 Thank you for having me today. Again, this is for Yang for the record. And I am the executive director and the council for the Vermont Human Rights Commission. And I know that all the committee members are aware that the Human Rights Commission is a state agency that investigates claims of discrimination in housing in state government employment and in places of public accommodations, which would include roads and lots of enforcement agencies as well. Part of our mission and statutory mandate is to also provide education and training in advanced policies and legislation relating to the protection of Vermont's most vulnerable, which is why I'm here today. The commission supports H518. I have provided my written testimony to the committee. I just wanna go briefly through the language that we do support again, allowing local entities to determine their level of cooperation with federal immigration authorities, honors of knowledge and insight and experience possessed by these agencies regarding their own members in their agencies and their communities. And we know from 30 years of implicit bias studies and that people have implicit biases about immigrants and what they look like, the same way that people have bias about what a U.S. citizen or an American looks like. And so the commission certainly supports language that would prohibit agencies and hospitals from adopting policies that would allow for greater communication or involvement with federal immigration authority that are permitted under the model policy. And lastly, the reason why I'm here is I have proposed an amendment to H518, part of the biggest criticisms that I've heard from various community members is that the current fair and impartial policy is ineffective because there really is no teeth for lack of a better word, no meaningful consequence when an agency fails to effectively adopt the model policy. The human rights commission was recently has started to mandate under Act 183 to do inspections of businesses in regards to sexual harassment. And so the amendment that I've proposed in here comes from language that gave the human rights commission similar rights to inspect. And so I just want to review that. So for the purposes of assessing compliance with the provisions of this section, the human rights commission are definitely made with 48 hours notice at reasonable times and without unduly disrupting business operations. Enter and inspect the records of any state, county and municipal law enforcement agency or question any person who is authorized by the agency or constable to comply with the requirements of the section and examine the agency's records, policies, procedures and training material related to the fair and impartial policing policy and agency or constable may agree to waive or shorten the 48 hour notice period. Following an inspection examination pursuant to the section, the human rights commission shall notify the state, county and municipal law enforcement agency or constable of the results of the inspection and examination including any issues or deficiencies and identified provide resources and identified any technical assistance that the attorney general of the human rights commission may be able to provide to assist the state, county and municipal law enforcement agency or constable that does any identified issues or deficiencies. Let me just say for the record as well that although Act 183 gave the human rights commission this ability to inspect businesses if we suspected that there would be any in fact actually the statutory language doesn't require that we actually suspect that anybody has violated a sexual harassment policy but it is a way for us to be notified sexual harassment issues. It's also a way for us to ensure that people are adopting effective sexual harassment policies and even though that has passed the human rights commission hasn't done those inspections and the reason we really haven't done those inspections is lack of resources and lack of time. Our goal and our hope is that we would only use that statutory right when there's indication that a business or an agency does not have effective policies or we know through investigations or lawsuits that they don't have effective sexual harassment policies. So because of lack of resources this isn't something that we would engage in on a routine basis. My feeling about adding this language to 518 is that we would be using it in the same manner that because we already have a statutory mandate to do an agency initiated complaint that should there be indications from the community, from community members that a law enforcement agency has not adopted the fair and impartial police policy or that there are concerns that law enforcement agencies are not following the FIPP policy that that would really be the basis for why the human rights commission would be conducting such an inspection. And the goal here is to review those policies and to review some of those concerns. I have a couple of questions. China then the whole committee does. But in your package we have a letter from the ACLU for us to support for this amendment. Did you, was this amendment discussed in the house? So this, I testified in the house over the phone and I did suggest to them that we would be open to doing inspections and I said that it would be language that would be similar. But I did not have a chance to provide what that language would look like. So that was oral testimony in the house, but yes. So there was some confusion that I spoke with representative Brad, I was a little confused by the name. I'm also a little bit confused by the current authority to investigate if, for example, the Bennington police department has no secrets come under fire in several locations recently. They are doing their own review, but is there anything that will prevent the human rights commission from looking at the Bennington police department to have just based upon current statute? So currently in order for the human rights commission to do an investigation, we typically wait on someone to file a complaint at the human rights commission or we could initiate our own investigation by initiating