 I like to start meetings on time, but a number of commissioners are getting out of work. And so sometimes we have to start late, such as tonight. Commissioner Co-Chair Rao is on the ferry coming over from Platsburg and should be here shortly. Commissioner Grant is on Zoom. Commissioner Comerford is ill, but should be joining us on Zoom. And I'll be looking forward to Chief Murad joining us. I believe some of the deputy chiefs are on Zoom. Is that correct, Mohamed? Okay, great. So we do have a quorum. And so I'd like to begin the meeting and I'd like to begin it with a motion to... Oh, here is Commissioner Rao, very, very good. I'd like to begin it with a motion to adopt or amend the agenda. So moved by Commissioner Oski. Seconded by Commissioner Keefe. Thank you, Commissioner Grant. All those in favor of adopting the agenda, please say aye. Aye. Great. No opposition, passes unanimously. The next item is to approve the minutes from the Police Commission Special Meeting from March 6th. Do I have a motion to adopt the minutes? So moved by Commissioner Oski. Seconded by Commissioner Rao. All those in favor, please say aye. Any opposition? Passes unanimously. Moving on to the minutes from the regular police meeting from February 28th. Is there a motion to adopt the minutes? By Commissioner Oski. Seconded by Commissioner Keefe. All those in favor, please say aye. Opposed? Opposed? Passes unanimously. I'd like to then move on to item 3.01. We typically have public comment as the first item on our agenda after the minutes. However, we have a policy that we need to review tonight. Welcome, Chief Murad. So let me explain a little bit what's going on here. The CNA report that reviewed the police department and did an analysis made a variety of recommendations. And one of those was to revise the DD-03 Department Directive 3, which is related to fair and impartial policing. So the process in this case was that the police department made those revisions and it now comes to the commission to review and approve. And as part of that process and at the recommendation of CNA, we have reached out to various stakeholders to review those recommendations. And I'm gonna just describe what the recommendations were. It asked that BPD consider adopting cultural competency training to be added to the directive, to add language that children or family members should not be relied on to provide interpretation services for those who are not English speakers. And in particular, especially added that there should be examples provided of biased policing to help supervisors identify that. And so we have two speakers, two people that we've reached out to provide input and welcome Shannon Trammell who is on Zoom and who has been shepherding this process for BPD. We have Mia Schultz who is the president of the NAACP from Rutland. And we have Jeffrey Jones who is a former Vermont state trooper. We have sought input also from Robert Appel who is a civil rights attorney. I don't see him here and we may get written comments later on. But because they both have commitments, we move this item to the front of the agenda and as soon as we're done with this we'll have public comment. So I'd like to call on Mia Schultz. Thank you, Mia so much for joining us. As I mentioned, she is head of the NAACP in Rutland has been working on these issues quite a bit. So welcome and we look forward to hearing your comments. Thank you. I will be candid with you. I don't have all of the information about the policy themselves. I do know that I looked at some of the information that was provided to me and I just have comments in general about some of the FIP practices that I saw. So I'd just like to talk about that and in general would be great to see. So I apologize in ahead of time that I have to leave early and that I might not be as prepared as maybe I would like to be in. But again, my name is Mia Schultz and I am the president of the Rutland Area NAACP and the NAACP is the largest civil rights organization in this nation. I'm proud to be part of the advancement of a more just society. And I've been a leading voice in efforts to reform policing practices all across Vermont working tirelessly to ensure that law enforcement agencies are held accountable for their actions and that they are transparent in their interactions with communities of color. And to that end, I've been casually watching what's happening in Burlington. I understand that black people in particular only constitute 6.2% of the population and they account for 21% of the police department's arrests and 36% of the police officers used forced upon them, forced on them, and that's that 2021 data that I'm sure you're all aware of. I've also been aware that the police department saw a decline in use of force, for example, over the past decade, but in instances where officers use force on black people they have proportionately increased in recent years. And I just actually perused some of the most recent use of force reports that were monthly, I believe, and there seems to be quite a few interactions that use some force with black people and the wording is careful in terms of the language and how they perceive contact. So when a department has such a history like the one that we have, there is in Burlington, it gives me pause and it heightens some suspicion. And those suspicions are certainly reinforced when I just saw that the department's most recent report for fair and impartial training indicated that it deemed watching the docu-series amend on Netflix as appropriate fair and impartial training. I'd be glad if I'm incorrect in understanding that. Let me be clear that it is completely inappropriate and unacceptable to watch a series as fair and impartial police training. While that docu-series is definitely powerful and emotional and examines the struggle for racial justice in America, it's certainly not meant to serve as a tool for law enforcement training. And those ideas and perspectives are certainly complex and nuanced and they simply cannot be condensed into simplistic training for police officers. Police training must be grounded in objective research, evidence-based practices, a deep understanding of the complexities of policing in diverse communities and it must be designed to promote public safety and protect the rights of all citizens regardless of their race or ethnicities. So we urge law enforcement agencies to recognize, are you all to recognize how that maybe watching that is counterproductive as a police training tool? Instead, I would love to see you seek out comprehensive and evidence-based training programs that really address these complex issues of racial justice and policing in a fair and impartial manner. And so I will hope this commission takes urgent action in addressing those, adopt some of those recommendations that I heard just listed. Those sound like great and be great additions to the policy. Again, I have not read it in complete, completely, but I do know that if it includes only training around a docu-series, it certainly needs some adjustment. It requires a fundamental shift in the way that we see law enforcement and how it's operated, particularly in Burlington, the United States and recognize the ongoing struggles for racial justice and equality. And I just came here to express that to you to let you know that there are many people and organizations throughout this state, including the Rutland Area NAACP that are looking at Burlington, our largest city in the state to do better, to move away from the performance, to be the model of reformation, to honor the commitments of racial justice that was made not too long ago and to honor that inclusion and that means not targeting people of color and policing and developing policies that enforce that and hold accountability to all involved. Thank you very much, Mia. I appreciate it. And just by way of information, I did wanna point out that in fact, the department is engaged with the Center for Policing Equity Forward Training. And in fact, the chief is, I believe it's in the chief's report tonight and he'll discuss that. So there is more extensive training at something we're all very interested in and I'm sure we'll hear a bit more from Chief Murad. Later on with regard to that. Though, thank you very much, Mia, for being here and taking the time to look at that. Thank you. Thanks. I'm gonna just kind of engage in a conversation here if I might. One of the communications between Shannon and I with regard to the CNA recommendations was around the issue of providing examples of bias. And I had a misunderstanding with her. I had thought that she was going to, they were gonna be included in this document and that was why we invited people to comment on them. And she in fact was looking to us to seek out stakeholders to provide that. But we have agreed that she and Chief Murad will be speaking with the Center for Policing Equity to work on those examples. So this policy will be coming back to the commission once BPD works with CPE to provide those specific recommendations. I'd like to call on Jeff Jones, who is, as I mentioned, a former state trooper. He's on the Vermont State Police, Fair and Impartial Policing Committee and a number of other committees around policing. So welcome, Jeff, and thanks for taking the time. Thank you. I share perhaps a different perspective than many on the board, but that's only apparent. I'm also on the board of the ACLU. I traveled to 30 semi-countries for the United States doing counter-surveillance. I was the first black police officer in Vermont as a state trooper. And having come to Williston Barracks halfway through my career, I worked pretty closely with the then Burlington Police Department. I'm not here to throw stones, but I do perceive a problem. And I'm not sure where the problem extends from to the department. I think the department's done a tremendous job in the fact that the Burlington of 40 years ago is not the Burlington of now. Ethnically, the challenges are great. I can quite remember being taught, being told quite strongly that how an American gestures people to come here by the girth as I was working with is the kind of thing that gets people killed and that you need to gesture with one finger. That's how bizarre and how dangerous making ethnical decisions or assumptions comes from. And I put that out not, it's a different city. And I think more is required of police understanding, police commitment to the fact that it's now a world city. And I think they've done a good job except for the disparities and the disparities. I don't know how you talk your way out of it. And so I'll just say that if like one of the cities in Vermont, they stop people of color for no reason other than their people of color and then their