through criminal prosecution and swift termination. The second thing that I remember from that Mullen Commission report was the testimony of one of the worst offending officers in the New York City Police Department. He said that when he met new officers and he wasn't quite sure whether they would be corruptible or not, he knew that they were corruptible if they were willing to accept something for free. Something as small as a cup of coffee or a meal. Now, I want that to sink in for a second because many times we think that we are different, that we are immune in Vermont from the atrocities that we see in cities like Minneapolis. We refer to these four officers as bad apples or that they are rogue or that they do not represent the masses. If reform is going to work, it must start with the truth. We are not different. We are not special. Our officers are just as capable of murder just like those four officers are in South Minneapolis. And if we don't hear and have that level of honesty and transparency, then reform is meaningless. We have yet to hear law enforcement say that what happened in Minneapolis could very well happen here. People across the state and country are calling for the police to be defended and even for the abolishment. For far too long, we have over relied on the police to respond to community issues that are beyond their capacity, mental illness, homelessness, substance use and abuse and poverty. We need to start investing resources to address these issues directly and to stop criminalizing our citizens. We have been defunding schools, public programs, governmental organizations like the Human Rights Commission for years. Maybe it's time to consider defunding the police. People are seeking radical changes because they do not have the luxury to wait another 10 years for how reform might work out. Today, I wanna lift those voices up and tell you that these bills before us are good but they are not enough and your work as legislators are not done. I would like to turn to the bills and just say that many of the suggestions that we made in the Senate were adopted. I have only two remaining recommendations. And the first is concerning body cameras. We do support the use of body cameras. They are helpful to us with the Human Rights Commission in our investigations. And I know that there are varying concerns and I agree that we need a clear model policy around the use of body cameras that perhaps those model policies can also be later codified. We also know that body cameras are not enough to stop police from acting badly. They do not, sometimes officers have them and do not turn them on but do not fully utilize them. And we recommend that there be some type of consequence connected to the failure to use body cameras when they are appropriate. The second recommendation is that these bills are missing an important cross-cultural component regarding use of force. Cultural competency is key to all forms of de-escalation. There are specific critical thinking skills that can give police officers tools to interact and communicate with people with psychiatric disabilities and non-white communities. I wanna share a story that I shared in the Senate involving another case from Minnesota. One morning in early April, in early February, an 81-year-old Asian-American grandma was in her shed she couldn't sleep. She was in her backyard and the neighbors called the police about a possible burglary suspect. The police show up, they shouted warnings in English and when they received no response they sent in their dog. And that dog viciously bit her only when they took her into custody that they realized she was 81 years old in her own shed which was in her own yard and that she had no idea they were even speaking to her. Cultural competency means that officers recognize that we have community members whose primary language is not English. Had they realized that, they might've thought of alternatives such as knocking on the door, making louder noises, even walking closer or throwing something to draw this person's attention before they used physical force. I wanna thank you all for this opportunity to speak and I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have with me. Thank you so much for sharing your perspectives. I know that we very much appreciate having you with us here today. Dr. Nesredan Longo is with us today and is not going to be able to be with us tomorrow. So unless I see people diving in to raise their little blue hand, I think I will invite Dr. Nesredan Longo to share thoughts. I have one question from Martin Lalonde and then we'll switch to the doctor. I'm just wondering if Boer is gonna be here tomorrow. I can ask questions tomorrow instead. Yep. Boer, are you gonna be with us from 12 to two tomorrow? Yes. Okay, I'll save my questions for tomorrow then. Thank you. Dr. Nesredan Longo. Good afternoon for the record. I am Dr. Aiton Nesredan Longo. I am chair of the Racial Disparities and the Criminal and Juvenile Justice Systems Advisory Panel and the co-chair of the Farron and Partial Policing Committee of the Vermont State Police. I come today really to represent what people on both of those bodies have said about both of these bills. There are, you should know, community members on both of these panels. Five on the RDAP and God knows how many on Farron and Partial and they've just chimed in. I got noticed that this meeting was happening actually less than 24 hours ago. They had less than 24 hours to comment