our own complaint. But a complaint can't just be based on mere suspicion that discrimination has occurred. We usually need to have sufficient language that supports what we call a prima facie case of discrimination. And that's really difficult to do so because we don't have that information without having done the investigation. So oftentimes we don't do an agency-initiated complaint because we don't lack the information to even start the investigation. And then in terms of Bennington, I can say is that I can't speak as to whether or not the human rights commission is doing any investigation. That's not what I asked. I actually asked is under current statute could you and with this, the second part of the question was gonna be if this were in effect, would you then be more clearly able to do that? Or would you be more likely to do that? So we would more clearly be able to do that and more likely able to do that. So what the inspection would allow us to do is gather sufficient information to see if it would even support a complaint to open an investigation. We do not just start an investigation without there being a complaint that contains language that suggests there could be discrimination. So for example, just because we hear about something happening in the news doesn't mean that the human rights commission would then use its statutory authority to investigate because we don't have sufficient information. The ability to do an inspection would give us the information that we need to start such a complaint and start an investigation. This will be purely based on the model policy. Right. Yeah. So I am a little confused about this because the model policies are public information. We don't need to go to the law enforcement agency to inspect their policy, their all public documents. And so you could get a public document at any time. Or so why do you, and then, so it looks like what you're looking at is whether the policies are sufficient in some way. But you could look at those policies at any time. Sure. So it does say here, the language is inspect and examine the agency's records, policies, procedures, and training materials. And I'm not sure how much of records, policies, or procedures, or training materials, which are public, which are not, and so their policies are public. And their training material is usually done through the academy nut. I mean, there is some individual training that's done at agencies, but I'm curious about what records you would be looking at is like, is it the records where, somebody stops somebody and then they file their, they are two record keeping systems in the state and they file a record, I mean they file the charge or the stop or is that what you're looking at? Because I believe those are also public. Sure, I think it depends on what would be the basis to do the inspection in the first place. So for example, if we're hearing from community members that this particular police enforcement agency is violating the FIP, the policies, or that they haven't enacted it, or even though they've enacted it, they really haven't followed it, that depending on those circumstances, if we were dealing with someone who is from an immigrant community or someone who's African-American, that those might be, we might be asking questions about data or records related to stops regarding immigrants or relating to stops regarding African-Americans. And again, I think it's based on the facts and what would be our reason for doing the inspection in the first place and so. So this continues on the same line of questioning. So when you, you know, when I was on the agriculture committee, we discussed having an inspection policy for farms to see whether they were following the phosphorus requirements. And the idea was you were trying to catch bad actors or people who maybe didn't understand what their responsibilities were. So you were needing to go there and inspect. So in this case, when you go into a law enforcement agency and you, I'm just wondering if you can walk us through, how did that work? So you notified the law enforcement agency under this language that you want to inspect. They have 48 hours that they can make it short. Then when you show up, how would you inspect? Sure, so how do I foresee this is, again, let's say that there's been a lot of news coverage and lots of phone calls that the Human Rights Commission that says this particular police agency is not following the fit or they seem to be targeting a certain group of people and we have concerns about them that first I would start with a letter to the agency and saying that under this language, we are asking to look at maybe recent stops involving people who are African American or immigrant, whether or not any of those people have been referred to federal immigration authority and we've asked to look at their policies and ask them to identify where those policies are posted and probably ask them to see how many complaints have been made about police activity involving African Americans or people in the immigrant population. And so it would start off with being a letter and say, is there an opportunity to sit down and talk about it? We'd like to look at these things, can you provide them or when can we come and look at them? And it may be that we come and look at them or we see those documents and none of it is concerning and then we would say thank you and we would not open an investigation but the possibility exists that when community members complain that police agencies are not following the fit that we couldn't end up seeing data or seeing information that aligns with some of those complaints and those two things together could conceivably be a basis for starting a complaint just to start an investigation. We have not determined at that point that discrimination has occurred or has not occurred. That is just enough to open an investigation to then use our statutory mandate under our existing statute to do a full investigation to see if discrimination is happening. Okay and so to take it one step further. So non-concerning information going further, concerning information you would go based on that but