situation is such that, well, look at the statistics. I can remember somebody who moved right up to the state police to officer Stas. And I sitting late at night on route four, totally bored. And so we had a discussion about how many black German built sports cars at three in the morning. Well, I find on Friday night that are going over 100 miles an hour. And both of us grabbed one in 15 minutes because they were all headed up to Killington and both of those cars had to open them and all of those cars were white. So what I'm saying is the assumption that enables you to make a stop or a shakedown on the street is not indicative of the overarching criminal situation. And that's all I've got to say really. And I, as I say, I did a full tour with the state police did a large tour with counter surveillance and I'm not here to criticize. I think this, as I say, Burlington as a whole has done a tremendous job, the Burlington police in adjusting to a world city as opposed to what it was when I first came on. Thank you very much, Jeff. I appreciate it, appreciate your input. I'd like to turn to commissioners to see if you have any. So Shannon, we agreed that we would give you some specific feedback right now and then we would review this, a revised version. So I'd like to see if commissioners have any specific comments or suggestions for changes to this document, to this revised DD03. Okay, well, I do. So I don't know, Chief Murat, if you have a copy of it in front of you. Shannon does, but I think it'd be straightforward. So Shannon, under, some of these are just minor details, but I think just this is an opportunity to fix it. So under the policy section two, under section C, it lists a variety of personal characteristics to be concerned about citizenship, immigration status, national origin, race and ethnicity. I think in order to be consistent with what is below for personal characteristics, you also want to add gender, gender identity and sexual orientation. Under definitions, part D, reasonable suspicion, and this is something I'd like to ask Chief Murat, you know, his thoughts on it, I'll just give you my thoughts and just, this is a suggestion. And that is that it says reasonable suspicion, suspicion for which an officer can articulate factual reasons, but there's, that does not need to rise to the level of probable cause. I would just delete not need to, so it should just say does not rise to the level of probable cause. Under probable cause, I might just suggest that you indicate that this is a higher standard than reasonable suspicion. There is a place here that you refer to the council, I think you probably want to spell out the Vermont Criminal Justice Council. And further down, the name has changed, so you have Vermont Criminal Justice Training Council, you just want to delete training. And those are really just the sort of, some basic editorial comments. Do any other commissioners have any suggestions or comments? Nobody else. Shannon, I think that's it then and we'll wait and hopefully for the next meeting we'll have the revised version with the examples that we can review. Excellent, thank you. Just for clarification, are you reviewing and approving 43 today? We are, so sorry. Okay, excellent. No worries. I'm sorry to tie you up. That's okay, no, you're okay, just to make sure. I also, if I may make a comment about the discussion about Netflix as a training video. I mean, I think that, I actually think it's valuable in my conversations with police chiefs in other areas is that one of the things that's important is for us to all be, have a greater understanding of our racial history. So I think chief mirad that it's commendable that you're using that as a training tool. And I wouldn't suggest something different than that. I think that's what needs is a more comprehensive approach to understanding race issues in the United States. So okay. So let's move on to public comment. Is there anybody from the public that would like to speak? Romeo von Herrmann from please introduce yourself and welcome. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I just wanted to highlight something that I thought worth mentioning, which I think the department is already started in doing so. That is the public information and community engagement coordinator officer that is engaged in assisting the department to have much more direct engagement with the community and help the trust building between the community and the police department. In so far as to say that I'm hoping that the department will expedite in finding somebody who looks like the community to be in that position and be in the department at the same time, but also somebody that has the pedigree of knowing all parts of the community, their needs, their concerns. What other department is lacking in terms of training? I would go in as far as saying, such as implicit bias training and human rights training and the New American communities, African American communities, the LGBTQI plus communities. So somebody who's well versed with all the aspect of community relationship development because in truth, there is a lacking of trust building between the community and the department. That's not to say that the department is solely responsible for that. It is just the way things worked out for the past multiple years and decades and so. So I would hope that the acting chief and the department as well as the union for the police department will seize the moment because I believe that we are at an inflection point here in the city and that this will be the chance for the department to meet that moment in bringing in folks in and not waiting for folks to come to the department but rather department going to the city and the communities and the neighborhoods and so on and so forth. So this past Christmas, when there was the Christmas lighting, I've seen department members walking around interacting with the community members and so on and so forth. That gave me some level of reassurance because I really wanna see more of the department members getting out of their cars and meeting up the folks, talking to them how they're doing, how's life going on, beyond just responding to an issue because trust is based on how much you relate to the other human being and how you listen to them, what their concerns are, but also just in their general life without necessarily having to put into a bureaucratic stance in front of them. So in short, all I wanna say is that I'm hoping that the department will expedite in getting a person for that post and any relevant post associated with rebuilding the trust between the community and the police department. And I'm hoping that both the union, community stakeholders, the city council, the commission here and the department will create an atmosphere where everybody takes a moment to seize the time. And that come in about a year from now that we'd be able to reflect and look at it and say, hey, you know what? We were able to achieve that and there's an achieving timeline that we can look back and say, this is what we've done thus far and this is where we need to go as far as the community and the department relationship is concerned. So I feel hopeful for the future of our city. I feel that the more that we have a very diverse members of our community involved in this type of engagement between department members as well as department unions, organizations, public civic engagement groups and so on and so forth, the merrier, I think. And so in short, I just wanna say thank you to the work that you all do as well as to the service that the department members provide to our city as well. So thank you. Thanks very much, Roy. Yes, thank you. And if you would just introduce yourselves and then, thanks. Thank you. My name is Jake Schumann. I am a resident of Ward One. And so I have two items that I'd like to say tonight. So the first is in reference to agenda item four. At the March... Your microphone. Oh, okay. Can you hear me now? Yeah, there we go. All right, so the first comment I'd like to make is in reference to agenda item four. There was a suggestion. I believe it was by Councillor Hightower, but I might not be correct on that. At the Ward One NPA on March 8th, the NPA meeting was also focused as agenda item four is on how to encourage more participation in the proceedings. And the suggestion that was put forward was to craft an agenda item for each meeting that is specifically intended to facilitate public discussion. So I'd just like to reiterate that. I think that's an idea that was interesting and resonated with me and might be worth consideration. But to that end, I guess I'd also like to say that the agenda today and the agenda at the last police commission meeting, I think was very refreshing in the topics that were put on the agenda and the discussion that it facilitates. So I wanna commend y'all for putting together an agenda that I think is really moving the commission in the right direction. So the other item I wanted to speak about, excuse me, is about the departure of commissioner Grant. Milo and I first met in 2012. I was working at the polling place in Ward Three at the newly named Sustainability Academy. And I checked in Milo at the check-in table for voting and I said, I still remember it. I said, wow, your name actually is Milo Grant. I love your radio show and I think that you've got a great DJ name. So I've known about Milo in the community for a very long time, but since joining the commission, we have really connected over the past several years around the work of the police commission and I've seen the journey that she's on and I really commend the work that she's done. I think that we are very lucky as a city to be gaining her as a city counselor, but I think it's really unfortunate that we are losing her as a police commissioner. So I just want to note the milestone of this meeting as commissioner Grant's last meeting and say job well done and thank you for your service. Thank you, Jake. Yes, please come forward. I need the glasses because I'm gonna read. Good evening. My name is Scott Waterman, resident of Ward Four. I'm a supporter of all professional law enforcement officers who continue to do the difficult work of public safety in the face of increasing challenges and vociferous public debate. Why am I speaking here? To address a worry I have about the ongoing issues reflected in our recent town meeting day vote, media and social media conversations and many of the opinions I've seen and heard expressed about policing leading up to the vote and ballot item number seven. While I'm heartened, strong word, that the ballot question did not pass, I'm troubled that I've heard little public comments since the vote from the mayor, the acting chief, the police