 Good morning, this is the Senate Judiciary Committee. We are, the day is, you know what day it is. It's Wednesday the 9th of February, 2022, we're taking up S-254 bill and act relating to creating a private right of action against law enforcement officers, violating rights established under Vermont law. And our first witness today is Joe Dmitia. Joe, did I get that messed up? Damiada was close. Damiada, thank you, Joe. I apologize from the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. Thank you, Joe, for being here. We wanted to cover what impact a bill like S-254 might have on your membered towns in terms of insurance and other factors. And maybe you can start with the way of the land today and what it's, what you do. Sure. Yeah, happy, happy to do that. Good morning, everyone. I'm here for the record, Joe Damiada and the director of risk management services at the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. I also have our general counsel, Phil Woodward joining me today, and Phil will help answer any questions that you may have at the end. As director of risk management services, I oversee the operations of VLCT's two member owned and governed risk pools, the VLCT property and casualty inter-municipal fund, also known as PASIF, and the VLCT Employment Resource and Benefits Trust, which is an unemployment insurance program. Today, I'll be speaking on behalf of VLCT PASIF and that's spelled P-A-C-I-F. I'll be referring to, you know, throughout this testimony to VLCT PASIF. As you've heard from VLCT staff members Karen Horne and Trevor Whipple in their testimony on January 20th, the Vermont League of Cities and Towns has joined 12 organizations in opposition of the effort to create a private right of action against law enforcement officers and eliminate qualified immunity as proposed in S-254. VLCT PASIF also joins that list and will be opposing this bill as well for the following reasons. The PASIF program was established by VLCT members in 1986, the 100% member owned and funded by Vermont municipalities. Our Board of Directors is comprised of 13 elected and appointed municipal officials from around the state. VLCT PASIF provides property, casualty, and workers' compensation coverage to 354 municipal entities. So that's cities, towns, villages, special purpose districts across Vermont. That equates to around 95% of the eligible entities in the state participate in our program. Included in those numbers are 53 police departments and 552 police officers that are covered by our program. The city of Burlington and the city of South Burlington currently do not participate in our program. In 2022, PASIF will be collecting $25.3 million in total annual contributions, also known as premiums in the insurance world, from our members. Of the $25.3 million collected, $1.1 million of that is for law enforcement liability contribution, which is what this bill is about. And $3.4 million is for workers' compensation coverage for police officers. And I only say that because I wanted to give you the average cost of ensuring a police officer, which is around $8,100 annually per officer into our program. The costs they just provided do not include the premiums for personal liability coverage that many police unions are starting to negotiate through the CBA process. Annual premium estimates for those policies that we've seen based on Colorado are ranging between $350 and $1,000 per officer annually. The cost of the policy for those personal liability policies obviously vary by state legislation such as S-254 and the type of coverage and limits provided by those policies. Ensuring police officers is a significant expense and we feel this bill will only add to those costs over time. As you've heard throughout testimony, the law enforcement profession is facing a staffing crisis. Morales at an all-time low and more officers are leaving the profession and new officers coming in. The effort in S-254, in our opinion, will serve to exacerbate the difficulty that police officers have in filling vacancies, retaining officers, and providing law enforcement services across the state. A particular concern is understaffed police departments that lead obviously to a host of concerns such as officers that are tired from working too many hours in slow response times. As you know, fatigued officers that work a lot of overtime likely lead to poor decisions or could lead to poor decisions from being fatigued, but also officer injuries. The more time they spend on the job, obviously the more fatigued they are, which leads to more injuries and more easily to hurt themselves. It's a serious problem facing law enforcement and one we should all be concerned about. I also want to speak to the comment that one of the witnesses made or said about insurance companies paying for intentional acts. I know this has been, I think at least one other witness has spoken to this. VLCT passive does not cover situations where the harm was expected or intended or brought on by dishonesty, bad faith, or deliberate violation of law. We are not aware of any insurer out there that will provide coverage for criminal wrongdoing. This bill is currently written, potentially puts municipalities in the state, thus taxpayers financially on the hook for criminal wrongdoing of an officer during their course of their duties. That would be a pretty major uninsured expense and one that could seriously harm public entities. I just want to clarify that for the record. Lastly, we also have concerns about this bill impacting passive's ability to purchase reinsurance protection, which allows us to provide adequate insurance limits to our members. I don't want to get into the weeds on what this is, but just a quick snapshot is, you know, we as a small pool, we can to provide adequate limits to our members. We can only ensure so much of that limit and then we have to purchase protection above that. Our reinsurers have taken notice to this bill. We've talked to a couple of them and, you know, our concern with it. And so we, we don't have any, anything that I can say other than they're taking notice and that we are concerned over time that there may be an impact on our ability to get reinsurance and thus provide adequate insurance limits to our members. It's too early to know, like I said, the exact impact, but we certainly expect some reaction over time by our reinsurers. In summary, we believe this bill will impact state and local governments in many ways and compromise, compromise your effective legislation, legislative action earlier years to enact law enforcement reform with a focus on training, accountability and transparency. My understanding is that the reform work today has been collaborative effort between a broad group of interesting interested parties, including law enforcement. This bill seems to get away from that approach, which I do not think is good for, is for the good of all. Thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts and Phil and I are here to answer any questions you may have. Well, I have a couple of questions, Joe, and if you don't, I'd like to understand the current state of insurance for police departments and individual officers. When we often read in the paper about a settlement, for example, I just read about a settlement in Bennington of $130,000, with obviously neither party can talk about the settlement, so we don't really know as citizens of that community what really happened or, you know, all that information. But one is a settlement that's reached. Does the insurance company pay for that or is the town paying for that? Phil, you want to take that? You're muted, Phil. I'm worried about that. I have to find the right. Okay. We all do that all the time. Initially for the record, Joe Woodward, I'm General Counsel at Passive. And I know the case that you're referring to, Senator, in that particular case, other than the deductible, the member, the town did not pay any of the settlement directly. That said, it does go into the calculus for the premium and the contribution that the member is going to need to make in the future. Ultimately, the funds for the settlement all came from taxpayers. So it's like my insurance policy. If my wife has an accident, eventually we end up paying the insurance company, whatever they paid us usually, from mine or vendor to vendor. They increase my rates. Increase your rates, or in some cases won't provide you with coverage anymore. But to your point, yes, there's no free lunch. And in this particular case, the question really is whether or not the taxpayers or the Treasury for that specific municipality would pay the settlement, or would it be spread out among the other members who are all making contributions and spreading a risk? Right. But at the end of the day, it's all coming from the same property tax base. Yeah, being a small member on risk pool, any loss like that is spread amongst the rates for the entire