what I think is more likely that you would have agencies that say we don't have any of this information. We don't have in this category anything that you have said you're looking for. Would you or could you know the sign which make the decision to go in the possibility that they may not be offering all the information. Is that part of this possibility too that you could go in and say our inspection involves going into the computer system to look at what you have or don't? So here's my thought is if we ask for, if we have statutory language that allows the Human Rights Commission to do these inspections. I do trust that the law enforcement agencies would comply with the inspection but if it turns out that they are not collecting that data they don't have that information or those records. I wouldn't start a complaint just to further investigate but what that does do is it informs me as the executive director of the Human Rights Commission that we're not collecting the information that we need and that these inspections have revealed that. And I would probably be back here next year saying perhaps we need to be asking for more data collection or more information to inform us about what is happening in the communities and the relationship between community members and law enforcement agencies. Okay, can you ask for that now? In other words, you can send them a letter and I'll ask you for these things. There's no requirement that they comply with that at this point. Right, so the only way that the Human Rights Commission can seek this information now under our existing statute is to start the complaint first and then to do the investigation. What I'm saying is we don't have enough information to initiate our own agency complaint at this point. We're waiting on people to file a complaint at the HRCH. But I, and I take that point and I think it's a good one. I would be more comfortable with a piece of statute on the menu that said these pieces of data must be provided. What you describe is more like the ability to go in and search and it's open-ended. You could search records as the word here. To my mind, that means anything within law enforcement agencies from the computers to the paper files to the audio files, that's, that is open-ended as a designated power bill. Sure, I understand that and I would say that last year when Act 283 passed the legislature believed that sexual harassment was such an important issue that it was important to give the Human Rights Commission that kind of statutory authority to do that level of inspection. And I would say that fair and impartial police is of the same level, if not more important. Okay, so when we begin by just reiterating that I'm a past Chair of the Human Rights Commission and I've been almost 36 years now in this month as a criminal defense attorney, I am not oriented towards police, opposed to not bringing the basis. You're reading your language and hearing your testimony, I hear a big difference. Your testimony is such that you're looking for a patent of conduct. This language is very specific and grants you an absolute right to go into a police department upon any reason whatsoever without a complainant and investigate fondness. Now, when I get the police affidavit, I know it is also accompanied by an error in the investigation of this habit. There may or may not yet be a judge that has found probable cause of a criminal case, which means that there's an ongoing investigation. That's not technically public information at that point in time and I'm reading this that actually gives you a right to go in and seek any agency's records just for the purpose of assessing complaints when you technically interfere with the police investigation, not necessarily their business operations as you accepted here, but with the actual investigation itself. There's no court order that may be needed. You are not in need of any kind of a complaining witness that will generate a reason for investigating this. And I have to frankly say, I'm uncomfortable, even as a criminal defense attorney, I'm thinking that you would have that power by standing for a communal nervous, frankly, not what you're asking for. I wouldn't have a response to that if I'm having a hard time. Knowing the overall intent is to have a pattern of conduct established that leads you to the conclusion that there is in fact a violation of that. That's not what this is saying. This is something I had a lot different point on. Well, of course I would just like to say that I absolutely respect what you have to say and I also understand that I hear your concerns and I'm really here representing the other concerns, which is people in the community who are feeling as if the current policy is ineffective or insufficient to address what we're seeing happening across the state, but I don't, I hear you and I respect that and I don't, it's possible that we could amend this language or change it to address some of those concerns. I can't say that I'm prepared at this moment to do that. Just so you know, the concept you're presenting, I certainly can understand and agree with. I'm very nervous about how this can present to us. Yeah, and again, in my mind, all this is gathering sufficient information to see if we can support a complaint in the first place to then do the investigation. This isn't to, right, yes. So if, oh, I'm sorry. No, I'm just, chew it, you can come back, I say chew it. So I'm even more confused now. So if there's a complaint, you can do this right now, right? Yes. Okay, but what you said is that there are complaints coming from communities and so then you would wanna go and look at that agency. But if there's a complaint, you already have the ability to do it, you don't need to have this open. And I do have some concerns about looking at any of the records because that's, that could, as Joe said, impact an ongoing investigation. And I'm just wondering if what you're looking at here is the deficiencies in the policy and whether they're actually carrying out the policy or looking at the actions of individual officers and investigating individual officers. Because if that's the case, that there's