commission, acknowledging the hard work of a group of public residents on the ballot question and the broader public support for it. Well, I think there were significant problems with what was being proposed. I don't think the work was misguided or inappropriate, perhaps only single-minded. I also hope that our city leaders understand that many who voted against ballot item number seven did so despite the belief the proposal contained valuable ideas. We should all agree that the issues raised around police accountability, training, transparency and leadership are real. Past incidents in Burlington involving officers and leaders have illustrated this. Well, ballot item number seven seemed to ignore was the existence of ongoing work to address these concerns and that the mayor, the police commission and acting chief Murad all believe improvement is needed. So what's missing? In my opinion, it's outreach. What's missing is an open, ongoing conversation between our leaders and the general public in accessible and consumable forum, not just in our echo chambers that seem to define us today. What's missing is the public awareness of these ongoing efforts like today that could decrease the polarization and mistrust of the police department that resulted partly in ballot item number seven. What's missing is a narrative that can engage our citizens and inform them about all your hard work. Currently, that story is hard to find. It took me a while to find the agenda for tonight's meeting. Unless your story can reach those who haven't heard or choose not to listen, our polarized discussions will continue. I highly encourage Mayor Weinberger, active chief Murad and this police commission to not only maintain your forward momentum addressing public concerns around fair and impartial policing, implicit and explicit bias, cultural competency, transparency and accountability, but to also publicly embrace the ongoing conversation and sentiment expressed in ballot item number seven. Make that conversation your own. Embrace the idea of welcoming all into the dialogue and making sure all have access to it. While this has not changed, while this will not change all minds, we'll meet your real obligation to be informative to us, the citizens. Don't fall back on the idea that a public meeting is enough. Clearly it isn't. Most importantly, show all the citizens of Burlington that this administration and this police department is working hard to create and deploy an empathetic, modern, well-trained police force dedicated to the safety and security of all Burlingtonians. That force should reflect all its citizens, but without broad public support that your outreach could create will be challenging at best to build that representative force. Finally, tell us, show us, encourage us how you're doing this. All Burlingtonians know your work, ensure all Burlingtonians know you're working to become the 21st century police force that we all want and deserve. Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Yes. My name is Annie Lawson. I live in Board 4. I wanna start by thanking everybody for the work that you do. I think that this work is so important. I imagine it takes many, many hours of your week and I'm grateful to all of you for being here. I wanted to speak to agenda item, I think it's number three, around a discussion of mechanisms for input into a charter change around the oversight role of the police commission. And I'm coming to speak tonight as somebody who was involved in organizing around ballot item number seven. And in that work, I spent many hours talking with community members and hearing their thoughts about police and in particular matters of accountability and transparency. And I heard from a lot of voters and a lot of community members that they feel that this could be an appropriate site for that work to happen. I think a lot of folks were like, well, the police commission can do that. I know that right now there's a limitation to the actual power that you have when it comes to accountability and oversight. And as you are considering ways to give input into revising that part of your role, I wanna share that many voters would support more oversight from this body. And many, many voters are strongly in support of more accountability and more transparency into the work that BPD does and more accountability to the community. I hope that you'll consider all the mechanisms that you have at your disposal and do so with the knowledge that the community supports you. Thank you. Thanks very much. Is there comments from any other members of the community? Thank you. My name is Farid Munarsha, resident of Ward 5. She's also part of the campaign for people for police accountability. I wanna thank Commissioner Grant for her services. I felt really, we were really lucky to have her on the commission. And I hope that she will be even better. The city council, although I'm sure we will miss her as a commissioner here, so I hope somebody will fill that role. I also wanna echo what the previous speakers have said about the need for accountability, just because question seven was defeated, doesn't mean then like the work stops. Anything we now have 3,000 people that we can use as a base for more charter chains that we see is necessary. One of the bigger misinformation that was spreading around was this notion that the proposed body would be unprecedented in its power to overrule the chief's disciplinary decision, which in fact, that's not true. I mean, you guys have that power. You can actually already overrule the chief's decision in discipline of officers, but the fact that it can only be in response to the grievance puts the commissioner in the corner of the police union, which just even putting aside the problematic nature of the FOP as a bright wing organization, like that just creates this conflict of interest. I do think that there needs to be a charter change in addition to all the wonderful work that you're doing and all the progress that's been made. And I would like to propose looking at the way, the fire department disciplinary process works and that the city council will have the ultimate authority on discipline matters. And I don't see why the, you know, if the firefighters union can live with that, surely the officers association can also live with that. So please consider that looking at the charter language there. Thank you. Thank you very much, Reid. Are there any other comments? Yes, thank you. My name is Lee Morgan. My pronouns are they them. I live in Ward seven. So I am also on the steering committee of the wards four and seven NPA. And we were discussing, or we had actually counselor Sarah Carpenter suggests at our last meeting that we consider doing a meeting dedicated to a conversation on public safety, which I think is gonna happen at least for our NPA. I think it might happen for others. So I would encourage you folks to stay plugged into that. I think an NPA conversation is huge because just looking at the election results, it varies depending on what ward you're in. So my Ward Ward seven voted down ballot, ballot item number seven very, very strongly. Well, other boards were different margins. So it's, I think it just really goes to speak that whatever area of the city you're in, you're gonna have a different experience with public safety, just the area. And then also your own personal background, whether you yourself have had law enforcement interactions or professional experience or not, I mean, and I can say living in Ward seven, the public safety issues we experience in Ward seven are very, very different from downtown or the old North end. So you were just, we're gonna just have a different experience and advice. So I hope that each NPA will take that suggestion. I think it's a strong possibility and look forward to seeing you folks at some NPA meetings. I know commissioner Grant, that's been something that you've been involved in. And yeah, and I'll email you folks and let you know when the wards four and seven discussion is gonna be happening and I'll email the chief as well. We'll have to have you there potentially. Great, all right, thanks. Thank you very much, thanks. Is there any other, anyone else would like to speak? Okay, thank you so much. And just to say that I think commissioners would welcome going to NPAs and if we are invited, we would be happy to be there, thank you. So that closes that item on the agenda. We just have someone online, I'll speak. Okay, oh, sorry, thank you, Mohamed. So Amy Malonezki, I was able to find you and able to do a microphone here, able to speak now. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, thank you. Oh, perfect, thank you. Okay, so I'm Amy Malonezki. I live in Ward One, I'm a white cis woman and I'm speaking today as a reminder to city leadership and acting chief that Burlington is watching. Almost 40% of Burlington voted yes on seven despite thousands of dollars of misinformation mailed to their doors. We're watching and we're not going away. We deserve public safety for everyone and accountability for everyone. I hope that city leadership honors their commitments and are cooperative with the police commission, which I know has been desperately trying to make progress on police accountability. And I know much of what I'm about to say is already on the minds of these commissioners, but I wanna be one more voice reiterating this, which is that a core part of ballot item number seven was five pillars of accountability for an oversight body. And this guidance was born from the black lead battery park movement. And I think it's important because solutions that are proposed that don't meet these pillars are more performative and not as accountable. So the first pillar being independence, the ability to function entirely independent of the Burlington police department with independent resources and legal counsel. The second pillar being investigatory power, which is the ability to conduct independent investigations including the ability to subpoena witnesses and documents and access to all records of the police department with the agency's full cooperation. The third pillar being disciplinary power, which is the ability to hire, fire and discipline police officers. The fourth pillar being representation back to the extent possible, the majority of the board should have diverse and representative membership. And five being transparency, having full transparency to the public of which it serves, including oversight of a comprehensive complaint process. So besides just like resurfacing those pillars, I also, as folks are moving forward on reforming what oversight looks like, I wanna keep this question at the front. How might the police commission and city leadership ensure they are centering the