group. But then each member is individually experience rated. So when I give you that $8,100 on average, that is just an average, like the town of Bennington, depending on how much we paid out, potentially is paying more than that $8,100 just based on their own experience. Yeah, and they've had, I think, three recent settlements. I might be off by one. Secondarily, when it's an individual officer, you spoke about 300 to 1,000, 300 to 1,000 per officer for personal liability. That indicate that they don't have that now? Yeah, I can't answer whether all don't. You know, I think it's something new that a lot of the unions are starting to introduce to the officers and through their CBA process. I also know that these companies are pushing these products, and I'm not aware of how good these companies are and what the coverage is and whether there is coverage in certain situations. I can't speak to that because they're private companies. But I have received emails from these companies where I've seen premium estimates and I'm talking to the Colorado insurance pool like ours. They do have that offer there. I don't know if it's a good idea to try and do that, but I'm not sure if it's a good idea to try and do that. Of course, there are bills a little different over there than it is here, but that's just a range that we came up with. Well, one would think that. I have personal liability insurance. I think it's called an umbrella, but, you know, I wouldn't be without it. Who knows what I could get you. So I wasn't aware that officers currently don't have personal liability insurance. Yeah, I would. I thought it would was already covered. Some of the, some towns have said if 254 passed, they would still indemnify the officers. They would still cover the officers. The idea of the 25,000 or whatever is less. I forgot the percent of the settlement. But is that pretty universal? And would that be allowed under PACIF? So I don't know the answer to that right off. I'm not, I haven't not talked to members about that. I think that, you know, that they would, I think you're correct in that it would be very rare circumstance. I think where that would be assessed against an officer, but I don't, I don't know. I don't know. I think, you know, there's been a lot of cases we would have covered. There may be coverage and other cases there may not through PACIF. Okay. Yeah. Other, other questions for either Mr. Woodard or Mr. DeMachi. And I clubbed the name again. I've been, don me out of. Don me out of. Thank you. Yeah. Any other question? Thank you both for joining us this morning. Really helpful information to better understand exactly what. what the landscape is. Our next witness is Kevin Gaffney, who's the deputy commissioner of the Department of Financial Regulation Insurance. And I wanna thank Mr. Gaffney for being here on his day off or vacation. We really appreciate your stopping by spending time with us, especially when you're on vacation. Well, thank you. And for the record, Kevin Gaffney, deputy commissioner of insurance from our Department of Financial Regulation. Yeah, we all know there's no real vacations during the legislative session, so it goes with the job. Yes, I'm here to... Well, first I'll just talk about generally what our role is and our engagement is with the insurance marketplace. You know, our overarching goal at DFR is to protect the solvency of the marketplace and protect consumers at the same time. And those often work hand-in-hand. And I think this is an example of that. The bill does, and just understanding the nature of how insurance companies approach risk, they certainly look at and react to what they see in legislative changes. The Colorado law that was passed, there's already spent some reaction to that and I'll touch on that later. But generally the way insurance companies will react to changes in exposure is to either mitigate the risk, eliminate the risk or transfer the risk. In this case, I think we've already seen that in Colorado that there have been, I think the committee was looking and Lynch Council reached out to us for data on what the pricing impact has been to date in Colorado and New Mexico, two states that have had similar legislation. It is too early. I know that there was already testimony on this, but I'll just restate that it is too early. There isn't specific data available yet. In those states, we're still within the statute of limitations. So it's not uncommon that those claims could still be brought forth. The pricing, the actual cost of insurance and pricing reaction is often lagging and has to be based on that change in experience. But I think once there are activities in the marketplace and settlements, you're gonna see that reaction in a rather responsive way. The more immediate response can often be, and I think Joe Damiata from VLCT spoke to it briefly is what the reinsurers will do because the reinsurers now carry the heavy exposure. And they have the arrangements with their insurers. In this case, municipalities through passive to have a retention limit for those individual municipalities. So it wouldn't take but just a strike of a pen to change those retention limits for those municipalities maybe by a half a million, a million or more dollars as they see the exposure. So that's just the general landscape of how insurance companies will look at things. In terms of elimination, I've seen it and heard of it in Colorado. For example, when Colorado went to renew their reinsurance arrangement, they did not have a multiple bidder situation where they had multiple interests in their renewals and they ultimately did have an increase in their price. And that's one thing that we do to protect the marketplaces. We want the market to be competitive. We want multiple insurers to participate in the market. And when there are fewer insurers then that often is another driver for increasing the price. So there's another, so the data is too early. And I would say the way insurance companies or even us as regulators assess risk in the marketplace is to first to try to identify what the problem is in the marketplace, what's the insurance solution that we're trying to solve or what's the market issue that's going to require insurance. And so that's certainly one of the disciplines that insurance companies will undertake. The other one is to try to mitigate loss. And we've done this in Vermont and this is just unrelated example, but in high risk workers compensation classes like logging, we have a program in the state to mitigate those losses, to not just have a program that is a book on a shelf to hopefully get lower rates for employers, but it's actually a program that does work site evaluations and risk assessments and provides changes to the way things are done to mitigate loss. And that mitigation does save the insurance company money, but it also prevents workers from being injured, not at work for extended period of time. And ultimately it deals employers to avoid them paying higher costs. And we've seen some real results with that. And I just share that because we're six years into the program insurance rates in the workers' comp market in that high risk class are down over 40%. So getting back to this particular issue, the way I look at it from a loss control and risk mitigation standpoint is looking at, I've been looking at what's happening with the task force in Connecticut and those kind of pillars of effective policing and community policing and those seem like the type of endeavors that a loss control program would encompass, training, communication, and awareness. There's a lot of this as an awareness issue of different actions and real and community engagement. So I just, I'm not gonna speak in any detail to the activities of that task force, other than to say that I think that is a proactive way to mitigate loss. And in this particular case, that would be to mitigate limit or reduce the impact to the Vermont public for these type of situations that the bill is looking at. I will now get back to what I touched on briefly is that this bill is broader than the Colorado bill in terms of what it encompasses. The Colorado bill folk is limited to violations of state constitutional law. This bill encompasses that plus violations of statute and common law. So it gets down to a negligence level that does encompass a lot of activities that and because of the nature of this bill would also encompass the incurring of legal fees that would be incurred by the defendant based on the language in the bill. There could be some unintended consequences here that if we spend perhaps that the ounce of prevention upfront, we could mitigate a lot of these losses. Plus, I think it just would offer just more enhanced communications between police and the community. That is outside my lane. So I'm gonna stop it there. But there is a relationship between what I see going on in the Connecticut task force and what