 The Senate Judiciary Committee meeting on Tuesday, whatever it is, June 17th, I guess. And our first witness is our last witness from last week. Oh, why can't I pronounce your name? It's really fine, Senator. It's Tom Nathred in Longo. It's the executive director of the... Oh, God. I'm the chair of the Racial Disparities Board. And thank you for being here again. And we're going to continue your testimony from last week and then hear from some other folks. Okay. I was... I have to confess, things are moving so very quickly that I have heard that S219 has morphed into a concatenation of 219, H464, and 808. I have not seen those. So in a strange sense, I'm here not having done my homework. Well, and that's fine. There is a draft available on our website, on the committee website. And I don't know the numbers that you just recited, but we do have a section banning the use of choke holds, requiring the use of body cameras, and dealing with deadly force similar to California law. Right. So those are the main sections, along with the original racial data collection penalty for failing to do what you're supposed to do. Okay. I'm going to... If there is someone else online who is actually prepared, I would recommend that you go to them right now and give me a few moments to confer with some other members of the RDAB, because I did not present this. The draft is on our web page, committee page for today. And I will go there right now. I beg your indulgence. This is all a new thing for me. Not a problem. Why don't we go to James... Why don't we go to James Pepper right now since he's available, representing the Department of State's attorneys and sheriffs. Okay. Thank you very much. James Pepper, Department of State's attorneys and sheriffs. I'd just like to thank the committee for taking this bill up and prioritizing it. I want to thank all the witnesses that have spoken today, and all the advocates and witnesses that have honestly been working tirelessly behind the scenes, not just in the preparation of this bill, but for years now. I would just mention, you know, ATON, Dr. Nasred and Longo conducted our last racial disparities panel from a hospital room awaiting surgery. And that's when we reviewed the kind of earlier draft of this bill. So it's, you know, there's a lot of... I have a lot of gratitude for the work that he's done over the last years chairing our racial disparities panel. So just if I could quickly, just at the beginning, just mention just that, you know, through my work on the racial disparities panel, it just becomes so obvious when you look at indicators like incarceration rates, or COVID deaths, or differences in average wealth, employment, underemployment, school suspension, and expulsion rates, health care outcomes. And the list goes on and on that we live in a system where racial inequality and racial prejudice is built into the foundation of it. That's something, I mean, Vermont is certainly not immune from that fundamental fact. And with respect to remediating institutionalized racism, I think police use of force and S219 is a good place to start. It's certainly where the kind of rubber meets the road when you think about, you know, the collateral consequences and at times deadly consequences that we've seen unfold across the country and in our own state. So, and I can't stress enough that public confidence in law enforcement is crucial and foundational to community-based policing, which is kind of the cornerstone of a modern police force. And this bill, I think, will fundamentally help build confidence in our system. So as Dr. Nussred and Longo mentioned, this bill is evolving very quickly. I haven't had a full opportunity the way that I normally would to vet it through the state's attorneys. They all know the basic principles behind it, but I'll do my best to kind of testify from my experience with the racial disparities panel and speaking with the state's attorneys that I have been able to talk to about this bill. I'd like to start with some of the later sections of the bill and then move to the earlier sections if that's all right. So I would start with section six. This is the new crime that's being created, the law enforcement use of improper restraint. So I would just say I'm not sure that this is actually necessary, although we don't oppose it. Police fundamentally are not trained to use restraints that cause serious bodily injury or death. And so these are going to be crimes already. And I'm just looking at the proportionality of this crime compared to the ones that we would normally charge in those instances where serious bodily injury or death results. An aggravated assault is a 15-year felony manslaughter, 15-year felony, first-degree murder, 35 to life, second-degree murder, 20 to life. I would note that this crime doesn't contain an intent element. So a prosecutor may just default to the crimes that are already in existence. It might just be easier when you're thinking about whether this was done criminally, negligently, or whether it was an intentional act. Certainly there's an aggravating factor here, which is that the police are using their capacity as a law enforcement officer where a person, you know, they have a disproportional force over the person that they're trying to detain or that they're using this force against. So I understand the kind of basis for this crime, but I'm just not sure it's totally necessary, you know. They ask you a question. The thing, Senator Sears, that you mentioned, oh, sorry, was there a question? Yeah, my questions are regarding the intent. I think that the section provides, you know, I like the section, but if you think there needs to be some kind of intent embedded in it, that I would be happy to hear some suggestions. I'm also wanted to make clear that it's in the process of a restraint where the crime would occur. Correct? Right. Employee is a improper restraint that causes serious bodily injury or death. That's right. Mr. Chair? Yes. I don't, I guess I don't see the difference whether the person intended it or not. So in other words, they're cutting off somebody's wind or blood to the point where it causes serious bodily injury. Do we need to worry about intent at that point? I mean, to provide a defense where somebody could say, well, I was just trying to restrain them not to injure them. I would imagine everybody would say that, but the point is that they used an illegal restraint and they caused serious bodily injury. So I don't know, it seems like we would just be, I don't know, looking for a way not to redress the crime at that point. I guess I would ask the witness that question. I was going by what he said. Yeah. No, it is a question for James. So I guess in some ways what you're saying is this is a strict liability crime where if you've done it, it doesn't matter what your intent was. And I guess that does make this different than the other crimes that I mentioned, the aggravated assault, the manslaughter. I mean, generally speaking, the greater, the more specific your intent, the greater the penalty when these situations that result in death. But if that's the way the committee wants to go, then I think, yes, this would be a no intent crime where if you've done this, then regardless of what your, I mean, if you've used an illegal chokehold and the person had serious bodily injury or death resulting, then it doesn't matter what your intent was. So I think as long as it's clear, it was in the use of restraint. If a police officer were being attacked by a person that they were trying to place under arrest and that person, and then that gets into a, for lack of a better term, talk about a wrestling match, that would be a little different. That was not an attempt to restrain the person all of a sudden attacks the police officer. So as I see it, that be a different situation? Is it clear that that would be a different situation? It isn't to me because if you're doing it, you're doing it in this case, but James would know better, but it seems to me that if you're, if you get into a wrestling match, you are trying to restrain the person. No. My description is of the police officer, and there have been cases where police officers have been attacked by particularly in domestic violence cases. Right. Not in, and, you know, we all know of them. And I'm a question as long as it's clear that the, it seems, well, it seems like the intent element should be if you're intentionally employing in improper restraint, and that might remove it from this idea that you're in a scuffle and the police officer maybe puts your arm in a way that they haven't been trained to do or might be considered an improper restraint. Let's move on. Yeah. Okay. If you could give some thought to that pepper, but we know on Friday it's where we're headed. Okay. Yeah, I will. I think that that's important. And remember that is a recommendation from the Sentencing Commission that whenever a new crime is created to make the intent element, if you want it there, if it's not a strict liability crime clear, so that it's clear to the officers and the prosecutors and the people that are reviewing these cases, what's intended. And with respect to that, I just wanted to point out something, Senator Sears, that you mentioned before in prior testimony that what is absolutely critical is who is doing this review when there is mispolice, alleged police misconduct, how that review is being conducted, who's making the charging decision and who ultimately is prosecuting the case. As this is certainly for a different bill. So I won't go, I won't belabor the point. But in practice, there's an independent review done by the Attorney General's Office and the state's attorney in the county where the incident occurred. But if charges are brought by the state's attorney, they are very often conflicted out of that case because of the preexisting, the working relationship with the law enforcement officer. And so, you know, there's a number of proposals that the state's attorneys are looking at currently in order to kind of give a more, I guess, independent investigation in even looking at conduct that falls short of criminal, you know, and also how to initiate decertification. I think those are issues that the state's attorneys are very interested in exploring and perhaps as for a different bill. Mr. Chair, before we move on from the section, I just wanted to respond to the idea that it's not necessary. And my thinking here is we have had law enforcement come to us as well as the firefighters come to us and ask us to create crimes specifically around injuring or killing a law enforcement officer or a firefighter. And so, those take on their own additional significance, so aggravated murder of a firefighter we just passed. And the intention behind creating the crime is to create an effect that people understand it's a very major thing to commit the sort of violence on someone in uniform. I view this as the reverse. This is a crime that is saying specifically how important it is for law enforcement not to use this particular form of restraint to the point where a crime has been created to enshrine it in law. So that I think is something we shouldn't overlook. We have already in certain ways privileged law enforcement in the criminal statutes. This is a way of providing a kind of necessary restraint in almost a balancing fashion. If I could just kick in there, I'm hearing where Philip wants to go there. I'm also a little bit