voices of those who are the most pleased? And this question seems to be on the mind of many folks speaking at public forum tonight. So I'm just an echo. And lastly, I want to express some heart deep, ever flowing gratitude for you Commissioner Grant. Thank you Milo, thank you Milo, you are a true treasure. That's all. I really didn't wanna start crying this early in the meeting, but thank you. Mohamed, is there anybody else online? Okay, that then closes public comment and the next item on our agenda is the chief's report. Thanks Chief Murad. Thank you Commissioner Seguino. So thanks, I've prepared this. Thank you Mohamed. We'll go through this relatively quickly I hope. And then move on to something that you'd requested which was a discussion of this. So I'll come back to this slide which is about the fair and impartial policing. We had an airport incident earlier this month. A plane was discovered to have a threat on board just prior to its landing. It landed, we worked with a number of partners. Our job as the Burlington Police Department in an incident like this is mostly oriented around security and escort for people who are not cleared to be in the airport. And we worked with federal partners, the TSA and the FBI and ultimately also of course great partners with the state police in the South Burlington Police Department for a resolution that resulted in safe passengers and a safe airplane and the safe airport. Next please. Thank you. We did some equipment training. We had a number of deployments this month of our emergency response vehicle and our emergency response unit and our crisis negotiations unit. Most of those occasions press releases but this is our crisis negotiations unit training with something called a throw phone. We do a lot of training with these teams and we are called on by a lot of our neighboring agencies to augment their resources when they run into situations that meet our expertise and our specialized tools and tactics. And there are links in this document. It's published both on the board docs under this police commission meeting and on the Burlington Police Department's web page in the city of Burlington website. And you can click on these links to see for example a document about the ERV. The next please. Thank you. We created a new video around use of force tactics that we are really pioneering here in the state. The use of Jiu Jitsu is something that other departments have studied. There are some real demonstrations of efficacy in other departments around reduced injury for officers and subjects alike. It diminishes the use of strikes which can be harmful to both parties and emphasizes grappling and other control holds. It's largely created by Sergio Caldieri who is the officer in the center there and the video is available on our YouTube site. And in addition, there is of course a full landing page on use of force that characterizes all of our monthly incidents, talks about leads to video for incidents that involve tools or serious injury or occasion significant public concern and also has a flow chart for how we process and review all incidents and data on those as well. Next please. We brought aboard several new police officers. In February, they are now down at the police academy. We are also working hard on other positions. If you can go to the next page please. We're still at 65 total, 55 are available. And that is still 22 officers on patrol. But once those three officers who are currently on FTO get off, that'll be a little higher. And once the six officers, it's actually five now. One was injured, he's still an employee and we're eager to see him get rehabilitated and rejoin the next academy class. But once the five who are currently in the police academy join us, that moves up to 30 and we get closer to the numbers that we need. We anticipate other departures as well. We're doing what we can to try to incentivize retention. Next please. Thank you. And part of retention is this. And growth is this. This is a slide that I put in almost every month simply because anybody who comes to this may be seeing it for the first time and not have been here for the February presentation or the April presentation of last year, what have you. But this is our starting pay. Top pay when this current contract matures is 100 for non-supervisory officers. And we do have a $15,000 hiring bonus currently. Next please. We're also of course building unique roles, things that no other department in the state has. And that includes our community service officers and our CSLs. We currently have five CSLs. Actually we have six as of today. Excuse me, we have five plus a CSS, that's the supervisor, which is Lacey Smith. We have another in the hopper. We have a couple of different community service officers ready in background. So I actually think that number five is now six for the CSOs, but it's five for the CSLs still. We're authorized to have six and should quite soon. Our revised priority response plan, which contextualizes the data that follows. Next page please. Incident volume, it's up this year. It's up quite a bit. It's up actually, it's up 24% over last year at this time. It's up 37% over 2021. And it is down however from those years preceding. It should be noted that March 15th was the very beginning of the pandemic in 2020. And so that data for March, we will soon see this year overtake 2020 as well as 2021 and 2022. It just doesn't happen at this point because the pandemic had not yet begun. Next please. These are selected incidents. We'll see that there are some trends that are going in the right direction. Aggravated assault is one. We'll see some trends that are going, continuing to go in the wrong direction. And that includes aggregated larceny and vehicle thefts. Mental health is down a little bit, but it's basically where it was last year, which was the highest year that we'd ever seen. Next please. This is priority one incidents. We see that graphic is, you know, where it's high on the high end, you can see that 2022, which is the green line ended far and away higher than any of the previous years since 2017. 2023 right now is on track, but it's early to tell where in a very early stage, difficult to tell a lot of noise in this priority one incident chart. Next please. Not a lot of noise in this one unfortunately. This is overdoses. These are not fatal overdoses. These are any overdose to which officers respond that are reported to the police and entered into our Valcor system. You can see that on June 1st of 2022, something extreme happened. We're not entirely certain what it is. We can't find a direct correlation to that. The hotel program may have been contributory, but it did not end on June 1st. It was actually at the end of that month, but something happens on June 1st of 2022 and it takes off like a rocket. This year is higher, not higher in total already, but it's far, far higher than any previous year and it is tremendously, tremendously alarming. Next please. So I will move on to discussion of that fair and impartial slide. Can you go back to that one? I'm sorry. It's the second slide. The number two, the second slide, the fair and impartial policing slide. Thank you, that one right there. So this is the fair and impartial policing training. There are a number of links in this. So this past month and into April, we have been conducting an innovative, facilitated training with the Center for Policing Equity, which is a nationally recognized non-profit. It was founded by then Denver Police Department Division Chief Tracy Keesey and Professor Phil Goff. I know both Chief Keesey and Professor Goff. I took implicit bias training with Phil Goff and I worked very closely with Tracy Keesey at the NYPD when she was the Deputy Commissioner of Training and I was an Assistant Commissioner under then Police Commissioner Bill Bratton who brought Tracy into the Police Department. I'm really eager to be able to work with them again now. According to Vermont's Rule 13, the police have to complete fair and impartial policing training biannually. That is every two years. And according to Burlington's June 2020 racial justice resolution, city employees have to complete training about the roots of systemic oppression biannually that is twice a year. So as per Rule 13 for calendar 2023, all level three police officers, and that's the only kind Burlington has. We do not have part time level two or level one police officers. All level three police officers are required to complete 30 hours of in-service training and that training has to include a fair and impartial policing section that's done in person. And the fair and impartial policing section must include components that are identified in 20 VSA 2366. And as per the city's 2020 resolution, the city staff must complete trainings or events that explore the roots, impact and solutions to systemic oppression including but not limited to systemic racism two times per year. The resolution goes on to say that those trainings should ensure proactive confrontation of the role of systemic state sanctioned oppression. So in 2021, we satisfied both of these requirements through a multi-session iterative training that we did with trustee loving. In 2022, the city did training through the Office of Racial Equity, Inclusion and Belonging or REIB. And shift workers were scheduled to begin that training, but the REIB experienced some staffing changes that precluded shift workers from getting that training in 2022. And as a result, I engaged CPE for this. CPE had also been on the Tongues of the Police Commission through your recommendations. But I went to Director Keesey to I still call her Deputy Commissioner Keesey. I saw her again in October at the IACP and began putting together this plan. And since last year, of course, REIB has a great new leader. Kim Carson is the new director there. This training plan was shared with her. She engaged with John Monahan, who was the person from CPE doing the training and discussed sort of how to help shape the training with John. So although I've noted that this training is required, we could not approach it as a check the box endeavor. It was incumbent on the police department to engage with this. And we know that across society, there are persistent racial disparities. They are included but not limited to healthcare outcomes and home ownership and educational access and attainment and income and wealth. Now, disparity does not automatically equal bias, but there should be no doubt that four centuries of inequality plays a huge role. And that history is part of our inheritance as Americans and as cops. And because there are disparities in national police metrics too, and here in Burlington, disparities in arrest rates and use of force numbers, we