loss control and law risk mitigation does within an insurance operation. Can you talk a little bit more about the Connecticut task force? Is that a local or state effort? It's a, yeah, it's a state effort, Mr. Chair. It's a multidisciplinary effort. So there's a number of participants on that. And certainly, we could obtain more information on it. Honestly, I haven't delved deeply into the activities of the task force. Other than that, this workers' top program that I've discussed, that's a multidisciplinary action. That's the departments of labor, the departments of forest parks and recreation and DFR and other non-public agencies collaborating. And the community and the business community. And all of those things would be maybe different players, but there's kind of the similar concepts. Well, I'm glad to hear about that. And thank you very much. Are there other questions for Mr. Gaffney where we let him get back to his vacation? Senator Barouf. Thank you, Mr. Gaffney, I appreciate it. I'm just wondering generally, if we think about qualified immunity as something that was as the doctrine designed to shield certain entities from risk, is it possible to say that under that doctrine, municipalities and law enforcement agencies and individual officers have enjoyed a kind of protection from rates going up that was artificial in the sense that it was produced by that court-written doctrine? Does that seem a fair statement? I really can't speak to that because there isn't any analysis I've ever done specifically in this space in terms of what... I mean, you're asking me a general question about whether a construct has reduced or increased insurance costs. And it would be a response for me to give you a just... I generally agree when I don't have enough data to really make the assessment. Rather than framing it as cost, what about if we just went with a general idea of risk? There's less risk for those entities under qualified immunity, right? For municipalities and law enforcement agencies? It's possible there are, I think. And I think the bill is focused on something a little more broad than what other states have taken. So yes, I think there's potentially risk that's less. This bill obviously does increase the risk. So if you're saying what exists now and what this bill would introduce, there definitely is less risk now. Yeah, so I thank you for that. I guess what I'm saying is it strikes me as self-evident that under qualified immunity, we have created less risk for certain entities and that if we then decide that that's unfair to victims and we remove some of that qualified immunity, then we are by definition shifting risk. But I don't think that personally, we're shifting risk in an unfair way, but rather we're restoring a kind of balance that we've artificially upset with the doctrine to this point. So I haven't been surprised by the testimony because I think it's pretty clear that risk is going to be borne by different people as opposed to being borne now entirely by the victims, injury and risk, it would now be moved to people who are in some cases perpetrating the acts and the people who indemnify them. So anyway, just wanted to make that point. Yeah, and just going back to my workers comp example, I guess that would be like increasing some benefits under that workers comp program to pay out more and that would enhance the risk. But what I described in that program is we're actually doing things proactively to mitigate the risk up front. And I do think that Vermont has an opportunity to be a model for police reform and should look at endeavors like what's happening with the task force in Connecticut. Because you could have a more immediate impact to Vermonters and Vermont, the Vermont public by engaging in those activities immediately versus what this bill would do in terms of having also the same statute of limitations and the like. So it's hard to just look at these things in a vacuum because I think when you're talking about risk management there's not one lever, there's multiple levers that you would want to engage to mitigate loss. And again, a lot of times the mitigation of loss is seen by the public as oh, that's just gonna save the insurance company money. No, I mean, we're talking about eliminating adverse outcomes and harm to the public. And so that's just what, I just want to just have that fuller view of what I'm describing here. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Other questions from Mr. Gapney? Thank you so much for joining us this morning. Good to see you. Thank you. I don't think I'll get invited back to Florida though, but at least I enjoyed this trip. Take care now. You too, bye now. Bye. Our next witness is Will DeWyte. And this is her second or third visit with us. We appreciate your sticking with the committee and giving your thoughts. Thank you, Senator Sears. Good morning, committee members. My name is Will DeWyte and I've been invited to testify here today as in my role as a consultant, a policy and training consultant with the Department of Public Safety. I just wanted to talk about three things that were raised in a previous hearing after I actually had left. And I just wanted to respond to some of those issues that were on the committee members' minds. The first issue was a question posed by Senator Sears in response to a hypothetical that I had raised. And so I had suggested that if a law enforcement officer received an order to go out and tear down the Sears camp and did so, and it was later determined that that was unconstitutional, that officer who in good faith had done that would be liable under S-254 as written. And there was a discussion about whether that analysis was correct or whether that officer would be able to raise this defense of good faith. And there was a suggestion that the officer would be able to raise that defense of good faith. And I wanted to explain to the committee why I don't believe that would be the case. The good faith defense is a common law immunity. And under this bill as written, common law immunities do not apply in an action brought under S-254 on page two, lines 12 through 13, the bill as currently written provides, and I'm quoting, an action brought pursuant to this section is not subject to common law doctrines of immunity as a defense to liability. The second reason why I don't believe that the defense of good faith would apply to an action brought under S-254 is because of language at page three of the bill, at page three of the bill, on line seven through nine, which states that an agency shall indemnify the law enforcement officer, except if the law enforcement agency determines that the law enforcement officer did not act in good faith. A court would likely interpret this language to mean that the legislature intended for liability to attach even where an officer acts in good faith. And so when courts as a co-equal branch of government tries to figure out what a statute means, it's really trying to do what the legislature wants the law to do. And in these two instances, I think S-254 is written makes it very clear that this legislation does not want the defense of good faith to apply to this action. And the last thing I'll say on this point is that maybe I'll say two more things on this point. I think a court would also say that, this bill gets rid of qualified immunity and qualified immunity is a good faith defense, but it's objective, good faith, not subjective, meaning that the courts have written qualified immunity as a good faith defense. And they put in this requirement of clearly established to make it objective. So it's like, you're not liable if an objectively reasonable officer would not have known that was a violation. So a court would say if this legislature was getting rid of qualified immunity, which is a good faith defense, they couldn't have possibly intended for an officer to be able to raise this defense of good faith to an action brought under S-254. And the final reason why I think that a court would not, or we couldn't rely reliably on a court allowing an officer to raise the defense of good faith is because this is really an unsettled issue of law. Courts often will look to other courts to see how they are handling these types of issues. And because this is a rarely used defense, they would probably look to federal courts. And in section 1983, jurisprudence, it's an unsettled question of law, whether the good faith defense would apply to non-governmental actors who were sued under section 1983. Currently, there is a split in the circuit courts with the third circuit saying it does not apply, and most other circuits saying it does apply. And the US Supreme Court itself has raised the question in three different cases, but has declined to answer the question. So for all those reasons, that's why I gave that example of when an officer does something in good faith, like serving a warrant that's facially valid, but