on these bills and certainly about these incarnations of these bills. And so I would like to, I guess, start by reinforcing in fact what Susanna Davis said. With all due respect to Boer, I could also point out a lot of instances where things are made in a reactive frame of mind and have been awful. One in the state, the so-called Me Too Bill went through that was questioning about what, at that moment, what about race discrimination? What about ethnic discrimination? What about age discrimination? What about discrimination against gender and sexual minorities? And people were told, we'll do that later. And as a member of some of those communities, I personally am still waiting. So I'm not so sanguine about working in a reactive frame of mind, which frankly any therapist worth his or her salt would say, please don't do that. If you just got divorced, it's perhaps not the best time to put your dog down. What I have here are comments that are disjointed from people on both of the bodies that I represent. They are not coached necessarily in legal language. And I want to apologize on some level, except that's ridiculous. We are not all lawyers. There is a lot, I have to say before I start, there's a lot of anger here. And there's some anger that is coming directly from the racial disparities advisory panel. Some of this anger focuses on the fact that we were commissioned to write a report that was submitted in December of last year. And I have spent the last two weeks trumpeting this report rather shamelessly, like a rather used car salesman. And people look at me rather surprised, what report would that be? Well, we should read that, which is a bit frustrating, given that we broke our necks to get it done. We had a deadline of the 3rd of December of last year. A lot of what is currently going on is covered there. And it seems to us, there's really no need to reinvent the wheel. The first comments that I would like to relate come from one of the RDAP members, Rebecca Turner, who is an appellate defender in the office of the Defender General. She's curious about the training. She's curious, I guess this is in 219, where the hours of training come from? Why for? Why, how is that based? Is it based on evidence? Is there evidence that this is all is needed? That's just a question she's raising. I won't spend a lot of time on it. On data collection, again, in 219, she feels, and I would agree, we need to be able to see the raw input data, including time, place, data stop, whether a supervisor reviewed the stop as well. Reviewing raw data, let's experts such as Dr. Seguino independently analyze conclusions reached by data collectors such as CRG. We also need to be able to search the data by county and town and also by officer. Stop data may reveal certain communities and neighborhoods are being overly policed and subject to racial biases. My next comments come from James Pepper, Deputy State's Attorney, Department of State's Attorneys and Sheriffs. He says that he thinks that the bill, again, 219, has some good aspects to it, but the section that creates a crime for using a chokehold, even if done unintentionally during a struggle, scuffle, is one that the state's attorneys can't support. Chokeholds have been effectively banned in the state since the mid-1980s, and the intentional use of them for anything but self-defense or the defense of others is already criminal. He has said also that he's made his arguments on this section to the committee already and he does not feel that they have been heard. He doesn't see reason to ask me to reiterate my points except I am. He, again, feels that our report made substantive recommendations to start to deal with the much more insidious problem of pretextual racism and implicit bias that works in ways that are much more subtle throughout the criminal justice system. He stands by the report and those recommendations. Next, Jen Furpo, Training and Curriculum Development Coordinator of the Police Academy in Pittsburgh. The Academy shares the concerns of many community members that this process is moving so quickly that it is impossible to get their input in a meaningful way. There needs to be a rich and meaningful dialogue as we move forward to ensure that positive and effective change is achieved. The Academy has wanted for some time to expand training on de-escalation, fair and impartial policing, use of force and scenario-based training beyond the existing curriculum. We are actively working to develop robust professional regulation processes. Funding was requested to support these changes. Not only was that request not funded but the Academy is facing a significant budget cut in the upcoming fiscal year. Next, and this is far more wide-ranging. Another one of our members on the ARDAP is Chief Donald Stevens of the Nelhegan Band of the Kuzuk, the Abinaki Nation. Chief Stevens is frustrated. He feels, again, focusing back to the report, why did they pass Act 54 and have us put in the many hours of work along with hours of testimony if it did not matter in the end? What is the purpose of our continued service on the board if our recommendations are not taken seriously? I really do not want to serve on boards for the sake of saying we are on a board. I want to help make real meaningful changes to the system that affect disadvantaged people. It's not like I don't have plenty of things I can do. I would point out here, Chief Stevens is not someone who whines. Chief Stevens is very far from being someone