concerned when you define this as a strict liability crime. Traditionally, an individual has the right to repel force against them, whether they're in uniform or not, based on the theory of self-defense. And James, as you're looking into this for Friday, I would just ask you to consider in a strict liability situation, are we muddying up that normal theory of self-defense? Because I'm concerned that if somebody in uniform is being attacked, and the only way they have to defend themselves in that moment in time is to use a chokehold, I'm not sure that I want to have them guilty of a crime automatically without the ability to say, wait a minute, the only way out of the situation I was in to prevent myself from being killed was to use this particular manner of defense. So James, I just want you to float that around in your head and hopefully give it some thought. But if we pursue this line of thinking, what we're saying is we're not banning chokeholds. So we're either banning them or we're not. If we say it depends on the officer's perception of risk to themselves, then we're back where we started. But that's a question for the jury as to whether or not they had that opportunity. We're on a really tight timeline. Mr. Sheriff Anderson, we're not going to take questions short. You'll be given a chance in a few minutes to speak. I want to, we've raised an important issue I think that needs to be resolved. And I am concerned with how this is, I want to continue this conversation. But Pepper, you have quite a few other things you wanted to get to or? I'll try and be as brief as I, I mean, in some ways, the other witnesses are much more important than our testimony. No, I didn't mean that. Okay. Well, I'll keep, I'll move on then. So section four. So I would just say with respect to section four, the essays have not been involved in the evolution of H-808 or 646 or 464. But, you know, the principles that are here that deadly force and I'm summarizing the way that I'm reading them, that deadly force be necessary, that it be that use of force be proportional to the harm posed and that there's a duty to intervene from other enforcement officers. These are all, you know, we support these. I mean, these, in my experience as someone who reads police affidavits for a living, the law enforcement officers that I know are operating under these standards already, albeit informally in this state. And if there needs to be a formalized stating of these, you know, the state's attorneys are okay with that. Of course, you know, what we've been dealing with, with the racial disparities panel is as much more insidious problem, which is how do you eliminate racial bias, both implicit and explicit, that are leading to these disparate outcomes in our incarceration population and the others that I noted. You know, that is a much more nuanced discussion and one for another day, but I would just mention that we started to deal with that in our racial disparities report. With respect to body cameras, you know, I think that's kind of a no-brainer. You know, I recognize the issue that Senator Benning raised the other day, which is, you know, the guy or the woman who's a law enforcement officer filling out paperwork and then all of a sudden the crime occurs in their barracks. And, you know, maybe they didn't turn their camera on at that time. But, you know, I think that for the most part, this, you know, as long, you know, police should be, their body cameras should be on and running whenever they're engaged in their duties. So we certainly support that. The sections one through three, so this will be my last comment. This is on the data collection. The, so the states are a strongly support data collection and the timely dissemination of use of force, as well as just every high impact, high discretion decision point, starting from that initial police encounter through the time the person is no longer in state custody. The racial disparities panel, justice reinvestment working group, spent a great deal of time dissecting and understanding the state of data collection in Vermont. And we came up with recommendations very similar to this and they were unanimously supported by all members of our racial disparities panel. The one note of caution is that, you know, we spent one of our, one of our meetings, we spent two hours with Stephanie Seguino, the UDM professor who authored Driving Law Black and Brown in Vermont. And the big takeaway from that was that the quality insistency of data that's being collected right now is highly variable. By way of example, she showed us eight different ways that law enforcement agencies are coding Native Americans. Some use I for Indigenous, others use NA for Native American, some use FA for First Americans, et cetera. There are also departments use, sometimes they code one stop as a single event. Sometimes if there's one stop with multiple outcomes, for instance someone was pulled over and they're given a ticket and then they're arrested or they receive multiple tickets. Sometimes that's reported as, you know, several different incidents. So my only point with mentioning all that is that, you know, without consistency across the state, then, you know, we certainly run the risk of drawing inaccurate conclusions. And, you know, when law enforcement codes something one way, the state's attorneys coded a different way, and then the courts coded a different way, and then Department of Corrections codes it even a different way, then, you know, we have no ability to track that one case throughout the entire system. And so I would just note that I really appreciate the approach that's taken in the Justice Reinvestment Bill, which says everyone needs to get together, including members of the public, decide what an incident is, decide what the definition of race is, decide what the definition of a case is, and track it consistently from one stop on the criminal justice system to the next. And also determine what resources are necessary in order to do that effectively. So with that, I'm happy to take questions and yeah, I just want to thank the committee again for prioritizing this bill. Any questions? Pepper, thank you very much. I do have a couple of questions that I'll hold on the quality of the data, but I agree totally with what you have said. It was clear from the Justice Center that their inability to get certain information made it very difficult for them to make certain recommendations that they might otherwise have been able to do. And the whole differences between state's attorneys, Department of Corrections, the courts, local law enforcement and collection of that data makes it very difficult. Thanks. Thanks very much. We'll go to Julio Thompson now because I don't see Julio, are you there? I am. I am. Good. Well, we picked up with you if you wanted to add to your testimony from last week. Before I do that, I just want to make sure that I have the latest version of the bill. I had was version 1.2 that was circulated. That is the latest version. Okay. Well, I think we mentioned, I mentioned before that we support H808. I think the discussion that I've been hearing about per se liability I think does require some thought. There are people in the room here on and off the committee that know that there are certain due process rights when you're talking about a criminal sanction for something where the person's actions may have been completely unintentional. It could be, for example, I think when the language and I don't have the answer today, but I agree that it requires some thought because if proper restraint might be something that could for any period of time, you know, affect someone's neck and then cause substantial injury, the injury may not have to be a neck related injury. It could be, for example, that in a melee, someone executes a headlock that's poorly executed and their arm crosses a person's windpipe briefly and then the two tumble down a set of stairs and the person, the civilian suffers an injury that might be substantial bodily injury, but that has nothing to do with asphyxiation or strangulation or loss of blood to the brain. It might be that the person suffers a long-term injury to their hip or their leg. So if that's intended to be captured in the statute, that's one thing, but if it's not then probably some careful language would be needed for that. So I think that that's an appropriate area of focus. Our view about use of force and just to follow up from last week is that, that reasonable necessary standard shouldn't be confined just to deadly force, but should be used for all force. It's not a novel standard. Like I said, it's some departments have been doing it for the better part of the last decade like Seattle, Cleveland, New Orleans, and fundamentally putting resources into training on de-escalation. Experiences shown in other agencies where they have provided those resources in escalation or de-escalation results in fewer shootings, fewer in-custody deaths, fewer complaints, fewer lawsuits, fewer injuries to officers or officers who are disabled as a result of a close quarters fight, and fewer overall uses of force, particularly in predictable scenarios, usually a person who's in crisis either related to a substance abuse disorder or mental health issues. Slowing the incident down, keeping distance whenever possible, explaining your purpose and so forth really helps. It's really tactically sound for the officers. And I think that for the larger police forces where there's more likely to be more prompt backup, embracing what's called a team policing model, that you generally, the default would be that if it's practicable to have a second officer there to place someone under arrest, you don't do a solo officer arrest because if there's any kind of resistance, the officer may quickly have to escalate force either to defend themselves or carry out the arrest, where sometimes the presence of a second or third officer communicates itself to the person who's going to be arrested, that fight is probably not going to be that productive. So I think that is very powerful. And I think when we're looking at policies, we support in other jurisdictions that have done this and made progress would have policies that hold an officer accountable for failing to de-escalate even if the force that they use ultimately would be justified under the use of force policy, if an officer escalates and provokes or enters into a situation where any reasonable person in the officer's situation would have to fight their way out because the other person became assaultive, but if the officer had opportunities to de-escalate or indeed escalated unnecessary, those officers should, if they had an opportunity to do it and didn't follow their training in policy, then they would be accountable for that. That's a critical distinction because usually and historically the focus has only been on the use of force by an officer when it happens. At the time the officer swung their fist or deployed pepper spray rather than the events, the decision-making process that leads up to that. When it's clear to officers that they're expected to plan ahead and use critical thinking when time permits, then they'll have more positive results for themselves and they'll know that they don't plan and just rely on impulsive actions or just aren't thinking ahead and following their training and coordinating with their resources, then they're more likely to have more close contacts