turns out to be not, or doing something like following an order of the mayor and tearing down Sears camp. This is why I believe that even when those officers are acting in good faith, they would still be liable under S-254. The next issue I wanted to talk about that was I think touched on a little bit during that hearing was this issue of who's going to pay for a law enforcement's defense costs under the bill. Currently, S-254 is written it doesn't currently under the current law in statute when a law enforcement officer sued by statute, if it's state, the attorney general represents the law enforcement officer. And if it's a municipality by statute, the municipality has to provide that legal defense, both attorneys fees and costs. However, this bill as currently written excludes those provisions. It says notwithstanding those provisions do not apply to this bill. So it leaves the law enforcement officer without any ability other than their own resources to pay for attorney's fees and costs. And that is the most expensive part of litigation. Oftentimes we buy insurance and we think, oh, I'm protected if I'm sued, there's a judgment against me, but the judgment is actually the small consideration about what insurance policies do. The big thing that insurance policies do is they provide you a legal defense. And usually they'll provide you a legal defense that's way broader than what they'll pay for ultimately. And in this bill, you've eliminated those statutory provisions that provide a law enforcement officer a legal defense and legal costs. And I think it's really kind of fundamentally unfair to ask a law enforcement officer who's operating in good faith on a salary that's not really intended to pay for litigation costs that could run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. And my concern is if a law enforcement officer doesn't wanna take out a loan or mortgage their house or whatever to pay these costs, it may be in their best interest to simply default because they are not going to be liable for the judgment. And I would be concerned that that would mean that these municipalities would have to indemnify this default judgment. I think it creates maybe a risk that hasn't been fully addressed or thought out. And I've been in communication with the CEO of the insurance company, Primus Insurance Company that's written the policies in Colorado as a result of that bill that law enforcement officers are free to purchase to the rate of $300 a year. And I asked, I said, does that $300 a year pay for attorney's fees and costs? And he said, no, that only covers the $25,000 that they might have to pay. So he also told me that he's only sold a handful of those policies across the country and that they are preparing to sell more but they have yet to. And so I'll stop there on that point. And then the last question I think that is unclear from the bill is whether S-254 would be retroactive. And by retroactive, I mean, will it apply to conduct that occurred before S-254, if it becomes law, becomes law? And I think the reason why I think that's worthwhile considering is because it really does increase the risk if it is retroactive because it could apply to cases that have already been dismissed on qualified immunity or for some other reason. They could refile if the statute of limitations has not run and the statute of limitations in Vermont that's envisioned by this bill is three years. It could also apply to cases that are currently pending. People could just tack on another cause of action for this bill and it could also apply to conduct that's already occurred that was done in good faith. So that facially valid warrant, when someone goes out and serves that currently, there's no liability if they did so in good faith but if S-254, something they did in good faith and that was legal and not actionable when they did it would then become actionable. And so those are, and I will also say that, we've seen three bills that have purportedly attempted to end qualified immunity. We've seen Colorado do it, the Colorado bill, the bill is silent as to whether it's retroactive. In New Mexico, they explicitly say that it's not, it only applies to actions that conduct that occurred after the bill was passed and in Connecticut, the same, they say explicitly that it only applies to conduct after the bill was passed. And so, I mean, I think those are the main points that were raised that I wanted to bring to the committee's attention. And the final thing is that there's lots of questions about why we're singling out law enforcement officers and we've been thinking about it from the perspective of the law enforcement officers. And I would invite you to revisit that question or consider it from the perspective of a victim, of governmental misconduct, we'll call it. And so if a correctional officer harms somebody, they would not, they would have to contend with the doctor of qualified immunity in all other immunities. And if they successfully did that, their recovery in many cases would be capped by statute because under the current law, for example, if you sue one of the tort claims act, there's a $500,000 limit per claim and two per claim and two million per occurrence. However, you happen to be harmed by a law enforcement officer, there are no caps, your recovery could be whatever you wanted, whatever you're able to successfully argue and you wouldn't have to attend with any of those defenses. So in effect, what this bill is, is setting up a two-tier victim compensation system. And I just wonder if that's what we want to do, whether we want to prefer some victims over others. And I'll just leave you with that. And I really thank you for your attention. I did introduce into the record an analysis of the other bills that have been passed in New Mexico, Connecticut and Colorado, compared to the Vermont bill, just for your consideration. And I'm happy to answer any questions about that or anything else that comes up. Thank you. I believe Peggy posted your analysis on the website, on our webpage. Again, your analysis of the other states and New Mexico, you said they had done a way of qualified immunity for everyone. Mike, you're correct in that. That is correct. New Mexico did a way with everybody. And they don't allow you to do the law list. You don't sue the employee, you sue the public body. So in our case, it might be the town of Bennington. Yes. Senator White. So I'm curious about that in terms of certain people have absolute immunity, including us. And I wondered if in the New Mexico, they just did away with qualified immunity or if they also addressed the issue of absolute immunity. They did not, they only got rid of qualified immunity and they left intact absolute immunity, legislative immunity and any statutory immunity and any common law immunity. They only got rid of qualified immunity. Thank you. I can stand to be corrected on the issue of retroactivity but I think unless the legislature actually put something in the legislation to make it retroactive, it's not retroactive. So, but Ben might correct me if I'm wrong but I believe we have to not withstand certain language in order to make something retroactive. Yes, Senator Sears, Ben Novorowski, Office of Legislative Council. That's normally, normally there has to be explicit language inserted into express retroactivity. However, I think Ms. White's testimony is that in litigation, it may be able to be an amendment to a pleading or something after the fact but that is something that can be clarified in language depending on the committee's perspective. All right, well, we'll keep that in mind for the, any redraft. Thank you, Ben. Any other questions for Wilda? Thank you so much. Thank you, I appreciate having me back. JDS from, I almost said BLCT, but it's ACLU. More alphabet soup for you, ACLU. Morning, Jay. Good morning, JDS, General Counsel for the ACLU. It's a pleasure to be back with you all and I'm gonna do my best to keep this brief. I've got four points that I just wanna get across. The first one is, I'd like us to remember why we are here and what S-254 is about. It's about protecting victims of Vermont, state, and constitutional rights violations. It's about access to justice, making sure that those people's rights can be vindicated when they are violated by a Vermont police officer. Now, the opponents of this bill have not said anything about the victims and about what rights they should have, how they should be compensated when these things happen. They have not talked about them at all and I think that that's an important thing to recognize because that is what this bill is about. That's who this bill is meant to protect. And we've provided a few cases and of course we've had attorneys come and speak or attorneys have come and spoken to you all, David Slay, Bradley Meyerson, myself, others who've represented individuals, victims of rights violations at the hands of police