who whines. He's extremely smart. He's extremely capable. He's extremely analytical. Again, he's pointing back to a lot of these issues were at least mentioned in the report and they were a starting place. There was a huge section in the report about mental illness and needing to take that away from the police. So we're all a little frustrated that we're doing this again. Many people in both the Farron and Partial Police and Committee of the State Police and the ARDAP are feeling this way. There's a sense from many people that this is all going so quickly that no one other than the legislature can have a handle on what is really taking place. And they also have said that that might have to be remembered at election time when they speak of community input. One person said, and this is really awkward to say to you and it's quite inflammatory. I should point out this woman is Caucasian. She assists gendered female. And she said, black lives seemingly may matter but white egos and careers clearly are mattering more. I would like to focus on the term reasonable again. I am an academic. I work in philosophy. That is one of the things that I do. Critical theory, textual analysis. It's a slippery term reasonable and I am not the first person to say this. This relates once again to that report submitted in December of last year, which many of you are likely tired of hearing about. It is a good read, I think, in that it makes much of what we call high impact, high discretion points of contact that citizens can have with the criminal and juvenile justice systems. Reasonable, that term is the locus of just such impact. It is culturally bound and defined. In literary theory and philosophy, we would call it contingent, which is to say that it is not stable in its meaning. It is indeed ironic, and here I am speaking of 119, that a bill that speaks to cultural sensitivity rather misses the mark in this respect. It's in fact kind of painfully ironic, in fact. There is no understanding of the culture which defines reasonableness in this document. It is simply assumed. It is assumption itself, the act of assumption that is the basis and the condition of possibility of the problem of bias. Meaning here not only changes from person to person, but also in the moment. That is what reasonable is. It is highly unstable. The question that I would put forth here is, are we really quite comfortable with using such a highly discretionary term as a foundation for deciding upon someone's continued existence and well-being? I would not be comfortable as either a citizen or as a law enforcement officer in this case. Many law enforcement officers that I knew do think a great deal. How are they to know if their bias is impacting and they will accept their bias? How are they to know if their bias is impacting a life or death decision in the heat of the moment? How is a citizen to know what definition of reasonable is being used? What culture is happening? What culture is being performed? Which culture is going to be dominant? That's really all I have. Thank you so much. I very much appreciate how responsive you are. I know that this is an uncomfortable timeline and we are doing our best to balance many different expectations of us in acting at this moment. But I certainly wanna thank you for all of the work and preparation that you've done to gather a number of different people's perspectives on these two bills and thank you for that. I'll also just mention that in the chat box for anyone on the meeting who's not listening or not watching the chat box, there is a link to the report that Dr. Nussred and Longo referenced. And so you can tap on that link and it's a quick 10 pages. Probably got a lot of good information for us to consume. So if you have a few more minutes to stick with us, I will invite committee members. If you have questions about any of the perspectives that the doctor shared with us just now, please go ahead and raise your hand. And Martin, do you wanna jump in first? Sure, if nobody else is gonna jump in first. Thank you very much doctor for your testimony and I did actually watch your testimony in front of the Senate as well. But so I do understand the concept or the concern regarding reasonableness and that's really in S1-19 is my understanding. How do we get at that? I mean, I guess I've looked at, and this is if you've been listening and I've been consistent been asking about the concept of whether we should have this uniform policy along the lines of what the commissioner, Shirling suggested versus codifying here and just looking and I've only had the opportunity to really study one such policy just happens to be South Burlington's and they seem to add a lot of the detail that one could look at to determine whether something was reasonable or not. So I guess this is becoming a leading question and I didn't mean it to be that way but are we able to get at that issue of reasonableness and cultural competency more readily in a uniform policy that has to be adopted by everybody that in South Burlington's it happens to be 25 pages opposed to just this five page bill that we're trying to capture a whole lot in that. That did seem to be more of a leading question. I apologize for that but you can just completely disagree with what I said as well, obviously. I'm actually gonna take it in another direction which is just the typical academic move. I think that the answer to your question is going to be covered frankly from consulting a great number