which place themselves or others at risk. If there are any questions, I'm happy to respond to them. You're suggesting that use of force, excuse me, the use of force standard in sections four, I think it's four, be extended to all use of force, not just deadly force. When we're talking about the fundamental requirement that force be reasonable, necessary, and proportional to the circumstances, oh, yes. And I'm maybe stating the obvious. I'm thinking of the two most recent horrid deaths of African-Americans by police. The one in Minneapolis was a counterfeit, an alleged counterfeit $20 bill. The one in Atlanta was, I guess, an alleged DUI because the person had blown over the legal limit. To me and to any normal, any person would see those as minor offenses, maybe the DUI more serious in potential future consequence. However, certainly, other ways to deal with that, they had the vehicle, he had offered the keys, he had offered to lock the vehicle. So I guess taking those two examples in your use of force, let's hope that there wasn't deadly force. Any use of force, how would you describe any use of force in either of those? Well, there are all sorts of uses of force, for example, that can happen at any point in an encounter. One can be contact controls when you're putting your hand on somebody and you are trying to get them, let's say, to, you want to be, you have authority to arrest them. An officer might use a wrist lock. So they bend the wrist in a certain way. That makes it painful for that person to jerk their hand away. That would be a use of force. Now, it's very fact specific. I think there are plenty of people in the room who either know this from practice or just common sense. So if you're using a wrist lock on an 11-year-old shoplifter who stole a Hershey's kiss that was observed by an officer in the store, that may not be proportional or reasonable to apply force given the nature of the offense and the sort of resistance one would expect from a young child. Then you could change the arrestee and the officer's size. So it has to be proportional to the threat and the person without delay. I don't feel comfortable going into all the details of the two incidents you give them because I'm not sure I have them all. I think it came out in the Minneapolis case, for example, that the officer knew Mr. Floyd and I think may have actually had prior contacts with him. So in cases where you have a property related or a nonviolent offense and the officer or the apartment knows where to get the person if they flee, if there's no danger presented, that may affect the reasonableness of force that's used to arrest that person. So I think when we're talking about all uses of force, when you're talking about necessity, the question becomes what uses of force would if you're going to say deadly force has to be necessary, but a taser doesn't have to be necessary, the pepper spray could be disproportionate to the circumstances. It's a little anomalous. That's why when that standard, that reasonable necessary and again the word proportionate or proportional has been used, it's been applied consistently to all uses of force. I think I testified earlier, Seattle did that in 2013 and haven't asked to change the standard, even though under the consent decree, they have asked for modifications to different policies, but not not to that standard. Cleveland has had that standard for all uses of force since 2016. Newark, New Jersey has had it since 2017. The Metropolitan Police Department in Washington DC has had a reasonable necessary and proportional standard since I think at least 2014 and maybe as far back as 2012. There are other agencies that are doing this or that have been switching to the standard and they've incorporated into the training. I've seen the Seattle training, it's quite good. I think it's been road tested for different types of force, both in terms of litigation and in terms of officer discipline. I think in the process and development, it's helpful for those who are going to be involved and I hope there's broad involvement in working out the details to communicate with those jurisdictions, ask them how it actually works, ask the police departments, the union and the community as well as those involved where their consent decrees, ask the monitors because part of their job under consent decrees is to measure officer performance and to make adjustments to policies where they're either unreasonable or counterproductive. I think there is information out there. I don't have it on hand but it is out there and I think that's worth knowing when you're talking about having a broad standard. Vermont would be joining it in a progress that's been made in the last half decade, not going out of front of everybody in the country. Thank you very much. Thank you. Another question for Julio. Thanks so much, Julio. Okay. I think I'm going to go to Gwen Zakoff from the Vermont League of Cities and Towns if Gwen is available right now. Can you hear me? Yes. Oh, great. Okay. Hi, this is Gwen Zakoff, a municipal policy advocate for the League of Cities and Towns. Thanks for inviting the League to testify on the bill. I think I tuned into some of the testimony from last week and now I'm aware that the 1.2 draft number is what we're working from, so I'll address my comments to those additions to the underlying bill and not repeat a lot of the testimony that's already been given because I think a lot of the testimony that's been given so far is well in line with the VLCT policy, public safety policy in general. I think the two parts of the bill that we probably don't have a position on necessarily, only because as I've been reviewing our policy, we don't have anything with any level of specificity that talks about standards for use of forest or deadly use of forest or those types of things. I couldn't give you an informed position on those, so without having our policy committees meet or the board meet or having any further review, I'll sort of refrain from those as having sort of a no opinion. But the ones that we would like to speak to are those that are addressed in our policy to some degree. So first off, overall, I think that it's important to note that we fully support this bill, the intent of the bill, where the bill is heading and the league definitely finds it important that all of our agencies, all of our municipal agencies, comply with data reporting, the more data, the better the data. It only helps agencies, it only helps communities and we are fully behind enforcing that standard. So we have no concerns with tying in grant funding access to complying with those standards. So that is the first thing I'd like to point out. The second thing we would like to point out is looping in some of the comments from the Commissioner of Public Safety, Michael Shirling, who he had put forth this 10-point proposal to the committee, and I think it's important to point out, and not just in terms of data, but sort of everything else that's contemplated in the bill, that the resources and the education and the training that is available to law enforcement officers is absolutely necessary to any level of success in moving, as he put it, sort of the ball down the field. And so the more the state can step up to help all agencies at the local and obviously the state level, the better it is for everybody. And so we fully support the equal access to resources and training and continued access to resources and training for our law enforcement officers. And in terms of the data, I think there has been a proposal and as far as we understand, there is going to be more standardization of how data tracking is done, and there will be a, apparently a vendor chosen to do an RMS system to do a sort of centralized system for all agencies to use. And we're incredibly thankful for that and very hopeful that that comes to fruition sooner rather than later because the lack of access to resources for certain agencies, depending on size of community, and access is really a big hindrance to a lot of officers and agencies being able to put forth the best data and do the best tracking. So we would really like to see the committee take a look at not just that recommendation, but all of the recommendations from the commissioner. So I think the last point I just wanted to bring up was the body camera issue, which I know under the bill is not extended to municipal or sheriff departments and only I guess DPS actually. We don't have a necessarily a fairly lee-wide position on this, but I can tell you anecdotally, I have not heard any opposition to this. I think by and large, every officer, every chief, and every mayor or city council, whomever we've engaged with has wants to see body cameras, supports the idea of body cameras, thinks it's really important. But again, going back to being able to not only purchase, which is generally the easiest thing to do when it comes to accessing the actual technology, but also having the continuity of reviewing that information for release under the public records act, having the resources available in the manpower or womanpower to be able to actually review the footage and disseminate it in a legal manner, as well as continuing to store that data. Again, it really depends on from agency to agency how prepared and able they are to meet to that standard. So I think overall, the more the state can do to help make this happen, instead of just putting standards forward and mandates, actually everyone playing as a team and trying to get everyone up to the same speed, that's going to be the most beneficial thing that the state can do to make sure that the high standards that we want our officers to live up to are actually come to fruition. So I think that pretty much explains what we wanted to say on record and if there's any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. Thank you very much. I would merely point out that we're hopeful that the congressional bill will include money for body cameras for local governments. I think the one that the policing bill that was being discussed in Washington, hopefully Representative Wells shall have better news or Senator Leahy on that front. I don't have any questions. Does anybody else have questions or comments on the league? League, thank you so much, Gwen, for taking the time to meet with us this morning. Appreciate it very much. Thank you very much. I think I'll go to Azana Davis, the executive director of agency of executive director of racial equity in the agency. I almost promoted you to secretary of administration. Oh my goodness. That would be a good job though. Respectfully, sir, please keep that keep it. I can't. Thank you for joining us this morning. Thank you for having me. I apologize for being late and I don't want to repeat what was said by other witnesses who I'm sure put whatever I was going to say far more eloquently than I will. So if it's all right with you, I would just ask if the committee has a particular question or a particular portion of the bill that you'd like me to address. I think on some of the specific areas are what was in the original bill, which is the data collection. And we've heard testimony and I know you've tried to deal with some of the different data that's out there. And as a member of the working group on justice reinvestment too, you certainly heard the frustration of the justice center and trying to compile data and perhaps a few comments regarding how we could improve