cannot be complacent in confronting or examining that even if, again, disparity does not automatically equal bias. And I believe that this training is going to help the department do that. The six episode Netflix docu-series amend the fight for America chronicles a historical perspective on the struggle for citizenship due process and equal rights. And it does this through the lens of the United States Constitution's 14th Amendment. The series presents stories and legislation and court rulings that ultimately led to the adoption of the 14th and 19th amendments to the Constitution. CPE's trainers, with whom I work, they have policing backgrounds. They came to Burlington in person. And over two days per group, we divided the entire department into four groups. Each of those groups went through two days of facilitated viewings of the six episodes and then guided discussion with these trainers. And the goal was to learn about how systems of oppression hindered the extension of equal citizenship and due process to black people, to women, to immigrants, to members of the LGBTQ community. And we also are exploring different views of the Constitution and the founding of the United States and how those influence behavior and how those differing views affect police legitimacy. So I watched the series after doing so. I proposed this training model to Dr. Kesey and her team. And among several aspects of the series, what I was intrigued by was its emphasis on due process. And I believe that was a way of finding something that would resonate with the officers because it's sometimes something that the officers fear they will not be afforded in various ways and at various times. And the proper application of due process is the foundation of fairness. And it's not always been applied equally to all Americans. In some cases, it is still not. There were parts of the training and the episodes that make the viewers that is employees of the police department as Americans but also as members of the police department uncomfortable. And I encouraged officers not to shy away from that. There were parts of those episodes that they would have disagreed with, including what some of the featured speakers say. And I told them not to shy away from that as well. Disagreement is allowed. Robust, pointed conversations were encouraged but they had to be professional and civil. And nevertheless, the more engaged, the more effective these sessions would be. So this was mandatory training. We are half done with it. That is two of the four groups of the department have conducted it. If officers miss it, they have to make up for it because it does affect their certification. And what I said in sharing this plan with the police department was that back in January as I prepared an annual internal message for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I spent part of that day reading. I read Langston Hughes and Theme for English Bee. I read Frederick Douglass' What to the Slave is the Fourth of July and James Baldwin's Journey to Atlanta. But I also went to YouTube and I watched again a speech from 2008 given in Philadelphia that has always moved me. Then presidential candidate Barack Obama's A More Perfect Union is a tribute to the American experiment. And it explicitly rejects what he called, and I quote, a profoundly distorted view of this country, a view that sees white racism as endemic and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America. What is right, and I end the quote there, what is right, said candidate Obama, is that America can change, I quote him again, America can change, that is the true genius of this nation. I believe that. I think that constitutional amendments like the 14th and the 19th are proof. And on a personal level, I believe this too. But personal change doesn't come from a two thirds majority of Congress proposing in a three fourths majority of the state's ratifying as it does for amend. On an individual level, changing and improving comes from learning. And I told the employees of the police department that I hope that they would do that together. I am gratified to say that the two trainers who attended, John Monahan and Sean Eldridge, told me after the first two sessions that they had not seen many police departments that had stronger internal culture. With regard to the way these officers engaged in the training, with the way they spoke with each other in the facilitated conversations after each episode. Of particular note was episode five of this six episode series, which deals with gay marriage. And the fact that there are members of the department who spoke about that from personal experience in very open ways that they had never seen in an agency before. And that too for me was a hope that I had in working with this series to find something that would resonate with them, both with regard to their work, with regard to the understanding of due process, and with regard to things that would be personal, affecting and impactful for members of the department in ways that would create empathy and ultimately learning for everybody. Chief, thank you very much. Let me open it up to commissioners for comments. And I wanna just remind you all that we're a bit behind in the agenda and Shannon Tremel is waiting for us to get to DD 43. So just a word of caution, if I might. Any commissioners have any comments about the chief's report? Commissioner Grant. Thank you. I have a couple of statements and then a couple of questions. Regarding the increased incidents and the increase in drug overdoses, I don't find this surprising, unfortunately. The city does not have a plan to deal with the drug crisis and it's only getting worse. We are going into warmer weather and I believe we'll see a lot of the same patterns that we saw last year. And I think they might get worse if we don't actually have a plan to deal with them. So that was my statement. I have a couple of questions about CPE. Did CPE recommend that series amend or is that something you wanted to work with? I brought that to Commissioner Kesey's attention and we worked on it together with her and her team and in putting together how to facilitate the viewings and the presentations that they gave around those viewings. But that would normally not have been something that they would have recommended for their training. They're open to various kinds of training. They don't have a specific training curriculum that they use or prescription that they, to which they adhere. So they come and they work with departments in ways that departments are going to, in ways that are gonna resonate with those departments. Did CPE review the data for the department? I provided all of that to them. It's in our very earliest conversations. Okay. A question that I have and I'm kind of curious about, as you mentioned, we have brought up CPE many times. Many, many, many times. Why wouldn't you have come to the police commission or at least notified us that you were going to finally move ahead with CPE? I mean, I appreciate that you did. And I just continue to be really concerned about issues around communication. It's like we have to find out about certain stuff from other people. Like I was just surprised, like, oh, he just talked about it at a press conference. I just would have thought, I just think it would have been more respectful to have let the police commission know in advance and given us an opportunity. Maybe we could have attended. Maybe we couldn't. We all have different work schedules, but I just would have appreciated given how much we've talked about it and the level of concern that we've had to have been given the heads up. So I'll just mention that. And in terms of what our officers got out of the training, did any of them reflect on ways that they could, when they're interacting with individuals in certain parts of our community? So for example, in boards two and three, we've unfortunately had some negative interactions and they sometimes are based on the background of an individual. Have officers talked about changes that they felt that they could make? So let me first mention that I did inform this body that we would be working with CPE. I made that notion, I made that plane a couple months ago. I mentioned even after the IACP that I'd mentioned that I'd been meeting with them and that training with them was gonna be happening. The, with regard to attending, frankly the kind of conversation that we got out of it would not be possible if members of this body attended. And I certainly would like to fix that relationship to make that not the case, but it is currently the case. And then with regard to your question, no, specific incidents weren't brought up in this. Actually, I don't know, I was not in, I attended all the training on day one with the first group. I did not attend the training with the second group. Even I had to think hard about whether to attend the training with the group because I did not want my presence to change the way in which they interacted or engaged with one another. And so I can't tell you what they did or didn't talk about in the second group. I know that they did not in the group that I was a part of. Okay, well if I can certainly respect, we know that there's been a lot of pushback on some of the work that the commission's been trying to do with accountability, transparency and oversight. But I would have liked the opportunity for us to have had some of that more specific information in advance. And I know the first time I heard about accepting help from CPE was at a press conference. It wasn't at a meeting. That would be it for all my comments and questions for now. Thank you. Thanks very much. Thank you. Okay, moving on to the next agenda item. Item 6.01, commissioner input into revised, the revised ordinance on civilian oversight, the timeline and process. I was gonna say a few words about this and counselor McGee is here. And so I'm gonna ask him to correct me if I am wrong on anything that I'm going to say. Last month we raised this issue. And I'll just say this that my understanding is that the city council will be putting together members of the charter change committee and the ordinance committee to move forward with revising the authority of the police commission around civilian oversight. And my hope was in raising this issue last month was that we as a commission would coalesce on what our contribution would be. It would be, in my view, inappropriate to have commissioners participate in that group without having the approval of all of the commissioners about the recommendations that we were gonna make. And so the idea was very ambitiously and unrealistically now I realize for us to have coalesced around some ideas by this meeting. I did ask commissioners Oskie and