officers in Vermont. I also had the opportunity just yesterday actually to speak to one of the people who were referenced in the cases that we've provided to you where qualified immunity prevented that person's rights, that person from being compensated. His name was Tim Keene. This is the case Keene v. Schneider and Senator Sears you mentioned yesterday that, or you mentioned it last time we spoke. This is the case where a man was in his house, he let the police into the house. They wanted to arrest him on suspicion of DUI but he was in his home. He said, I don't understand, I'm not going with you. I got my young daughter here and she's all alone. He told me yesterday that her mother had passed away earlier and when he refused to go with the officers, they got physical and at the bottom of the stairs, they started kicking him and broke several of his ribs. I think broke his thumb and his daughters at the top of the stairs, crying, asking them to stop, to stop. The officers hold him away and left him there. And there was tape of this, there were recordings. The charge against him was dismissed and still the second circuit said, even if your rights were violated, doesn't matter because qualified immunity because the officers have immunity in this situation. That's the kind of situation we're trying to address and Mr. Keena believe is gonna submit a letter to the committee about his experience. So again, the second point is S-254 provides a solution for these situations. It creates a specific right of action that's reasonable, limited and encourages vindication of people's rights. Even these rights we all do here to make them meaningful and to vindicate them is what's important. And I think that this bill actually goes a long way to making that possible. It also supports accountability for law enforcement. It supports racial justice across our state and it's what nearly 75% of Vermonters want to see happen. Now the opponents of the bill, unfortunately have not offered anything in response to what the proponents have said, except unfounded assertions. There's been no support for their concerns, only speculation. We haven't seen any examples showing that this would present a problem, that this legislation would present a real problem. We haven't seen any data along those lines. We haven't seen examples from other states that have passed very similar legislation of any problems at the town, state or for law enforcement officers. And they've offered no real criticism. They simply oppose the bill. That is not how this process should be working. They oppose it in large part, it seems because they're concerned about finances. But when we talk about victims, we need to, victims of rights violations, we need to balance as Senator Ruth was saying earlier, we need a better balance here and that is what S254 is about. We also believe that S254 will go a long way to as the, Mr. Gavney spoke, to incentivizing towns to mitigate their risk in a more concrete way, doing things like community policing, doing things like having civilian oversight and civilian control, having better training, better supervision. These are all things we want to incentivize. And we do believe this bill will support those efforts. Now, opponents have also said that this bill is coming at the wrong time. It's motivated by animus towards law enforcement. And that is simply not true. The public, by and large, if you look at various studies from around the country, from, you could say before 2020, before George Floyd and after, show that the public by vast majorities supports law enforcement. But it also supports getting rid of these unnecessary immunities, making the process fair for those who are victimized and have their rights violated at the hands of law enforcement. The last thing I just want to say to conclude is, let's remember, again, who this bill is for. It's not for primarily the law enforcement community. It's not for municipalities. It's for victims of rights violations. People who suffer and have no recourse. That's not every victim, but a good portion of them. And we shouldn't allow that to go on in our state. And opponents act like these things have not happened in Vermont, but when we look at the news over the past several years, over many years, we have numerous cases of people being victimized at the hands of law enforcement officers across the state where their rights were violated. We have, and there are more people who have not come forward or who don't bring cases because they'll likely get kicked out in qualified immunity. If we're testimony, again, from attorneys like David Slay and others about the experience of these individuals, you've heard about specific cases that we've put before you. You know the data that's out there that Vermont law enforcement stop, search, and in some cases use force disproportionately against people of color in our state. And this bill is about increasing justice to prevent these regularly occurring injustices both in the field and in our courts. Vermont's state constitutional rights and civil rights should be meaningful and upheld when violated. To make them meaningful, to give them power, we must remove these immunities and make it easier for people to vindicate their rights. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions. I'm gonna turn it over to Senator White who has a question or comment. So thank you, Jay. I do have a couple of questions. Remind me the case that you, that you, and then we've heard a lot about this case and it ended up in the second circuit and they were the ones that, so did it start in a Vermont? Court and then go to the second circuit? Is that the way it happened? And why did it go to the second circuit? It must have, I'm just, so if we eliminated qualified immunity in Vermont, does that impact second circuit cases because that's a different court? I don't know if you understood my question. Okay, great, thanks. I do, yeah, no, it's a good question. So I think a couple of things to know off the bat for attorneys like myself who represent people whose rights have been violated, plaintiffs, at this, right now and before and earlier before Zulu and other cases, it's very difficult to bring a case or it wouldn't make a lot of sense to bring a case in Vermont State Court about those rights because about your Vermont constitutional rights because there's no attorneys fees attached. You still have qualified immunity to contend with and your case is likely to be removed if you bring any federal claims. So you bring in a federal court. So that that case, Keeneby Schneider started in federal court in Vermont and then was appealed to the second circuit. My feeling, and I think this is a foreground conclusion, maybe not a foreground conclusion, but my feeling would be that at least in future situations, if S-254 became law, you would give people a fair chance to have their Vermont rights adjudicated. So Vermont constitutional rights and you would have the opportunity to do so without worrying about qualified immunity. And you would be encouraged because you could still access and have the possibility of attorneys fees. So this bill is really about those Vermont rights. It's about looking at a Vermont civil and constitutional rights and making those meaningful for victims. We can't do anything about what federal courts are doing and what federal law says, but we can do something about what our courts do. So if I can follow up. So if we pass this, then the second circuit court or federal court could still apply qualified immunity because this just would affect Vermont courts. And the second part of this question is you refer always to Vermont constitutional rights, but this bill also says statutory and common law violations. So if you would comment on that a little bit about, because I haven't heard much talk about that just constitutional rights. So to the first question, the reason that, so the second circuit wouldn't review or federal courts don't review state constitutional claims. So it wouldn't have anything to say about those claims now or in the future, if this bill were to pass, because it doesn't have jurisdiction over those claims. So your second question, Senator White. Yes, the bill references common law claims, statutory claims and constitutional claims. And what I think I've always said is civil and constitutional rights, civil rights being statutory and common law and constitutional being constitutional. That's how I view civil rights as like statutory rights, such as our anti-discrimination laws. So when we look at Vermont state anti-discrimination law, the Public Accommodations Act, those are the kinds of things that I'm talking about that would be covered by this bill and would have the same structure. The Federal Civil Rights Act of the section 1983, which is the right of action you sue for federal rights, civil and constitutional, does it similarly. So we're kind of just