already a process for doing that. And this is one of the reasons that they can be certified. Well, let me first explain the first part of that, which is of the complaint I said. So when I say someone files a complaint, that is an individual calls their office and says I have been discriminated against by so-and-so, this law enforcement, or I was stopped unlawfully, or I've been targeted unlawfully, that's an individual. What we, that sometimes happens. But what we do sometimes also hear during our outreach, our training, is that you have a group of people who say there's a problem with this law enforcement entity. But they are unwilling to come forward. They are afraid of retaliation. Or it is their friends or their family members. So they are living themselves not with the people filing the complaint. But we'll hear that from several different community members. And that's an example in which, oh, okay, maybe this is something that the Human Rights Commission could look into. So a lot of the public response to what was happening in Bennington was why isn't the Human Rights Commission looking into this? Isn't that why we have a Human Rights Commission? Well, we can't look into it because we don't have enough information to even start the investigation. And unless somebody files a complaint to the Human Rights Commission, that can't happen. It can't be a complaint from a community. It has to be an individual that's has to disagree. Yes. Or we initiate our own agency complaint. And we would have done that if we had sufficient information. But we can't do the investigation until we have the information to support the complaint. It's, again, there was another agency that is better equipped or that we are supporting to do that work. I mean, the Human Rights Commission is happy to do that. But I would just refer you to all the public statements that have been made, that it is the job of the Human Rights Commission to handle what was happening in Bennington. Well, and it's not just Bennington folks. Right, yes. That just happens to be the example that was brought in. I brought that up, but also, there was a pretty important case that highlighted the issue of Bennington. So I thought it was a different way to get at it. But Mike, I'm going to put my appropriations committee hat on. You said you have a problem resorted now to do the jobs that you've got. And we have 253 million dollars in requests over over the governor's budget level. And we have also unfunded promise about water quality and unfunded promise about weatherization. We have unfunded well. And the finance committee wants to do about 4 million dollars in tax credits with reduced revenue. So in all of that, how do, is this any more than just a window dressing that said, yeah, but we don't provide you with the resources to actually do it? I mean, I think that's a very fair statement to me. And I haven't been very honest in that. We haven't done any inspections related to Act 183 because of lack of resources. So I don't see this as this ability to go into any law enforcement agency and just ask for a bunch of records because I don't have the time to do that. I actually am dealing with people who have bias complaints in those investigations and more. So my thought is that should another situation arise like we saw in Bennington, that would probably be a situation in which we could utilize this language to say what is happening down there. Please give us some information in regards to the fifth part. Did you adopt it? What does that look like? You know, what are the record slide in terms of police stops and does the support in agency initiated a complaint to start an investigation? But, yeah, I mean, I'm being very honest that this isn't something that we're going to be doing just because we have the right to do it now. And in defense of Bennington, I must say that the university who wanted to study on traffic data concluded that there was bias based upon the data and then the Center for Justice Research at Norwich. Their own study said the university in Vermont study was flawed and inaccurate. And then the UVM people said, with all due respect to UVM, they said, no, the Center for Justice Research is flawed. Nobody actually has told, in all of that, the people of Bennington are somewhat confused, but I will say this very publicly that they are doing a review of their police policies initiated by the community and the town, so I'm worried that it is ongoing. But I will say that sometimes the information that people get is not as accurate as one would think. And I know UVM is still running their study, but I've gone over both studies and read the Center for Justice Research, but I've got a late name, okay? Crime Research Group. Crime Research Group, thank you, Chloe. The crime, that was the Center for Justice Research, now it's the Crime Research Group. Anyway, their study indicated that their methods were flawed and the way to do a study. There is one other group that I'm concerned with that nobody has talked about, and that's young people being profiled, whether they're people of color, whatever, but particularly those under 22 let's say, who are being profiled, and that's one of the concerns that I've expressed. And is that a group that also could be looked at? I mean, do you have a potential? Do you have a bias for your police? Sure, potentially. I just wanted to ask, I have a job, good question, when you were talking about the Bennington situation. So I remember what you talked about, people saying the human rights action should jump in. Did you contact the Bennington Police Department about the fit and their... No, I did not. And my question would be one, because you don't need this legislation to send a letter asking for their policy and how they operate. Right, but they're not going to comply. I work for an enforcement agency, and I don't have an authority outside an investigation to seek that kind of information. And so it's a wishful, yeah, it would be, I've written a wishful letter and say, please give me some information so I can look into it, but I don't think practically that that would... But you've got a stronger position