that process. Absolutely. So in Vermont, our race data on any topic and in any sector are so fragile because the proportions are so outsized of people of color and white Vermonters. I always jokingly use the example. I'm 100% of the Latinos where I live. If I move, that's a 100% drop in my household. So our data are very fragile for that reason. However, they're immensely important for us to continue collecting because it's going to help us understand where we are as a baseline and where we intend to go or how soon we can get to where we intend to go. So collection of data is so, so monumentally important, race data is so important. And yet, unless we're all doing it and we're all doing it in a unified way where we can extrapolate where the data are transferable and using similar methodologies, unless we're doing all of that and doing it consistently and doing it across the board, it's not going to move the needle. So as close as we can get to universal race data collection, particularly with law enforcement, is incredibly important. And to the extent that we can incentivize our different agencies around the state to do that, I think it's critical that we do. You mentioned, Senator, the frustration that we experienced during the justice reinvestment process, because there was so much more we wanted to know and we wanted to dig a lot deeper. And unfortunately, we were often met with the answer that, well, we don't know, or we didn't, we weren't collecting back then, or with an asterisk saying, this might not be accurate, or, you know, 20% of the officers left that one section blank. I'll give perhaps a more a more grim example. Recently, we had difficulty understanding the racial disparities in COVID-19 cases, because we simply weren't publicly reporting those data at the beginning. And even when we were publicly reporting them, the providers, at least initially, had an abysmal collection rate of 27%. They were treating it as optional information. Once we were able to provide guidance to the epi team and to providers to let them know this information was not optional, we approached 100% collection rate. And that's when we were really able to see the racial disparities and act on them as a result. So it really is life or death when we're thinking about who's being stopped, who's being arrested, who's being incarcerated, who's getting sick, who's not, and where are the patterns where this is happening? Thank you. That's helpful. Senator White has a question. Suzanne, I know, thank you for your testimony. I know we kind of talked about this before, but how do we make sure that there are a couple of different ways of reporting this data? One is the self-reporting, and one is kind of in the eye of the person who's doing the reporting. I work for Public Housing Authority at certain times, and there's a section there on the application that asks for racial information, and it says it's optional. And I know that sometimes people fear filling that in because they fear being discriminated against because they've filled it in. So how do we kind of make sure that people are feeling comfortable about doing it, and whether it's self-reported or in the eye of the person that's reporting? Yeah, you know, there are different reasonable minds will differ on this one. I am of the belief that race data should be self-reported because particularly in Vermont, our population, just as an example, our mixed race population is said to increase by over 200% by 2050. It's going to be increasingly difficult for us to look at a person and know accurately that person's racial or ethnic composition. Not only that, I mean, I think it's a bit presumptuous of us to make that assumption without giving people the agency to self-identify. So personally, I am of the belief that whenever possible, race data should be self-reported. However, you are a correct senator in that there are a lot of people who are uncomfortable giving that information over to a system that has historically used it as a weapon against communities. There's a certain guardedness that many people have, and that's something that is our fault as a society. And so I think allowing people the option, as you mentioned, making the information perhaps optional for the person, but explaining to them in very clear and sincere terms, we're asking for this information so that we can check ourselves to make sure that we're not inadvertently or intentionally discriminating against anybody. It's helpful to us. It's helpful to you to provide us with this information. You don't have to, and we'll do our best to fill it in. I suppose what I'm saying in summary is I believe it should be self-reported whenever possible. However, I also believe that it should be optional and that we should include a disclaimer that lets people know the reason we're asking for that information. And last, if the person still, with that making an informed decision chooses not to respond, then perhaps we can make it perceived but with a note like a checkbox that says this is perceived or person declined or what have you. That way we'll know what percentage of it is self-reported and what percentage of it is not. But again, I think it's all about letting people make informed decisions for themselves. Other questions on the data issue? I wonder if we could move to the use of force. There's been some that have use of deadly forces, excuse me. Those sections, there have been those who suggested we should wait and study this issue and those who suggested that we forge ahead with what's in draft 1.2 on the use of force, but with the understanding that if it's an effective date of say October 1st or even January 1st, that would give time to continue to work on the issue. Do you have any thoughts about which is the best way to go there? Or whether you should even contemplate that without a full study? I am extremely pleased with the enthusiasm that we've seen here and across the country. People wanting to enact policy quickly. And I also think that we really want to get it right. And so if more time allows us more opportunity for community feedback and input, if more time allows us to come up with a scheme to resource it properly, then I am for more time with the boldface caveat that it is not to defer, but rather to perfect or to come as close to that as possible. I also recognize the incredible urgency. Brown bodies have been murdered in the street by the government for so long in this country. This is a matter of urgency. We needed to get this done yesterday, yesteryear, yestercentury. So all of that said, sir, I am going to punt and tell you that I don't have a firm answer on this. I think that I would rather we do this well than do it too fast. I know that's unsatisfactory as a response, but I think it's actually a good response. I appreciate that. Thank you. And I just have to say one more thing. Communities of color, women identified communities, pretty much anyone who's ever been systemically marginalized in American society is repeatedly told to wait, wait for reform, wait for change. It's not the right time. It's not the right administration. It's not the right whatever. We don't have the money. So what I'm saying is not, hey, we want to wait. It's fine. We're cool with that. What I'm saying is we want to get this really right, and that requires however much time it takes. So I just I had to say that, but yeah. I appreciate that. I think it's a you're absolutely correct. Some of these things that are in this bill should have been done years ago. And I take responsibility for what was mine, what wasn't. I've been trying to put into the, I've been responsible on the Senate Appropriations Committee for the State Police Budget for years. And believe me, I've been trying to get body cameras for at least five years. Senator Nika knows she's on the committee with men. It's been a struggle and unfortunately, it took these incidents to bring that forward in general agreement on body cameras. Other questions for Arizona? Thanks so much for joining us. I hope you'll stay involved with our process and continue to work with the committee. Appreciate it very much. I think I'm gonna go back to our good friend Eaton. I was the long go. Did I get it close? Close enough, sir. It's perfectly fine. I again, I apologize for but I'm hearing other people are sort of playing catch up this morning. I am glad that I'm not the only one. I have to say people of color at this moment in the state are much like the ugly kid at the at high school who suddenly because of some strange magic is now beautiful and has many suitors who all want to go to the prom with them. And so I'm a little confused as to where I'm supposed to be and when and what's going on. And I crave your indulgence on that. I want to say first off, I'm grateful for how this has morphed in terms of the recognition of the complexities of data collection. That is something that the Rdap certainly put in its report that I forwarded to you last weekend that was submitted, of course, in December. And I'm grateful that this has become a more nuanced document in that regard. I echo everything that executive director Davis has just said. I think that that is very articulate and very poignant and absolutely on point. And I can say that I believe I have not taken the particular points that she made to the Rdap, but I feel that I can say with very great certainty that people would be completely behind those. I have, I'm currently looking at Nouvelle 219 or 219 Redux. And the one thing that I would say and again, I have not had a chance to take this to the Rdap because we met last Tuesday. We'll meet again in July. I want to say that I would really like to hear in particular what Rebecca Turner would have to say about this. She's one of our members, as is Jessica Brown, who is another member, and then certainly Jeffrey Jones. What I would like to forward is some thinking that I've gotten from Rebecca Turner on this that I think is important and I think would stand actually, again, this is my supposition based on familiarity, knowledge of the membership of the panel. And I'm looking at page six, lines eight through 13. The reasonable officer language is, again, something that I'm pretty certain the membership of the panel would have some issues about. That the notion of reasonable is, shall we say somewhat fluid and it really depends on one's subject position. It really entrenches the deferential use of force. Everything can certainly be deemed reasonable from an officer's perspective in the moment. So what would you do with so-called furtive gestures? What does that even mean? Something like hands and pockets, slouching, eye movements, flight, nervousness. I sit as the co-chair of the fair and impartial committee for the Vermont State Police as well as the chair of the ARDAP and I will tell you, I get very nervous when I'm pulled over. Hasn't happened often. I must put that in. But I think a lot of us do. I think that nervousness gets interpreted culturally in very different ways. I think that that cultural difference has to be taken into account. I don't see that here. That seems quite dangerous to me. Again, where is this taking place? That's also going to influence the definition of reasonable. Are they coming from? Are they in an area of known criminal activity? All of these things are not mentioned and yet extraordinarily influential in the perception of the idea of reasonability, I guess I'd say. So I think what