trying to mirror that in some ways. It's true that the Federal Section 1983 Civil Rights Act does not include, to my understanding, does not include common law rights, but that's because common law rights are not adjudicated at the federal level. Usually they're more based in the state law. I'm still a little confused about civil rights or civil rights, but I'll leave it at that. Yeah, actually, if I could follow up on that because I share your confusion. Well, will the White testify that in Colorado, it just covers constitutional rights and not common law and not other matters? So I always thought civil rights were covered in the Constitution. So I think it's a common way to look at it and I think it's fine that civil rights are, in my eyes are typically those that are covered by statute and as in they come from civil law. So that would be what you all create. And those would be rights such as, at the federal level, it would be things like Title IX or Title VII, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, things like that that actually provides substantive rights to people not from the Constitution. They're based in equal protection, which is a constitutional framework, but they're much more specific and have a little, and we're created by legislators like yourself. That's at least how I'm viewing it and how I think we look at it from our perspective. What if we followed the Colorado model? What would not get covered? Well, as I said, what would not get covered would be things like Vermont's anti-discrimination law, the Vermont Public Accommodations Act, and it wouldn't cover, for instance, the new use of force law that you all passed last year. So there are substantive rights that I think people that would want to see under this bill that would not be covered if we didn't include those statutory rights. Other questions for Jay? One final question, Jay, that the bill only covers police officers and it's been criticism that it doesn't cover other groups. But do you have a response to that? Yeah, the ACLU is not opposed to including other government employees, but and as I've said, so we're open to that possibility. However, as I've said, I think it's important to recognize that law enforcement officers have a very special role in society and in our state. And that the importance of meeting that great power with great accountability seems to be of the, you know, paramount importance to us. Senator White. I hate to keep beating this one, but could you just help me understand here? What we've heard is that in Zulu, it created a right of action. And what the court said is that we needed something like qualified immunity, not necessarily qualified immunity, but something like, and it created a right of action for the victims. And what I understand is that the main issue was that it only covered, the interpretation was that it only covered state police. It didn't cover other law enforcement officers. Could you tell me why, why that court case does not address this? And if we came up with something like qualified immunity and included all law enforcement, that that would not be an approach. So Zulu, which is, you know, I represented Mr. Zulu with my colleague Leah Ernst. We won that Supreme Court case. It does a couple of things. And what you're talking about is it created a right of action under Article 11. So that's our search and seizure protections. It didn't talk about rights of action under other constitutional rights or statutory rights. So that's important note, of course. And what it did was create this qualified immunity-like test to determine whether a person who had their Article 11 rights violated by a state employee could access money damages. And that qualified immunity test, similar to qualified immunity that they developed, we feel is an important one. It's a step in the right direction, but it doesn't get us all the way. So the legislature certainly could look at what Zulu did and use that test as a jumping off point. We just feel that it's necessary for us to capture all victims of police misconduct that we don't have any kind of limited immunity. May I ask one more question? I'm sorry. Could you talk about the difference between, I know that Colorado just did constitutional, they didn't do statutory and how has that limited victims' ability in Colorado to seek compensation? Under, they didn't include statutory or common. Senator Wett, I just gotta say I'm impressed by the depth that you've gone on this because it's really, it is this important stuff and it's important for us to tease out these differences. As I said, I think the differences that you're seeing from the Colorado bill, the Colorado statute versus this bill, they didn't include statutory rights. And I think so when someone's rights under the Colorado Civil Rights Act, like our Public Accommodations Act are violated, qualified immunity could still apply in those situations in Colorado. That's what we're trying to avoid here in Vermont. Thank you. Thank you. And I think there's a lot of, one thing that the opponents of the bill, as I said, they have not offered different language or changes. And I think that, and they've just said that they just straight opposed the bill and that's it. And I think Commissioner Shirling said on the first day he appeared, first day of testimony said, we're not here to make this bill better, we're here to oppose it. And I think that's unfortunate because that's usually how bills are made. And I think there's a lot of work that can be done and if necessary, and I hope that we can continue that conversation, we do feel that this bill, as it's written by and large, does what is necessary to ensure access to justice for victims and that this state takes the next step forward as other states have in ensuring that those rights for victims. And I do appreciate the fact that Commissioner Shirling said that and that they're not here to make this bill better. But the proponents of the bill have said the same thing. We're not here to make this bill to change this bill, we're here to support this bill. So just that, I mean, that's the way advocacy works for bills and then it's the committee's responsibility to tease that out. Sure, yes, I think that's absolutely true. All I'm saying is that I think we'd be open to learning what people would think would make this bill better so that we could comment on that and could address it in the future. Thank you. Other questions for Jay? I mean, I have a thousand questions, but I think I better not ask them today. But I do think reading parts of Zulu, it's clear to me that the Supreme Court was suggesting that legislature should step in and should do something. One quote is the legislature may provide and limit a statutory remedy with constitutionally based tort violations. Absent legislation providing meaningful remedy for constitutional thought. As long as a remedy provides meaningful regress for significant violations. And I'm not sure what significant violation means and I'm not at liberty to get down to Chief Justice Ryber's office and ask what's significant, but I think that they were signaling that it may be time after 55 years for the legislature to do something in terms of qualified immunity. So anyway, it is Senator Baruth. Jay, I appreciate your testimony and in the spirit of what you were talking about, making a bill, exploring changes, one of the things that Senator White was pointing out was and other witnesses willed as well, is that Colorado had a more limited scope. How would you feel if the committee went in that direction and removed the common law and those other pieces and centered it around constitutional redress? Well, I suppose on behalf of the ACLU, we would want to see what those changes were before making significant comments. However, there are some critical portions of the bill and so I guess we'll have to just wait and see. That's kind of where I think we're at right now. Okay, and that's fair. I guess this committee has done under this chair has done a lot of progressive work in reform over the last five years in particular. And when we're doing that, a lot of times we are looking at templates that are in existence. Here, the drafting has gone a little further than Colorado. So it wouldn't be a crazy notion to think that as we move it forward, one of the ways toward possible compromise might be with a preexisting model. When we did death with dignity, for instance, we went very close to an existing model and that helped out in the process. So I just, I note that for what it's worth at this point. Thank you. Yeah, I think I appreciate that, Senator Burroughs. I think part of the problem here is the opponents of the bill have not talked about improving the bill or changing it. And it's not just the commissioner of public safety, by the way, it's at least 12 groups, as I understand it. So thank you, Jay. Our next witness is Reverend Mark Hughes. Mark, welcome. Good