more people. I think you actually need to take this to the community, to the communities in the plural. I think it's very, it would be very arrogant in one way for me to actually answer that in any way that would directly address the question as you framed it. I really think I have to say this is another example of why I'm saying it needs to go a little slower because I really feel like that's a question that you need buy-in for from a vaster community. In the report, there was a section that we wrote called impact upon people of color. It's quick and I can just read it here because I think it's germane in this moment. A broadly shared idea among many of the panel members was a concern with ensuring that policies being adopted in the state do not have a disproportionate impact upon people of color. One panel member pointed to the fact that often laws seem to be neutral on their face but have a disproportionate impact upon minority communities when applied. The infamous three strikes laws would be a degree just example of this. Thus the panel is concerned with conceiving of laws, I'm sorry, of strategies to track and document the racial impacts of policies being made in the state. One recent bill H 381 and act relating to racial impact statements is perhaps a step in this direction. Although there is a pervasive sense among panel members that the creation of such legislation should involve the input of communities of color and that a body such as the attorney general's panel itself. I think you see why I went there. Sure, yeah. And I guess just a follow up question. And I happen to agree with you at least certainly on 119 that going slower makes a lot more sense because we haven't gotten enough input as you're saying. I'm just wondering, of course the legislative process is in part getting input but we're time constrained and whether that's something we can continue to do in our brief recess or make it a longer period of time or again, if it's not necessarily best to have the legislature, the committees really running that as opposed to, well, it could be your organization. I mean, where's the best place to get that community input most effectively for putting together a use of force policy? You know, I have some ideas here and they're bad but I've been involved in them just because they're bad doesn't mean they can't be tweaked. They're a little crazy but I think we're at a period in time right now where we have to be a little crazy. I think all the old solutions including 1964 just haven't quite got it. So I would point out the attorney general put together a series of fora in the wake of what happened to representative Morris that took place around the state. I had the honor along with Tabitha Moore and Curtis Reed moderating these panels. We went, they're not done. Of course, nothing's done because COVID is happening but those panels were slow. They were frankly quite painful. There were several of them where I was in tears at the end but people were actually listening. Legislators showed up and said nothing. They listened. It has had some positive effects. I cannot speak to their ultimate positivity or negativity but what I can say is this is a kind of model that might be used in this regard. It's not fast. It's quite slow, in fact. Even organizing one of these things takes, I lost several of my lives being a cat. It's not easy but I'm not sure that any of this is. I'm beginning to believe that all of the easy decisions that we all make because they are familiar are not gonna work. So just one quick follow-up. I know somebody else has a question but I guess my concern is how one would merge that kind of input with the, and I agree it's complicated, the complicated constitutional background that we have with regards to searches and seizures and Fourth Amendment and such and how that can work together. And I'm not expecting an answer from you necessarily now but that's one of really a big complications in this particular area when we're talking about use of force and policing. Absolutely. I have an idea of how to deal with that. Let me know. I would suggest talking with Julio Thompson. Sure, sure. Yeah, he's next to me. All right, thank you very much. You're welcome. Mike Marwicky has a question. As soon as I figure it all out. It's on, thank you for taking the time. Absolutely, Mike. And as a Putney resident, I hear what you're saying about getting out to the people and I'm always concerned that us Southerners don't get this opportunity. So I share your suggestion that continuing this dialogue to hear from people or is the way to go and I hope we can not impose upon you but ask for your advice on how best to do that because I would think this is the way to go. I, thank you, thank you. I also, I want to also say that there is a balance here to be struck that what Boer Young is talking about, that is, it's indisputable. It's indisputable. I also think that what I'm saying is indisputable. There's got to be some midpoint here where everybody is unhappy, but everybody is productive. You see what I mean? Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Hal Colston. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a quick question. How would you equate this process you just described with a truth and reconciliation process? I think it's actually, a lot of it comes from a truth and reconciliation process. I have several friends who are in native communities up around Montreal. We have very interesting conversations about the confluences between these processes. And I am very persuaded by what they do. I am also friends with a number of people in Japan which had experience with reparations that didn't go very well. And there are now discussions culturally happening around the truth and reconciliation model. And I'm feeling, and there is a feeling in Japan as well that that is the way to go, that it has long been a way to go and that much about reparations did not, in fact, work the way they were hoping to. Thank you. You're welcome. So thank you so much for being with us again. Absolutely. That's what I see for raised hands at the moment. I would love to invite Curtis Reed to share some thoughts with us right now. We've got about 15 minutes left before we adjourn today's. And so we may not get a chance to hear all the committee's questions and follow-up, but would love to hear from Curtis Reed. Thank you. You're welcome for the record. I'm Curtis Reed, Jr., Executive Director of Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Diversity and Chair for the Vermont State Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights. I have just one simple thought. If you don't know your history, you're doomed to repeat it. A little over a decade ago, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, we issued this report on racial profiling, excuse me, racial profiling and law enforcement. And I vigorously defended a process of giving law enforcement writ large the option of opting into the recommendations. State police and City of Burlington took off and actually began implementing the recommendations out of that report. And a decade later, we still find, we still find departments across the state that haven't conformed or even tried to because they were guidelines. I am fully in favor of codifying changes that affect all law enforcement in the state that we need to bring everyone under the same umbrella operating off the same policies and practices and understandings and core values and not leave it to the goodwill or good faith of the 80 plus law enforcement agencies. So that's my only comment. If we don't know our history, we're doomed to repeat it. And I would hate for us to repeat giving law enforcement agencies the option of doing the good work, but rather legislating it. And that's it. So you have 10 minutes left. Thank you, Martin LaLonde. So, Curtis, if you could, I agree with the concept that this can't be optional that whatever the policy is for use of force, which we're talking about here, that it has to be statewide, it has to be uniform. My concern is where that policy should be developed. And just again, you've heard me earlier, just comparing the 25 page in-depth South Burlington policy looking at the one that's online for campaign zero and then looking at our five page lethal force policy. It seems that if you could comment as far as where that policy should come from, I'm trying to divide two things. There's making sure everybody follows it. And then where do we get that policy? Where do we put that policy together? Do we do it through a public outreach that we talked about a little bit? Or do we try to put something in legislation with those level of details? See, this is why I'm not a legislator because that's what you need to figure out. And from my own opinion, I think that the process that ATON outlined in terms of a collective process that involves a maximum number of stakeholders ultimately is a good thing. Whatever that outcome is, that that ought to be mandatory across the board. So we're talking a difference between what's expedient and what's durable over time. But however you get to the end, it should be mandatory for all 80 plus law enforcement agencies across the state, bar none. Thanks, thank you. Mike Perwicki has a question. Good afternoon, Curtis, good to see you. Thank you, Mike. Thanks for taking this time. I think you answered my question, but I was gonna ask about continuing this process and opening us up for more voices to be heard. Is that your suggestion? Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Curtis, for being with us. And hopefully you will be able to join us tomorrow as well. There will be other folks we hear from tomorrow, but we would also like to be able to ask you more questions if folks didn't get a chance to ask their question today. Okay, all right. Thank you very much for the opportunity. Great, thank you. So committees, I think that we will take the luxury of a five minute stretch break between now and when we go to the floor of the house, we can all pretend we're walking from committee room to the floor. And we will come back to this topic tomorrow from 12 to two and continue to hear from witnesses who we didn't get to today. And I will just say to community members out there who may wish to testify and didn't get a chance to, you can feel free to reach out to me via email or my committee assistant, Andrea Hussey via email. And we will do our best to get people in front of the committees tomorrow from 12 to two. And a quick reminder to gov ops so that I don't have to say this on the floor. We need to finish our consideration of the pay act amendment. So we may need to do that tomorrow morning in a quick committee zoom right before the floor. So just keep an eye on your email from Andrea for an invitation to that on a separate topic. So thank you all. Thank you for giving us a lot to think about. And please do join us back tomorrow for this continued conversation. Thank you.