the ARDAP would come up with here is that there's really not a lot here that seems new in terms of use of force. We would very much agree that we need some more time on this. Everything that Director Davis just said is so profoundly true. I have been weeping literally over this. But I think that even though we have been waiting for so many years and indeed decades, there really needs to be some more in here. I was on a call yesterday afternoon with Speaker Johnson and she related to me that someone in a call the day before that I could not participate in had taken that California approach to use of force and completely torn it apart for her in ways that she did not anticipate. I would suggest that those contrary points of view would be very productive for everyone to hear and certainly this committee. Thank you. Do you have the would love to hear from Rebecca Turner and the two other people you mentioned our time is limited and I don't know if they would be available tomorrow but Peggy if you could give that contact information to Peggy we can try to get all of them. It would be my pleasure. Thank you. Senator Baruth had a question. He's muted. Sorry, Eitan you mentioned that in a call with the speaker someone had torn apart the California structure. Can you give us any more sense of what were the objections? No I can't. The phone call was very wide ranging and it had to do with the fact that I wasn't able to be there on Monday because one of my previous dates needed me. But I don't have the details on that and I just related what I knew because I think it's important for us all to have these cross-fertilizing conversations. I wish I could tell you more. Thank you. I've just been reminded that we do know Rebecca Turner I think she was in our committee last year. Oh I'm sure yes. And she does work for the Defender General. He does. Thank you. Other questions for yes Senator White who's muted also. Yep thank you. So Eitan I just wanted to we had a discussion the other day and I just wanted to get your perception on this because I've been trying to do some research on it. There in the bill it said under color of law and it was brought up that that might at this point be a little incendiary and we should maybe change it to authority of law but I've been doing some research and color of law is a is a term of art that and it's widely used in both federal and state. It has particular meaning so I fear changing that because of the perception. So would you please help me out here a little bit. I am a big believer in history and so what I would suggest is that perhaps you do use the new term and say under authority of law and perhaps in a footnote or in a parenthetical statement say exactly what you just said that this term which is now kind of shall we say troublesome refers to this. And that way you're using your language to move things along so I would suggest that that would be helpful that you could change it without change. Okay I just I'm concerned that we're changing something that's been in existence for a long time without taking a lot of testimony on what that might mean and the repercussions it might have an unintended consequences but I think what I was suggesting was that you could have your cake and eat it too. Well we could we could try to do that but I I I guess I would Senator Sears when we look at this more I would like some more kind of legal people to testify on that to see what what that might legal people but we have our own professor of English on the committee. Yes but but I also would like legal minds to weigh in on that. I am not sure how to take that Senator Baruch but you may respond. I always take it in the most positive way. I guess what I would say is I I took Atom to be saying that we would use the new phrase authority of law but we would have a definition that made it clear that authority of law is a reference to a standing federal term color of law that we had made the decision not to use. Precisely. Yeah so it's a it's a transitional thing. Did who want to comment on that? I would I would just say that I think the legislature has done this plenty of other times when it's changed language and statutes that relate to people who have disabilities that they've updated the language that might have been adopted back in the 1960s or 70s and some of those laws that have passed where they changed the terminology they just indicate that there's no departure of the standard but it's just updating terminology so I think that's that's feasible and Ledge Council I think would probably give plenty of examples of that in the past where they're just updating terminology. That's very helpful. Any other comments on the color of law? If I could just chime in on this I I agree that we could stand for an update to language and I appreciate the the senators raising this because it gets at a deeper issue which is the way that language colors our perception of of the world and our understanding of it I mean I think I mean just parts of regular language we talk about like master bedroom and master suite right which dates back to slavery and plantations we talk about things being grandfathered in which is the grandfather clause right which permitted which was a sneaky way to prohibit newly emancipated enslaved people from voting we talk about the rule of thumb which was you could beat your wife with a stick as long as it wasn't wider than your thumb right so these are the the ways that language becomes part of our view of the world and you know I was told once that in the sciences we're always taught to question authority and question what we think we know and we're quick to revise a theory because we're not wedded to the idea we're wedded to truth wherever that leads us but in law we follow precedent so closely and it makes it hard for law to change because we do things the way we've always done them because that's how we've always done them and this is one really great way that we can update law in a way that's quicker and that's more you know less adherent to tradition and more adherent to just what's right so for whatever that's worth I just wanted to add that in I appreciate that for for years the weak school was the reformatory in the night from the 19 early 18 to the 1800s to the 1970s so and the weak school was closed but it was still in law all over the place um so while it's it's a less of an example it's an example of how we do need to frequently update our laws um I don't know how many people are aware but I was always as chair of this committee we've never fixed the bankruptcy laws that allow us to have a yolk two hawks and and a bunch of chickens in Vermont um that are not subject to bankruptcy laws and that goes back to centuries where we I don't know how many people have a yolk and two oxen anymore on their farm can I just say that I I appreciate that thank you for starting all this well no I just wanted I just wanted to make sure that we weren't doing something that that um so I appreciate the the comments because I felt a little uncomfortable changing it when I looked up the definition and what it was so I appreciate um the comments here and I feel comfortable doing it I have forgotten I believe our witness the witnesses are there any other questions for you I think it's okay any more any other comments you appreciate your testimony very much and the work you're doing the work that you're doing is so important and we really do appreciate that and that of all of you thank you um I'm going to go to sheriff anderson and then coach christie or excuse me rep the honorable representative coach christie who would be the next witness after sheriff anderson sheriff uh welcome to senate judiciary committee thank you mr chair uh mr chair I I guess I'm not familiar testifying before this committee so I'm not sure the flow and I apologize for being late I was part of the training council meeting uh where we're discussing some of these issues so would you like me to make comments to testify to the happy to have you make comments on anything regarding this particular draft of the bill which contains data collection use of force body cameras and banning of choke holds as well as creating a crime for restraints involving choke holds that result in death of serious bodily injury very good I will I guess for the sake of simplicity I'll go by the sections in the bill the first section regarding tying to grant funding I actually wanted to speak about this before the the significant changes to this to this bill in support of doing this and some conversations that I've had the sheriff's association certainly supports participating or supporting this language the commentary that I wanted to provide originally was rather simple and it's simply because of the involvement that I've had in the work to get the the software and databases to collect this information and be able to provide good data senator white I believe has referred to me in this committee as one of the nerds when it comes to data and I'm a true believer in having objective data that's comparable I understand the problems of trying to compare apples and oranges and prior to the race data collection law back in I think it was 2014 there were so many different standards so real short so I don't take up your time because I know you're pressed there was some work that was being done by one of the rms vendors and as you're aware there's two one of them was to essentially automate the process to be able to transmit the collection of race data to the training council's vendor which is the crg crg research so that is supposed to be completed this week I haven't gotten the email yet saying that it's actually done but that was work that we had been working on right up into January I also like to note that while I can't speak for all law enforcement agencies in Vermont and certainly for any that were failing to report I can speak for several that I worked with who were trying to comply with the standard but with some technical hurdles either because of lacking knowledge on how to use technology or other reasons I think it's important to note that of all the agency heads I've spoken with over the years I haven't found one that was saying they didn't want to comply I found several saying they didn't know how to comply or with questions about it I'm a firm believer in a standard established under traffic safety and how to establish traffic safety which is that we call the three ease education enforcement and engineering we had a lot of engineering to do because the systems the computer systems beforehand didn't capture this information and we needed to add that so I wanted to be clear that at least from my perspective a lot of people were trying to do the right thing and I understand when a rule is made a law is made a policy is made and then people don't follow it how frustrating that can be so I want to at least communicate that the the chiefs the sheriffs do support this language and trying to get to the point where we do deliver equal information that's processable it also helps us in trying to deliver information for federal grants that we apply for so everything that the federal government generally does is a database this is helping us and I actually my personal opinion going back to the three ease this is the enforcement piece that has been missing so I want to thank senator baruth for bringing that forward in the original bill and just note that we do support it regarding section