Keef to look at a variety of civilian oversight models and begin to put together a matrix that we could use to discuss. I think this is gonna take longer than I had anticipated because we all have full-time jobs and it's a lot of work. I will say that NACOL now has on its website that I will share with commissioners and I will share with Muhammad to put in the minutes. It actually has an interactive website where you can actually look at variety of commissions, types of civilian oversight bodies, a review model such as ours, a monitor model, an investigative model and so forth and actually look at their authority around discipline and oversight and so on and so forth. And so I'm gonna simply say that this is gonna be ongoing work and we are going to have to continue to bring this up at meetings and to see how much we can put together so that whatever representation we have on the committee that the city council is putting together represents the will of the whole commission rather than individual members of the commission. And I would invite any comments on what I've said by any other commissioners. Okay, moving on to 6.02 discussion of the mayor's memo. This is the memo we received March 23rd. And again, this is really just a very brief discussion. This memo was in response to a complaint and the commission's input on that complaint. We've separate the mayor separated out the discussion of the complaint, which is confidential and with some things just for us to note. And I am doing this, put this on the agenda again is part of our effort for the commission to contribute to what the community clearly asked for, which is transparency and accountability. So I'm gonna just to mention a couple of items here and I'm gonna invite fellow commissioners to comment as well. The memo is on board docs if any of you would like to see this. I'm gonna read from one portion of this just to again clarify where we are now which will may differ from where we end up with regard to oversight. The mayor made clear and I will just say this that currently actually the commission does not have any final say over discipline. And I wanna also revise the notion of discipline because the approach of the commission has not been punitive but rather can we help the police department do better? And very often the recommendations that we make are around training and education. They're not about firing officers or other kinds of punitive discipline. So in any case, in the current scenario when it comes to high level complaints or uses of force, the commission, the chief brings his recommendations to the commission. We can agree, we can ask for more information or we can disagree. We don't have the authority to, the chief has the final say shall we say. And in the complaint policy it says that with the majority vote from the commission we can then bring this issue to the mayor. But the mayor makes clear in this memo something that I think we should all keep in mind and that is that it is beyond the mayor's authority in city charter to overrule the chief's decision regarding discipline or to direct the chief to take specific disciplinary action. And it should be, I'm quoting from the memo now, it should be understood that under our current system the mayor cannot serve as an appeal body for disciplinary decisions by the chief that the commission does not agree with. I'm just stating this as this is the state of where we are now and nevertheless I think that what we do have is a process where we can exchange ideas, discuss and debate differences of opinion. And where we go with this will be up to the ordinance committee and the charter change committee. There were a few other items in this that were important in my view. One of them has been about the commission's access to information because we do review incidents, we do review complaints and uses of force. We have felt and I think part of the complaint policy gives us the authority to access certain information but I think it's fair to say that there's a level of mistrust and so there are times that we get redacted documents from the police department. The mayor therefore has said that the city attorney's office will review any investigative reports and they will be redacting those reports to send to us. And as a note here, this is I think a temporary solution. We have requested and I think are in discussion with the chief about a non-disclosure agreement. I'm hoping that we can build some trust with a non-disclosure agreement to have access to the materials that we need to provide the oversight that we have been asked to provide. And even that is a temporary solution and hopefully the charter change ordinance committee will further clarify what the access of the commission would be and what our responsibilities are with regard to confidentiality. Another item on this memo is that the mayor has instructed that both the commission and the chief exchange our discussions with regard to complaints and uses of force in writing so that there will now be documentation of these various complaints and so forth. And I think that is simply important again for accountability and transparency. And finally, there's a minor item in terms of how we submit our reports to the mayor when we bring items to him to discuss. I'm gonna leave it at that and I'm gonna see if any of my fellow commissioners have any thoughts or comments on the mayor's memo. Yes, I have it. Chief, I'm sorry. And actually chief Murad, if I have misstated anything, please after commissioner Keith, please feel free to chime in commissioner Keith. I would just as a moment of reflection, I would say it's been a learning process. The complaints process is really guided by the complaints policy, which I think was posted on board docs. I think if anyone's taken the time to read it, it's a pretty high level, fairly vague document. And I think through practice, we've had, I would say, as a volunteer civilian oversight review body, it really does depend on cooperation with the police. And I would say, despite the growing pains and getting the procedures in place and the reaction issues, every document that we've requested, we have received in a timely manner. And I would really like to thank the Burlington Police Department and particularly DC LaBarge for his work. That has really facilitated a dialogue. We are really facilitating information that comes from the public. How much transparency around that? I sense from public comment, the public would like more. As that process evolves, I think we're getting guidance from Public Safety Committee to the Cindy Attorney's Office. I think I would just ask the public, I really appreciate the comments. We take them seriously. I think the Burlington Police Department does as well. We thank you for your patience. I think it's an evolving process and it's growing organically. I was encouraged by the mayor's memo. I think the requirement of having a written exchange of documents is a great improvement of when I joined the commission back in July. I think that itself has improved a lot more of the rigor in terms of the investigation that we do. We don't have full investigatory powers but we are asking critical questions and getting information and having that dialogue. And I think that has been, I think that process is evolving and becoming more productive. And so I would just like to, again, thank the police for their cooperation, ask the public for some indulgence and some patience. I think as we're working through these processes with the city's attorney's office and the public safety committee, we are looking at various models. I would say of the preliminary work that we've done, I'm feeling highly encouraged in terms of the work that I think will eventually come out and be made more available both to city council and to the public at large. So just thank you all for allowing us to space to work through this. It is a fairly complex issue but I think we're making progress. So again, thanks for the, with the police department. Thanks very much, Commissioner Keefe. Chief, is there anything that I recited from the memo? Any alterations? Okay, great. And Councillor McGee was I careful enough in the way I've represented with the city council is doing great. Any other comments from any other commissioners? Okay, moving on to the next agenda item, the policy review the week. So this is DD 43 and this is reporting of corruption and other misconduct. And again, the police department. Thank you, Shannon for doing this, worked with the police department to incorporate the recommendations of CNA. We sent this back last time and asked for a few adjustments here. One of those was to more fully respond to the CNA's recommendation that they, let me back up and say this, that the policy identifies four possible reporting mechanisms for officers who would like to report corruption and misconduct and CNA asked that the policy reflect how they differ and what the advantages, disadvantages of each reporting mechanism are. And there were a few other minor changes. Shannon, is there anything that you'd like to add? Oops. No, I think that was it. The only other thing that was requested for Commissioner Keith was to keep it consistent while on the previous version it said if you are reporting to a deputy chief that you needed to make that report in writing and we have changed that in this version as well to be consistent with the other ones that say may require to be reported in writing. Thank you. So the substantive change here, as I understand it is the addition of the phrase that all methods of reporting are confidential so that an officer doesn't have to worry that one reporting mechanism might be less confidential than another and that speaks to the recommendation of the CNA, is that correct? Yes, the recommendation, I think that adding this language also clarified that it's the employee's choice to choose the method that they're most comfortable with based on timing and perhaps who it's against they may prefer to go to HR directly and that is completely their choice to choose any of the four mechanisms but no matter which method that they choose that is a confidential report and cannot be discussed or talked about or shared and that no retaliatory measures can be taken because of making a report. Great, thank you. So I'm gonna ask my fellow commissioners if you have any further recommended changes to this policy. I have just one and I'd like to see if that's acceptable to the chief and Shannon here. It's just a very minor change and that is under the reporting mechanism to the HR department, part E. I spoke to Karen Durfey today, the director of HR just wanted to see if this worked for her and her recommendation was to change E to a change can to will and I will read