morning, Mr. Chair. Good morning, committee. Hi. Good morning. Thank you for having me. It's good to see you this session, Mr. Chair. Good to see you too. And the committee as well. And thank you for allowing me to come back into your committee to testify on this, which we believe is a pretty important policy. First, the quote of the day is, I share your confusion. For the record, my name is Mark Hughes. I am the executive director of the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance, Injustice for All. I am also the minister here in New Alpha Missionary Baptist Church. Part of my testimony is gonna refer back to the previous career experience as a certified information system security professional, as well as a certified information systems auditor with over 25 years of experience, mostly from a risk management perspective in an emerging industry. Something that was new, that involves various perspectives of risk management, including accept transfer and mitigate. So thank you for having me. And also wanna thank you for all of the work that you're doing in this area. This, I believe, is a very small step in the right direction. And it's also a part of, it's a portion of a multifaceted challenge that we have that's enormous. And I think you spoke to it in conjunction with your other body last year when you resolved that the legislative body commits to a sustained and deep work of eradicating systemic racism throughout the state, actively fighting racist practices and participating in the creation of more just and equitable systems. You further stated that this legislative body commits to coordinating work and participating in ongoing action grounded in science and data to eliminate race-based health disparities and eradicate systemic racism. That is your R-113, which is the joint resolution relating to racism as a public health emergency that you passed last year. There was a number of other things. In fact, Mr. Chair, the first time that we met was almost around this time, maybe about a couple, a few more weeks into this session. And I think everyone was in this committee except for your esteemed college, colleague rather, Senator Phil Behruth, but I think everyone else was here and it was in the spring of 2017 when then Senator White saved the day for us with S116 and came back with some phenomenal input that would take us to the racial disparities in criminal and juvenile justice system advisory panel. And that panel is still in existence today. And that was the first work of the substantial work of the legislative body towards systemic racism. And that panel is still in existence. We would go on to senators, the senators committee in the following year with Act 9, 2018 special session and create the racial equity executive director's panel, director and panel rather, who by the way was charged with eradicating systemic racism. We also know just recently, and thank you, the PR2 has recently passed the constitutional amendment to abolish slavery which really serves as a foundation in eradicating systemic racism. Also last year we passed the health equity bill as and we just mentioned the R113. The reason why Mr. Chair that I went through all of those is just to expand upon the breadth and the depth of the challenge that we're dealing with. Yes, we are dealing with the criminal justice system but we also know that there was housing, education, employment, health services access, the transportation system, economic development as well as this system that we call criminal justice. And right now we only happen to be talking about policing. So this is a very broad challenge that we're dealing with. I think we have made some progress. I do think that this policy is going in the right direction. I think that as we review it, that we have to also frame it in the same frame that we've used to outline the challenge, the larger challenges. Very little am I hearing and admittedly I haven't been listening to this conversation for a long but I felt we would be remiss in not chiming in on this because of its importance but very little have I heard that has framed this conversation from in a conversation of addressing systemic racism, the responsibility that we have. We know that the criminal justice system and specifically in this case policing has a huge impact and adverse impact on essentially all categories that are not white, male, cis and straight that we know that but what we're here to talk about is the impact on black and brown folks. And we've done a lot of this work and we continue to do so but moving towards the policy, I would just say that the other components of what we're dealing with here that must be taken into consideration. We have to take a close look at what does it mean when we start talking about contracts? What does it mean when we start talking about oversight? What does it mean when we start talking about data collection, policy, training? There are a whole lot of elements that go into this conversation that we're having and I don't think we would do it justice if we weren't considering all of them as they come together. This is a good approach. This is one of the things that we should be taking a look at. However, when we start to talk about risk management I would like to have a conversation about the risk management as it pertains to black folks and black and brown folks. And I appreciate Senator Beirut's comments earlier when he was talking about risk and he kind of flipped the table on the conversation about risk because that's really what we're here for is to talk about risk as it pertains to me. Personally, I feel and I know there are many people who look like me who feel the same way that the biggest risk to my life or my safety is law enforcement in the state of Vermont. Hard stop. So in all likelihood, if I am hurt or injured in the state of Vermont, unless I do it myself there's a high probability that that will be at the hands of law enforcement, period. And it's not a new thing. This is a post reconstruction. This is a 1619. This is a national history thing. You've acknowledged it already in your commitment to address systemic racism. So I'd like to keep the main thing, the main thing. And that is to just have a brief conversation about what that means to us. Now risk management, what does that mean? How do we accept risk? How do we transfer risk in our communities as black and brown folks as it pertains to policing or the rest of the criminal justice system? How do we mitigate risk? And again, and I'll go back to my first visit here, Mr. Chair, when I first got here you recall we were sitting down and we were talking about Title 20, 2366 and 2358. What are these for those who are watching fear and impartial policing policy, race data collection and training for all law enforcement agencies? How do we even hold them accountable to that? How do we invoke rule 25 in the house and say we actually have a viable oversight of law enforcement when that holds them accountable? Not just on a personal level, but on an agency level. And we'll talk about the agency level in a minute because I think it's very important, even though we're talking about qualified immunity to talk about the agency's responsibility because this is not a, this is a bad Apple thing. Oh, that was a bad cop thing. This is a systemic thing. Again, you've already acknowledged that. This is a systemic thing and this has everything to do with how an agency is run in the culture of that agency as well. And that goes back to holding that agency accountable. So how do we acknowledge, how do we accept, how do we transfer, how do we mitigate? I think that in terms of how Black folks engage the criminal and the civil justice system today is very, very important. We have this thing called the 14th Amendment and there's this alleged equal protection under the law. But if that was true, we wouldn't be having this conversation about systemic racism. And I can give you case in case in case after case where Black and Brown folks have sought justice both criminally and civilly and have failed because the system has failed them. So I think that, if all things are equal and we're talking about engaging this policy and implementing this policy, I think it's fair to say that Black and Brown folks, even with the eradication of this thing called, well, I just lost my train of thought there. Qualified immunity. Qualified immunity, thank you. Even it's neurological and being treated. But even with this qualified immunity eradication that we still wouldn't have a level playing field that we'd be playing on. I mean, it's important to acknowledge that because if we do acknowledge that, then we accept the fact that there are gonna be substantial hurdles. Now, I'm not arguing against this policy. I'm just asking this ought to be practical about what it actually means and what it's really gonna do because there are substantial economic hurdles