section two I think I basically commit to the same same statement so I'm just going to go past that section three the the executive director of Susana I think she really hit the nail on the head when we talk about trying to standardize data and standardize it across across not just law enforcement but across all entities the I guess my request would be that rather than codify and statute what the standard is codify that the standard for let me let me back that up that we codify what the standard is and use that across all segments of the government one problem that we had in trying to develop the race data collection is that we do interface with the department department of motor vehicles a computer in our our rms system our records management system and in doing so they define race differently than we originally had started defining race and so the department of motor vehicles included ethnicity as part of the races whereas our records management system separated the ethnicity out and so then we started running into problems where there's 15 different standards for 80 different agencies where we were trying to make that all work and as one can imagine that's difficult so either designating what the standard is and codify that and statute or designate the entity that defines what that is wherever that fits in in the government I think that that would be important so everybody can turn to that one definition when we talk about something such as race or ethnicity there's also a problem is that we interface all from law enforcement interfaces with the federal bureau of investigations through what's known as nibers and if there's any questions about what nibers is I'm happy to talk about that but I assume it's been discussed here and the FBI has its own set of definitions of what races and ethnicity is that we have to comply with to comply with the FBI standard so it becomes frustrating problem not just for for us but also for the vendors that we we selected develop the software to support us when we need to try and take square pegs round pegs star pegs and get them to come out the other side as being just one discrete message regarding section section three and I don't have I'll say I don't have a piece of this but I'm aware of the knowledge CRG who is currently the designated vendor for the council they are trying to work with the administration to actually store all the data under the data dot vermont dot gov domain where the state has all of its publicly publicly shared data process for that but just want to be want the committee to be aware that that's something that's being looked at to increase access to this information then going to subsection five where we where I'm sorry subsection five regarding the collection of force data on motor vehicle stops again I just asked that a standard be set that we codify what force is being used I'll speak more to to the use of force conversation later on but in short that we just codify what levels that we are reporting what we want to know rather than speak to specific techniques per say speak to specific categories because as I've mentioned in the government operations committee we defined force beginning at the very presence of law enforcement we believe that the office the uniform that all has an effect and as the committee has heard today a testimony of of etan being stopped he gets nervous and well there's a there's a reason for that and presence is in its own nature of force so I don't think we need to capture every time we're present on a car stop because obviously if we issue a ticket or a warning that defines presence but then where are those lines so a discussion surrounding that I think would be important and I'd be happy to offer language or suggested categories if the committee would like that with regards to section four I agree with Julio regarding not just capturing use of deadly force but capturing the use of force including lethal and non-lethal I also echo similar concerns regarding the period of time on how improper force could be used or improper restraint could be used a mere glancing touch of a neck could be construed to be a 20-year felony which I think would then create an adverse effect especially in law enforcement where we see a backing away from intervention as opposed to engaging because police officers across the state would ultimately say it's not worth arresting someone where I have no penalty to act if there's even a mere possibility that I could be arrested for doing that I don't think that that's the intent I think that there's been a lot of passionate statements about what we are trying to prevent here and I also want to reinforce that strangulation has long been recognized under Vermont statute under specifically under aggravated assault and or under the homicide statutes and with that we have case law that supports it we recognize what it is Vermont law enforcement is not trained in the either the level two or the level three non-lethal use of force classes on any sort of chokehold or restraint the in fact I spoke with Sheriff Hill who was in the 1985 police academy who said that they were teaching it at that point and then halfway through his class they entered in and said we no longer teach chokeholds or neck restraints so this has been out of the the mainstream training in Vermont for several decades as to whether other agencies do provide that training or not I can't speak to that my agency does not my concern however with the language also goes to what I think the goal is to prevent as people dying from a neck restraint my concern is is that if a police officer is being strangled and they are effectively will say the crime of aggravated assault or attempted homicide or whatever that legal standard may be there and their only two options are to either strangle the person back or shoot them what is a preferred option I feel that deadly force is a well well defined standard in the in the United States both at the Supreme Court level as well as in the state of Vermont and what is permitted and not permitted there's legal minds in this room that I think could speak to the those instances far better than I can but trying to completely revamp a system that is codified and through precedence then leads to lots of questions and what the secondary tertiary and coronary effects can be I I offer to improve the system we recognize that there are problems we need to do that which is why the sheriff's association the chief's association the department of public safety and the training council are meeting frequently to say how do we fix this we need to fix this we recognize that there's things that are wrong and as many of you know most of those organizations generally are are like hoarding cats or herding cats excuse me so that the cats are facing in the same direction and going in that directional loan I think that that's a remarkable statement that we recognize the issues and and we have to own that I would offer if the current language stands as is that we consider sustained pressure because again it's the interruption of a person's breathing that leads to issues with that with their ability to live I also would encourage that we consider not necessarily eliminating the language but eliminating the crime and saying that it falls into the language of the already established standard of aggravated assault and or homicide complement it I think it does two things it doesn't create the issues that pepper was discussing or I should say the additional work that pepper was discussing but it does as senator baruth mentioned it does codify that we recognize that this is a problem that we need to speak to specifically that does speak to law enforcement and does say to law enforcement this is not okay we do not do this and if you do do this this is the penalty that you're looking to face my concern is the language a law enforcement officer shall not use an improper restraint on any person for any reason the another concern with that is what if an attempted and trained technique a proper technique were affected but then then effectively done improperly and I think that's what senator benning was mentioning is what happens if we try to do something and it goes wrong and that does happen well I just I need to point out I'm sorry but you know people that work in group homes around the country have been arrested charged with murder were in proper restraint so I don't think this is a new idea we've heard of incidents throughout whether that was an intent to provide an improper restraint or not I don't know but there's enough of those cases that have happened that I don't know why we should treat law enforcement any different they're supposed to be trained in proper restraint methods so the in response to that senator I I can give you ancestral stories I'm trained to perform what we know as a armbar takedown and on one instance I attempted to perform that but because of the resistance instead of performing an armbar takedown I was flung through the railing of a deck had that changed because the person was fighting with me had that changed and instead of performing an armbar takedown I twisted the arm the wrong way out of a loss of balance then things like that so those are the concerns that have been raised to me it's I offer as I appreciate that but I didn't see much sympathy for those folks senator benning it's easy to look in hindsight and say this and say this is what happened that shouldn't happen but dick using your earlier analogy of the gentleman who was killed after being initially stopped he was actually asleep in his car at the Wendy's drive-through if you walk through from the beginning of that situation we as a legislature have determined that for someone to be convicted of a DUI there has to be a breath test that's not just a preliminary breath test but a data master test which is used as evidence so if you walk from the beginning of that stop all through that process is there an ability on the part of law enforcement to use force at some point during that period between when the individual is first rolling down the window in the car and when they hopefully eventually get to a barracks to take the test I've heard a lot of people suggest that this crime doesn't rise to the level of deadly force I will agree with that I've heard a lot of people say that the officer had an alternative he could have just simply let him go because he had the car and he had his license and registration but the officer all of a sudden doesn't have the ability to follow through on the process of the crime now I'm a defense attorney frankly I don't like when people get convicted of crimes that's just my nature but if I'm looking at it from the officer's point of view if we expect them to only be able to convict somebody of that DUI by getting them to the barracks and having a data master test taken at what point in that process should we say the officer is allowed to use force and how do you identify at what point in time that force becomes overbearing to the point where we say no you just can't go that far I don't know how to get to the answer to that question frankly but this is all part of the conversation and what I don't want to see us do is get to a point where we are depriving officers of the ability to follow through on what we expect them to do by going to the endpoint and looking back in time and saying this shouldn't have been the end result we don't want the end result but how do