the revised sentence. In some cases the employee may be requested to provide a detailed written report which will be transmitted to HR rather than can be. I wanna just ask if that's acceptable. Shannon, you've got the document and maybe. So it's simply saying that in some cases when an employee reports makes the complaint to HR that they may be asked to provide a written detailed report and that that will be transmitted to HR. I think there are instances in which if it is a crime that's being reported that may not be appropriate or possible. Obviously if it's reported direct to HR then whatever is produced is produced but there are other times where that may not be possible. We do cooperate with HR, I dial HR into almost every serious disciplinary decision, et cetera but these are also any kind of, this is a much wider range than personnel issues. Right, so I'm gonna just state my understanding of this. This is that the complaint, this is under the part two where the officer could report to HR verbally if they provide a written report, the notion is that that will be transmitted to HR rather than can be. But isn't the officer actually already sending it to HR? I guess I'm uncertain of the. Which is why the request for the change from can to will, right? Because they are reporting to HR and if they're reporting and writing instead of it can be Director Durfee is suggesting that no matter what is reported in writing to HR is reported in writing to HR. Yeah, I don't have it. I mean, that's what the reporter is doing. I have no objection to that. It's up to the reporter. Okay, great. With that I'd like to make a motion that the commission approve this policy change with that one change to part two E with regard to the HR reporting. Is there a second to that motion? Commissioner Rao seconds the motion. Any further discussion amongst commissioners? All those in favor then please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Thank you very much. And thanks for your indulgence Shannon. I'm sorry to keep you waiting. I promised to schedule that earlier in future meetings. I really apologize. It's no problem at all. Thank you very much everyone. Thank you. 6.04, discuss the CNA recommendation that VPD should work with Burlington Community Members to set up a recurring opportunity to engage in conversations that enable all involved parties to be seen, heard and understood. Consideration should be given to recruiting outreach, recruiting outreach, shared agenda development, participatory meeting formats, et cetera. I think the comments this evening really spoke to the deep interest in that. I mean, I think we were in a moment in Burlington in which the community is deeply engaged and wants to engage with the police department with regard to public safety in the city. And I didn't have a particular goal or should I say action item with regard to putting this on the agenda, but wanted to just continue to keep this in the conversation and to let this percolate to see what ideas come up. There were some very useful ideas that we heard from community members tonight. And I'd like to also speak to a proposal that we had from the Vermont Interfaith Association. Commissioner Rao and I met with Debbie Ingram from VIA and several other members and they have proposed a strategy for getting community input. We'll post those documents in the future, but they are hoping to focus initially on a particular neighborhood, have VIA members go door to door and to essentially conduct a kind of survey in terms of people's interest in public safety, hold an open community meeting where the results are revealed and to put together a task force and with sharing those results broadly with the neighborhood and the police commission and the police department and so forth. So we have suggested that the Public Safety Committee host a joint meeting with the police commission to hear directly from VIA about their plans. And I wanna say this, that part of the commission's role is to community engagement. And it's relatively challenging. We have a very diverse community, it requires a lot of resources. So I hope that we would welcome the VIA's proposal to have community groups like this help us in this process that we are really with our obligations, probably cannot fulfill as well as we would like to. So I will be sending to commissioners and I'll post this for the next meeting with the documents and I believe that Councilor McGee that we would advertise the joint meeting with Public Safety to hear from VIA about community engagement and of course include Chief Murad and the police department and that. Does anybody have any, yes, Commissioner Oskie? Yes, the CNA recommendation talks about the Burlington Police Department engaging in that work and I think that's different or it could be in collaboration with the work that we're doing but I'm wondering if that's something that you've given thought to or is that underway now? Any kind of ongoing conversations other than the commission conversation? Thanks for that question, terrific question. So I attend NPA meetings pretty regularly certainly whenever invited. I have outreach meetings with different members of the community at AALV. I have relationships with people at the Boys and Girls Club or the King Street Center. I go to events, I'm out in the public making myself available to people, parking on Church Street, moving up and down as far as specific kinds of events. We used to have some of those things. We had routine creamy with a cop events with children. We had a community barbecue that we moved around the city and did every year. Some of those were budgetarily removed in 2020 during the countertops over the city budget at the time. Some of it is now very difficult owing to staffing. It is hard to take if you have four or five officers on a shift for the entirety of the city, asking them to come to a barbecue is challenging and getting off-duty officers. It's never been something that we necessarily attended off-duty, that officers are paid employees of the city. And so oftentimes that would be something that we would sort of plan for and staff up on. But no, I think there is a desire inside to have some of that increased. We are contemplating some things like that with the new public information and community engagement coordinator that has been hired and making efforts to re-engage with some things that we used to do, including we had a clergy event where we brought in clergy to the department and met with them. So do we have something right now hard planned? No, I don't have anything calendared. It is however something that we used to do that I do think you're correct would be terrific to do again. That is something that the CNA report mentioned. I had to correct their spelling of creamy, which was a flat lander and abysmal. I think Courtney mentioned that in her article about it, but those are things that we do wanna re-engage with. Thank you. Commissioner Rao. Thank you, Chief. That was actually very helpful. I actually think the VIA, what VIA is proposing will provide BPD some of the input. They may not, they're understaffed to gather themselves and for us as a commission to do some of the information I think they will give to us hopefully from going door to door can be used by BPD in a very productive way. I mean, I don't know if your information, what you learned from them. For example, we're not in a position to do focus groups with community members. I have gone around downtown talking to my neighbors, which is not the same as spending hours talking to people about what their needs are. And from what they have given to us, it's a very open-ended discussion. It's not just, you know, do you dislike BPD? These are not closed-ended questions, but these are very open-ended questions and they're very positive-oriented. So in the sense they want to see positive change. So in that sense, it may not be such a bad idea for us, for BPD to be engaged in this process as they move forward. If nothing else, you'll get a lot of data to think about and maybe move forward of how you can, what you were just mentioning, you know, how you can do it in a more productive way rather than just kind of like, okay, we'll just do some lip service and that's all we have. So those are my few thoughts. I don't know, Stephanie, if you got something different from them than what I just said. Oh, that sounds just right. Great. Well, I think this is the commissioner grant. Thank you. So I know the department loved creamy with a cop, but, and I think even my first or second meeting as a police commissioner wasn't that I was disparaging that particular type of outreach. My concern was it wasn't the level of outreach that was needed in the community given how some people felt that there needed to be something that was more substantial. Now, I definitely agree with whatever VIA wants to do. I think it's important to continue to have these conversations, to continue to get responses from the community, measure the temperature in the community. That work doesn't need to continue on an ongoing basis, but there was information that was, the final report wasn't in the best format that we would have liked, but I personally attended many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many focus groups from the Talitha consultants. And they gathered a lot of information and a lot of people really expressed a number of good ideas. And I felt like some of it, there was a lot of information there that people just didn't want to look at or didn't want to accept. And I just am concerned that the same thing will happen with information from VIA. So it's about taking the information. There's a certain amount of defensiveness that we have been dealing with. I know that as a police commissioner from the very first meeting, resentment against the work that we're trying to do, taking it as a form of attack. And it's not meant to be a form of attack. It's meant to help our department be better and have more positive engagements in every way with the people of Burlington that they serve. And in order for all of this to improve, there has to be a level of self-acknowledgement. And to continue to say that, oh, because of the work that we're doing, I just find that very troubling because is the message really getting through is my concern if there is such a tremendous bad feeling. We can tell by looking at the votes across the city for ballot item seven, I've been talking about how certain members of my community have been feeling for a very long time and the votes reflected that in wards two and three. And I would love to see positive engagement. It's one of the things that I'm most sad about as I leave this position, I thought I would be able to do more but there's been such