that Black and Brown folks would need to face. As I'm nearing towards conclusion, I would just say that to read into the record, the definition of systemic racism at this point, I think is appropriate if I can be allowed, Mr. Chair. This is the definition of systemic racism. This is the thing that the legislature has committed to eradicating and the executive director of racial equity is actually signed up to do. Systemic racism involves both the deep structures and the surface structures of racial oppression. It includes the complex array of anti-Black practices, the unjustly gained political economic power of whites, the continuing economic and other resource of inequalities along racial lines, and the emotion-laden racist framing created by whites to maintain and rationalize their white privilege and power. It goes on to say that systemic racism thus encompasses the dominant white racial frame with its white racist attitudes, ideologies, emotions, images and narratives, as well as the discriminatory actions and institutions flowing out of and linked to that frame. This racism is material, social, ideological reality and indeed systemic, which means that the racist reality is manifested in all major institutions. And I quote you from, this is a quote from a book that we've used for years in doing our work. It's called Racist America, Roots, Current Realities and Future Reparations, Joe Fagan and Kimberly Ducey. I say that to say this is that this is a systemic issue that we're dealing with, qualified immunity and lifting it. Yes, it will move the needle some to the policy. One of the things that's really important to understand in this, as we do our work in bolstering the HRC, as we do our work in bolstering the Attorney General's office's abilities to respond to criminal and civil and deliver consistently equal protection under the law, as we do the same thing in our state's attorney's offices. Understanding that it's really important that we are balancing how we mitigate or how we manage rather risk. I think as we do all of this work, I think it's also important that we hold agencies accountable. And I think, and I heard a golden nugget earlier today in testimony is as we connect things to insurance, for example, if you go back and take a look at the policy right now, as it's before you, I think it's over on page three, two, three authority. I've got a mess here. Age three of three. There is a provision notwithstanding the provisions. And oh, by the way, we are proponent of this policy and we were very open to working in this process to make this policy better. So contrary to all of the other assertions, there's a willingness in our communities to work with folks who oppose this policy to be clear. We support the ACLU, we're behind this, but if there's some better ideas, somebody for crying out loud say something. But one of the things here is in notwithstanding the provisions of title three in chapter 29, 189 in the titles, 29, 55, this is law enforcement, shella demnify law enforcement officers for any liability incurred and it goes on, it talks about liability from the perspective of law enforcement. So all of this policy is really all about at the end of the day, after all of the money is pushed back and forth across the table, how safe is the establishment, is the municipality, how safe is the state and how safe is the law enforcement officer and who's out of money, okay? And at the end of the day, that doesn't do anything for black and brown bodies for us because with systemic racism still in place, we still again face numerous obstacles. I believe that somewhere in here, if we're able to be able to tie some kind of mitigation commitments into these agencies, you might have some better policy. I think if this particularly as a pertains to insurability and you can do that. Now back to the experience that I've had as a systems auditor, as a security professional when it was very new to hold a person accountable for protecting data or sensitive information or organizations when insurance companies first started engaging in this type of activity. Yeah, it wasn't a whole lot of information out there unlike what we're dealing with now because there's reams and volumes of information out there right now about how folks have had use of force against them where it's up over 31, 32% here in Burlington up from 17% four years ago where there's claims and complaints and deaths all across the state. Don't say we don't have information, Mr. Chair. But previously when I was in another industry, yes, the industry was immature. Yes, there were still trying to figure things out. There was a tectonic shift that was happening across the nation at that time and folks had to get on the train. And at some point or another, what we were able to do is we were able to move to a point to a maturity where we are today. They held organizations accountable. They insurance companies came in and said, do you have policies in place? Do you have training in place? Do you have, are you surveying your systems? Are you auditing your systems on a regular basis and so on and so forth? That comports very easily to the conversation that we're having right now in terms of title 20, 2366 and 2358, the requirements that we have for law enforcement agencies, all 79 of them collect data, implement fair and partial policing policy and conduct training in 2358. Why would we not tie that to the requirements to be able to make these agencies eligible to have the insurance that they need in order to cover these law enforcement officers? So there are some ideas I think that could be fleshed out here. But at the end of the day to move this forward, I think the key is to hold agencies accountable so they can hold individuals accountable. And as an insurance company, if I was going to insure you and you told me, now I'm just gonna put my other hand on, I've got fair and partial policing policy in place, check, I'm collecting data, hear it all is and it's not on a freaking bunch of spreadsheets over at the crime research group stacked in a pile. Most of them not legible, but it's something that is useful, check. Yeah, here's the training records of all my check. Well, that's gonna reduce the risk or the exposure if you will for that particular agency in a perfect world. And I think we can build from that, but I think we gotta get constructive with this type of work that we're doing here and link it to the other work that we've already done, work that we established us, established the groundwork for years ago. So I thank you, Mr. Chair, for your time and I would say I'm just as an alibi fire, some of the other things that is really, really important to be thinking about now as we talk about transferring risk or mitigating risk is also what are we doing in our communities, in our impacted communities? Because that what that does is that also takes the pressure off of this age-old, this age-old all the way back from slave catching, this age-old dance that black and brown folks do with policing. So what we tried to do here in Burlington was is to divest and reinvest some of those resources into what is now the Richard Kemp Center to be able to stand up outreach and education and adult basic education and youth activities and workforce development and all of those rich resources that must be in these communities to be able to divest again and reinvest in these. All you heard about in the news was 30% reduction in law enforcement officers which really goes back to what folks choose to look at and what they choose to focus on. Nobody wants to talk about divesting and reinvesting in the commitment that we need to make in these communities if we're gonna make some progress in these areas if we're really trying to reduce the risk to those who are exposed in our community as opposed to just having a conversation to make it sure that the police come out whole. Of course everybody wants good policing in their communities if it keeps them safe. We shouldn't have to have that conversation but we also wanna invest in these communities that we know are vulnerable. That's how we mitigate, that's how we transfer risk. That's how we make the investment that needs to be invested. So thank you for your time to your questions. Again, appreciating the opportunity to come and talk to you. I know you're moving towards a markup and if there's anything that you'd wanna come back and get any questions answered for me later on you can also reach out later. Appreciate that Mark very much. Are there any questions for Mark at this point? Thank you very thorough and I appreciate the testimony. Committee, we're gonna go on a break. Oh, Senator White, you had a question or comment? Thank you. I just wanted to thank Mark because as usual you are pretty clear in your opinion. So thank you very much. Senator White, it's good to see you. Thank you. Committee, we're gonna go on a break until five after 11.