you get from point A when the car windows being rolled down through to a point where an arrest can actually happen and somebody can be prosecuted in the manner in which we as a legislature expect that to happen I think the the prop well I appreciate that Joe and and time doesn't allow me to continue to debate this but um I'd like to complete the with the witness we um but I will say I'm looking back at the number of cases over the years where people in other functions we have a court ruling regarding Woodside and the use of restraint while it was not a chokehold they were deemed to be improper restraints by staff at Woodside the court ordered a decission to assist the court ordered um no longer certain classifications of people could be held kids could be held at Woodside anymore because of the improper use of restraint so we have examples where courts right here in Vermont have ruled on improper restraint why and my only question to uh Sheriff Anderson really was why should law enforcement be under any different standard than other people who are forced to provide restraint all of that can be questions but if you read Judge Judge Crawford's federal court ruling on the Woodside clearly we have an example there I don't know if that was racially motivated or not I don't remember the details of it but I'd be happy to brief you senator I don't I really I need to move on um and uh because I I want to make sure we hear from coach Christie uh if if we could if Senator Baruch and Senator White um and then we'll hopefully move on to other issues that uh Sheriff Anderson has I'll hold uh for time Senator White yeah I I just would like to um not right now but follow up on um the where the line is on the use of force because as as Sheriff said the in their training they consider just the mere presence of a uniform and a police car as a use of force so when we're talking about appropriate use of force I I think that we need to do a little more investigating on that and I know he said he had some language that he could give us and not right now but maybe he can write that down and send it to us and we can look at it that'd be helpful Sheriff please go ahead thank you Mr. Chair so very quickly to answer your question regarding the Woodside restraint from my understanding of what happened that's not trained and that's not a permitted restraint in law enforcement teaching Woodside has personnel that are not trained by the criminal justice training council's curriculum as far as I understand it so I don't know how those people were trained but what I do know is that what was what restraint was done there was not something that falls within our our training model the second piece is in response why law enforcement should be able to or why there should be a different standard is because by the very nature of law enforcement it's the only government entity that is empowered to take away a person's ability to physically move we don't have a citizen's arrest actually we don't have we don't have an organization that removes people from a crime or from a violent scene or a person who's experiencing a mental health crisis and needs to be secured for their own safety so there's a different level of of need but that being said you're not going to hear from us that we feel that there should be an appropriate restraint or inappropriate conduct our goal is to establish safety and establish trust it's not to serve as the the executioner it's not to be the punishment it's not to to teach people why they don't break the law we're the entrance into the criminal justice system we're not the criminal justice system I appreciate that uh senator Sears I I understand you have more witnesses I just have two brief concepts on body cameras and under color of law uh with regards under may may I continue yeah please do well with regards under color of law I reached out to senator white because uh not because I'm connected with the phrase itself but rather because uh I understand under the federal statute the effect of that language and my concern uh or what I am married to is that that punishment that consequence that enforcement uh be preserved and so hearing from uh Julio today on his his view of that and I'm more than happily content uh I just wanted to mention that uh under the michigan law review they define it as unauthorized indeed and grossly illegal conduct and so that's what whatever phrase we want to attach to it um that's what we're really trying to define and however that that happens from the perspective of law enforcement we want to ensure that that's preserved uh the uh beyond that I'm not an attorney and don't will never claim to try and offer the language in that regard uh I see Julio turn on his camera I don't know if you want to speak to that I'm sorry did you say you referred to the Michigan law review uh yes sir did you can you give the citation that like the volume in year if you have it I have a link which I will uh post okay just forward it to me that's all that's all I just wanted to see that's all okay you had another point you wanted to make uh and with regards to body cameras I believe it's been mentioned but uh I spoke with uh the sheriffs uh my agency does use body cameras the mile county uses body cameras the other ones haven't identified a funding source to be able to get them it's not only the upfront cost but it's also the storage cost uh and then there's also some uh concerns regarding the public records act uh and the release of information from those uh under our current interpretation I say the windham county sheriffs province current interpretation it's incredibly permissive uh and my only concern with that is that we do get invited into uh into people's homes we get invited into some of the worst moments in people's lives uh where those those recordings can be used for a variety of reasons which we don't get to discern any sort of any sort of intent for example I just received a public records request for video recordings of a person with a mental health crisis uh with whom I have personal knowledge that there's a divorce proceeding going on and how those could be used could be could be for completely reasonable reasons they could also be used to the detriment of one party or the other for something that happened two years ago so I would ask that the committee at some point sometime in the future next year whenever that may be but they consider the effects of uh public records requests on these I think that there's a need for public access to recordings I think that there's a need for accountability just how that happens I think there needs to be discussion actually we did pass a bill a few years back on body cameras and uh and it probably should be updated and reviewed once again uh on how the store I agree um that it is the public records aspect is a problem I remember discussing that we had a number of body camera footage where an officer had felt the need to turn it off when he went into somebody's home where there was domestic violence and he was interviewing the victim um for a number of reasons um felt that was necessary so we did discuss all that in that bill and I um at some point Bryn maybe they the law that we currently have should be um somehow referenced in the body camera section so the people are aware that there's a law there already on body cameras and if I could if I could just add if Bryn's gonna be looking into that when they are dealing with a confidential informant in any kind of a case I'm wondering if they have a body camera that's on full time whether that would be uh I think that was one of the places we exempted the but I don't remember okay we had a number of exemptions um other questions for Sheriff Anderson Sheriff the pleasure to meet you and uh thank you for your testimony and I'm sure you'll continue to work with Senator White on some of the data collection that is more into the government operations committee than Senate judiciary luckily absolutely and I thank you for the time uh and I appreciate the work that you are doing thank you we now have uh coach um Kevin Christie whom uh all of us know as a representative from um god I shouldn't have mentioned from where um I forgot the town uh coach but um coach is also the head of the social equity caucus uh of the legislature and has been obviously active in a lot of these bills I we've worked closely together over the years on a number of initiatives so I would please that you could take time away from your schedule to meet with us today coach well thank you very much senator uh and uh our colleagues uh allies and friends um I this has been an emotional time as you can all imagine and have felt at different levels uh but for me personally it's uh it hasn't been easy uh to do our work and just be a human being during this time um you know being a black man and watching another black man killed and then another one you know following you know very shortly after uh knowing full well that race was in intrinsic in that in that process you know so uh it it just hasn't been easy and then the uproar uh that resulted uh just brought back a lot of memories uh you know of the 60s and just every day uh so I'll I'll try to set that um you know at a level and and move forward with some of my thinking uh regarding uh this look at law enforcement at this time so I didn't put it in my testimony but I I wanted to start with a couple of questions and we don't have to answer those but I want you to keep them in mind as I present you know my my thoughts so one question is would you send your child or family member to a non-accredited hospital would you send a child or a family member to a non-accredited school so what this does is it brings me to this when we look at a shift in paradigm uh education and training across disciplines throughout my career we have always spoken to utilizing best practice best practices are the cornerstone of continuous improvement another concept to be applied is we don't have to reinvent the wheel this brings up the results of my research and observations a high quality research based policing system that embodies our aspirations the 21st century policing task force construct in addition we are challenged in our legislative mandate to assure quality transparency and accountability the tool that is used across disciplines and institutions is accreditation the crown jewel of law enforcement accreditation is Kalea the commission on accreditation for law enforcement agencies the pillars of 21st century policing are building trust and legitimacy policy and oversight technology and social media community policing and crime reduction training and education and officer safety and wellness they reviewed five ways stakeholder groups can implement the task force recommendations local government would create listening opportunities with the community allocate government resources to implementation conduct community surveys on attitudes towards policing and publish results define the terms of civilian oversight to meet the community's needs they would recognize and address holistically the root causes of crime law enforcement would review and update its policies training and data collection sounds familiar on use of force and engage community members and police labor unions in the process it would increase transparency of data policies and procedures call on the post commission commission to implement all levels of training examine hiring practices and ways to