pushback and I hope that that will change. That'd be an honest self-reflection and that will change, thank you. Thank you very much. I wanna just say, given that this is a recorded meeting that I think the commission would welcome ideas about community engagement, such as those expressed tonight. If you'd like to email us and I will share them with the chief and we'll let this percolate and see how we can do better going forward. So moving on to agenda item 6.05, use of force reports. Again, I wanna contextualize what we do here. The department every month produces all instances in which there are uses of force. And I believe DC Labreck is here. Is that correct? DC Labreck lived at 7.30 and he asked that you send him the videos that you wanna review. Okay, great. Maybe Chief Murad can ask you about this. I'm gonna explain a little and the question I would ask is, how in these reports we define use of force is probably different than other departments. And we include such things as handcuffing, for example. So just for the community to understand that we define, the department defines uses of force much more broadly than perhaps in other communities. Maybe you could say just a bit more about that. Yes, the state use of force policy does talk about use of force as anything that moves beyond compliant handcuffing. And so if a person puts his or her arms behind their back and you take that arm and move it into position and handcuff them, that is not a use of force. But if you have to forcibly grab that arm and move it up behind the individual, that would be a use of force. Certainly if you take a person to the ground or if you have to use a tool and implement, such as a conducted electrical weapon, which is more commonly known by the brand named Taser, or if you have to use pepper spray, those are uses of force. Those are uses of force really in any department. But when I was a police officer in the New York City Police Department, uses of force were essentially determined by the officer. And frankly, most officers probably wouldn't have said they used force unless they also charged resisting arrest or unless there was an injury involved to themselves or to the subject. And anything other than that might not get tracked by officers and that was not required by the department until about 2014. It was something that we did when I was an assistant commissioner, created a much more comprehensive and thorough new threat and response to injury report or response to resistance report, excuse me, the TRR. The here, however, they've done this for quite some time and it is a very broad definition. The majority of the uses of force that you will see are low level in the sense that they don't involve injury, they don't involve even the use of tools. Often they involve the display of tools, many of the videos that we have now placed on YouTube as per our agreement with the police commission are display of weapons, they're pointing firearms. A felony car stop, if a car is stolen and the people inside are believed to be those thieves and have a history of weapons possession or of resistance to law enforcement, a felony car stop is conducted by training, that is something that requires having firearms at the ready on those individuals. Certainly during a search warrant when going into a location that we do not know by training and by convention that is an instance in which firearms are gonna be pointed at the people in that residence. You've already undergone judicial review and had a judge's permission to engage in that warrant. So those are uses of force, I don't consider those low level in that having a firearm pointed at you is not a fun experience. Having been on the wrong end of it, I'll definitely say that, having been on the wrong end of having it fired at me, I'll say that that's much worse, but there is also a much broader definition here than in other places. Thank you very much. So each month the commission gets a report, we're more fully staffed as a commission than we have been and so we will be requesting videos for all of the 10 incidents on this use of force report and I will email DC Labreck that and we're gonna request them, we get them for three days, they expire and we have to request again and most commissioners work during the week and so we need to unfortunately repeatedly request them but I will do that this time. We have started a practice in which we assign incidents to commissioners to make sure that every incident is thoroughly reviewed and then to raise concerns if there are any about any of the videos and incidents and so I'm going to do that assignment right now. So I'm gonna assign Commissioner Garrison incidents one and two, Commissioner Keefe incidents three and four, Commissioner Rao incidents five and six, Commissioner Oskie who is very busy in Montpelier give her one incident and Commissioner Grant, I'm so sorry, yes, number seven and Commissioner Grant you will probably not have time to review videos before you take on your new job. I would love to see six though. Okay, I will assign you one then to report on and that is incident number eight and I will take, I'm sorry, I understand she wants, every but all of us can see all of the videos. I'll watch six but I'm happy to report on eight. Thank you. Thank you. And so Commissioner Comerford number nine and myself number 10. With regard to last month's, we reviewed three months worth of use of forest videos at the last meeting and there were two incidents that commissioners had questions or concerns about. We decided not to discuss them here because while we believe that at least one of them probably should be discussed in public as per open meeting law, we are exploring whether in fact there is, it is appropriate to do so and whether there are limitations in respect to confidentiality. So we're seeking that guidance and we will be speaking to the chief and DC LeBreck about those incidents if we can in public session and if not in executive session. So I'll further communicate with you about that. Anything else with regard to use of forest? Okay, we're then on to item 7.01. This is a moment where we recognize commendations for the work of the police department. This month we don't have any to report on. So moving to item 8.01, Commissioner Updates. It's an opportunity for commissioners to comment on anything related to the work that we do in department. Commissioner Garrison. Yes, so on behalf of the commissioners, the Brown to Police Commission, we would like to thank you, Commissioner Grant for your service and we wish you luck on the council. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Ah, this is so hard for me. I didn't think it'd be so hard as you know the public really doesn't know like the blood, sweat and tears that go on behind the scenes. It's a tremendous amount of work. It's extremely stressful. We wish we could talk about so much more, but we're bound by the rules of confidentiality. But I think we're really, we've really fought to make things better, to make things better for the people of Burlington and to make things better for our officers, even though sometimes they don't recognize that, which breaks my heart, which breaks my heart because I feel like there should be some easy wins, but this is what happens when we're addressing things that are systematic, right? They didn't get this way overnight and it'll take, it won't change overnight. I wanna thank everyone for their support and especially through some really difficult times. I've definitely been really concerned about some of the things that we've had to deal with and I know that sometimes I may have been, not may have been, I was angry. I was angry and then other times I was crying. So it's been a lot. I hope to continue to support your work as a city counselor. It's one of the reasons that I ran. I felt I needed to get to the next level because I was so concerned about the way that our body was being attacked. And as I've talked to a lot of people through the campaign who have served in public office, no one's seen anything like that. And we do know that public community safety brings out the worst in people, but it can also bring out the best. So that's what I hope for. And I hope to continue the battle on positive public engagement. I hope to meet the new public information officer and speak with them about what work they will be doing and then giving suggestions that have been made in the past, especially from the Talitha consultants in terms of some of the public feedback. I think that would be great. And I just think that we can hopefully continue to have positive conversations around accountability, transparency and oversight because these issues are not going away. They're not gonna go away until they're dealt with. And I can leave the commission and other people will come in and the same issues will need to be addressed because they haven't been resolved. So even though I've been the most vocal, I hope that, and I know it's hard to run our schedules, we all have part-time jobs, families, all of that, I get it, but whatever outreach you can squeeze out at the NPAs, it's really important. It means a lot to people. It really does, just even reviewing the chief's report because so many people, I felt, became more aware of our meetings, they found the information interesting, especially when we talk about the fact that numbers, numbers were so confusing, is crime going up? Is it going down? Well, you can have two things out of truth at the same time. You can have the average number of incidents not be as high as they used to be, but certain incidents are going up. Once again, the drug crisis. So I'll leave it at that, and I wanna thank everyone and I wanna thank people who spoke at Public Forum. It means a lot. And see you next Monday night. Great. Any other commissioner comments? Can I take my plaque home? My little? I get a new one. Nope, don't have to ask Muhammad. Can I take it home? So I'd like to move to enter executive session pursuant to one VSA 313A6 to discuss a record that is exempt from access to public records pursuant to one VSA 317C7. Is there a second to that motion? Second. Second by commissioner Grant. All those in favor, we say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Passes unanimously. I wanna say that I'm immensely proud that we have once again finished our meeting. But eight minutes before 8 p.m., which is our goal is to finish by 8 p.m. So thanks to everybody for doing that. We will not be having coming out of executive session with any decisions. And therefore I'd like a motion to adjourn the meeting. Commissioner Garrison, seconded by commissioner Oskie. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Passes unanimously. Thank you all so much. See you later.