involve the community and recruiting and ensure officers have access to tools they need to keep them safe communities on the other hand would engage with local law enforcement participate in meetings surveys and other activities participate in problem-solving efforts to reduce crime and improve quality of life work with local law enforcement to ensure crime reducing resources and tactics are being deployed that mitigate unintended consequences call on state legislatures to ensure the legal framework does not impede accountability of law enforcement and lastly review school policies and practices and advocate for early intervention strategies that minimize involvement of youth in criminal justice systems a reference the the post commission that's peace officer standards and training to explain calea calea accreditation programs provide public safety agencies with an opportunity to voluntarily meet an established set of professional standards which require comprehensive and uniform written directives that clearly define authority performance and responsibility reports and analyzes analysis to make fact-based and informed management decisions preparedness to address natural and man-made critical incidences community relationship building and met maintenance independent review by subject matter experts continuous pursuit of excellence through annual reviews and other assessment measures I did provide two links in the uh in my testimony for you that gives you I mean incredible amount of information from those two sources the US Department of Justice final report on 21st century policing and then uh calea's website what I'm proposing is that we create an omnibus law enforcement reform bill this when I say all it means all law enforcement agencies across the spectrum uh use of force uh we would uh define as necessary and require necessary necessary consistently uh across all law enforcement including uh the sections three four and five of miss uh boree yang's testimony that she gave uh I I support her position you know there in addition to adopt adopting the pillars of 21st century policing we would adopt accreditation it is required in statute across many institutions already we do it in education we do it in healthcare we do it in human services including providers and facilities so both the providers and the institutions are accredited um of our institutions which one does not law enforcement we don't have standards across the board in statute that we said that they will attain uh calea the commission on accreditation law enforcement agencies we could require that accreditation there are levels of accreditation and self-study preparation uh is the time span for doing the work of compliance we would give a time frame to complete the self-study in order to not lose certifications uh and funding I didn't put that but that would be uh an option for us uh and this would allow all agencies regardless of size to move in that direction uh the work of self uh study is timely and it it if done well it can take up to five years to get through your self-study uh to be engaged and on track for completion of the self-study we it's verifiable through uh the agency process we did this in title 16 uh those of us that remember about 24 years ago we did it for tech centers because up to that point tech centers were not accredited so by statute we said we will ensure that tech centers were accredited and over a period of about four years we were able to get everybody into the queue for self-study and then eventual uh accreditation uh the next piece would be uh looking at act 54 the act that was related to racial disparities in the criminal and juvenile justice advisory council we would amend uh the oversight within the act to include the racial equity executive director to the council regarding act nine uh the racial equity executive director uh we would amend to add original language back into the bill that was dropped and this would give us an additional layer of um of transparency and accountability by putting subpoena power back in the hands of the executive director of racial equity to aid in the work of mitigating systemic racism across all entities of state government we would look at what's in h 478 establishing a task force to study and consider a state apology and proposal for reparations for the institution of slavery accreditation for communications one of the other things that uh kalia offers is accreditation for like the 911 systems the call centers uh and uh law enforcement communication entities uh moving to the training council uh the thought would be to move the training council to the department of public safety with legislate would legislative oversight combined with both house and senate gov ops and judiciary committees uh two pledges in august when we reconvene to look at adding support to the office of racial equity with a data analyst and a policy analyst if we look at all of the work we as a legislator legislature have added to that entity it's it's self-explanatory in in the request the other one would be the pledge in august to add body cameras to all of our law enforcement entities across the board where they do not exist at present those of us that have been trying to work on body cameras uh over the the years and we got the report from um commissioner shirling himself where he said they had the money in the budget for the cameras the actual physical cameras the problem came in storage uh just as the sheriff mentioned you know before me where the sea changes come in the last couple of years is with the data farms that have been increasing quantumly across the country in the world the price of data storage has gone down you know almost uh the cost has become viable and that's why when we were putting our cares package together uh commissioner shirling said that he felt that he had enough in his budget now to make it happen um so i i think our work when we come back that would make sense so in closing back to my first two questions about accreditation right why wouldn't we uh move in that direction uh these are all research based uh it's it's interesting that the 21st century uh policing uh task force report was completed in 2016 up to that point it was back in the 60s during the johnson administration that the federal government did its last task force on law enforcement there was that span of time between johnson and the obama administration that that had been looked at at a federal level those reports and the task force itself some of the best law enforcement minds in the country and the world actually because they had the international associations involved as well were part of that process it's research based it's been followed since its inception and one evidentiary piece that i'll i'll share with you if you watched the news at any point about the riots and the protest there was a distinct difference from community to community and what i gleaned from that after the emotional part was the difference we saw law enforcement with helmets shields sticks tear gas then we saw law enforcement with arm in arm taking a knee with protesters what you will see now is is that those agencies that were hand in hand and taking the knee were agencies that have already moved to 21st century policing and khalia accreditation those other agencies are still old school and working on old pretext so that is basically my testimony at this time and and it's not you know let it's not throwing anything out if anything it's offering research based supports to a new paradigm for vermont law enforcement i want to thank you coach for your thoughtful and testimony and i followed your testimony that you've written down hope that time to go to the links that you provided certainly your final point about the different law enforcement agencies and how they responded to protests and other behaviors is well taken one of the things that appears in the in my local community the bennington you're muted senator sears somehow i shouldn't be muted i hear him i hear him can you hear me one of the things in my local community in the report from the chiefs of police association regarding the bennington react you know the bennington police department was the warrior mentality that was throughout the department and i think that that particular point you just made really hits home to me because that's where i think in many ways the gathering of all this equipment that was made available through the federal government a surplus military equipment to our local police force in many ways militarized those police departments from a community policing model which has significant changes too i think we all agree however this militarization of local police departments and that impact on particularly minority groups is i think at the heart of the problem and you you really touch on that through the accreditation process as well as your other comments so i think it's well taken thank you mr chair i i think one other thought in in what you were mentioning about that uh you know just process um i i'm i'm really uh taken uh by the moment you know we we we have an opportunity i think to to look at the whole picture i i will share one other piece of information about accreditation there are only two we have what approximately 75 law enforcement where in that area you know entities of that number only two are accredited in our state dsp being the state police and uvm police and there's one that's in self-study which is heartford and it's been it's almost in its fiftieth year of self-study the uvm um campus security police department are not at the top tier of accreditation they are i think a level two or a level three there's five levels of accreditation and i'm not sure where the state police are but they're not at the very top but they are in accredited agency as well so that's the rest of the story about accreditation but you know i i i think that well i i i won't beat beat up that uh if you have a chance to visit you know the report you'll see we will uh senator benning and i want want to mention that senator benning is a former chair of the human rights commission who will now be asking a question of the current chair that yes and for me this is the most important question of the immediate moment because coach you're a difficult guy to get a hold of were you expecting me to make the reservation on saturday or were you making the reservation on saturday for our lunch i'll be doing that of course that may be a good place to end this meeting unless there are other questions but i'm glad that you're all having lunch together reminder we're meeting at nine tomorrow right yes thank you peggy uh the committee meeting will actually start at nine a.m. tomorrow senator nickah will be chairing the committee i'll be on the road to albany new york but we'll be hopefully listening in with our wonderful also phone service between bennington ramon and albany new york senator white thank you um senator sears do do we have a meeting at noon yes we do the caucus is already on we're supposed to be jumping on i know but i thought there was also a conference committee at noon today's wednesday we didn't get the house um okay responded yet to our noontime meeting okay i was not aware there's a noontime caucus yeah at 12 o'clock yeah we're actually supposed to be signed on right now yeah well i'm thank you very much i guess we'll adjourn this meeting so those of you want to be in the caucus can join the caucus