today if you have, because you can say they denied me this information, this information, this information. And then we could look at, specifically require agencies to provide those categories. Instead, we're expressing concern of this language because it's a very broad brush. So... There is another way to narrow down what you're trying to accomplish. Defensatories regularly bring suppression motions based on documents that present situations in clear profile. Those documents that they're using are literally the applications of the narratives of the police officers. There's a defense bar that makes a simple conversation about the term or whether it's an established pattern that their policy might help. But then you have the potential to develop a specific complaint by which I think if we gave this right to any other agency, name the police or law enforcement type of agency that was given carte blanche opportunities ago and he didn't have to give records anywhere they wanted. Chloe over there would be a screaming bloody worker in a heartbeat, this particular issue. Just try to think of a way to get to where you want to be. Charming. Conceptually, she supports. But in fact, we did, whether it was this bill for another bill, we actually removed that ability from the agency's office. Charming, to do that. Let me just say, let me just say for the record that so I've heard it from many community members about what was happening in Benton, about what was happening with law enforcement agencies throughout the state of Vermont. And I've heard a lot of public officials and otherwise say, why isn't the Human Rights Commission doing something? And this is my best response. And I felt that I owed them that to present it. But. I appreciate your response. I think it's a sense of the committee that it should be narrowed to some extent. Sure. That it's very broad. And then the other sense of the committee is that we should pick on the judges next. Yeah. And should this committee not adopt this amendment, this legislative session, its language that is something to consider the next legislative session? I would also say that it's a resource issue as well. Yes. We have expectations that a commission can do things. The public has expectations that it can do things that's not resorted to do. It becomes our responsibility to meet those expectations that in this environment, that's certainly the goal. So if your commission does a terrific job and I appreciate all the hard work you do. And I want to thank all of you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Our next witness is Enrique. Somebody coming with you today. If you want to pull a chair up your wall, I'll let you do it. We're going to go another season. I'm just going to do it around the bush. Oh, okay. That's really good. Is that, it's right here out. Yeah. It's in the roof of my life. I sat in this chair for two hours yesterday. Thank you. You're welcome. That's my first. Please go ahead. Hola, buenos días. Mi nombre es Enrique Valdaza y soy parte de la comunidad inmigrante. Centro la Voz de Comunidad aquí en el estado de Vermont. Y bueno, agradezco el espacio que hacen para escuchar nuestra voz y que nos parece es un momento importante. Hello, everybody. My name is Enrique Valdaza. I represent the background community here in Vermont. And I bring the voices of the very farm workers. Thank you very much for the space and the time we're here to talk to you about this. Estoy aquí apoyando el 1518 y también la enmienda presentada por la Comisión de Derechos Humanos. Y también, bueno, hemos visto el testimonio de Marc y que recomienda algunos cambios adicionales en la política y también nos parecen bien. Pero vamos a enfocar hoy en la recomendación de la Comisión de Derechos Humanos. So I'm here supporting Bill 518 and the amendment presented by the HRC. We also have seen the testimony of Marc Hughes. Maybe you got it. He recommends some additional changes and we believe these are good. But now we're going to focus more on our testimonies about the amendment to the HRC. Bueno, como la comunidad inmigrante en Vermont y en todo el país, la comunidad inmigrante, siempre hemos sufrido la presión política de inmigración. Hemos estado trabajando por aquí en Vermont, hemos estado trabajando por muchos años en la política no más polimigra para realmente parar la colaboración entre los policías de inmigración. Pero esta ha sido debilitada por el gobierno de Donald Trump y la policía por querer seguir manteniendo la comunicación con las agencias de inmigración. So here the minor community in Vermont and the whole country will be suffering about the political oppression of immigration policies. And we are working really hard for years in this FIP policy. But this has been a weakness, it's weak now under the new administration of Donald Trump. And we see that the police is defending and wants to maintain this relationship with the immigration agencies. And at the end, it's not something that strengthens their trust in the police and the minor communities. Y bueno, algo que quería igual decir es que bueno, nosotros yo he sido un trabajador lechero aquí y en Vermont tenemos una comunidad lechera, verdad, de trabajadores migrantes que ayudan, que ayudan a sostener esta industria y que hemos estado trabajando fuertemente para mejorar esta política y ya no ser discriminados y separados de nuestras familias o de nuestros trabajos. So I want to acknowledge that I'm a minor worker. I've been working on dairy farms and we're a whole community here that are sustaining their industry. We're really important for the state and we have been working for years here and we want to be recognized. Y bueno, enfocando un poco más, como dije la semana pasada, es sumamente necesario que esto se mejore, verdad, porque no es suficiente. Mentionamos la política modelo y por ejemplo, el 25% de las agencias no tienen la política modelo o adecuada, la mínima, verdad. También algunas políticas han resultado en que no se han actualizado desde 2011, 2014, 2016 y políticas que ni mencionan nada acerca de inmigración. So I want to rectify the importance of this because we see that the actual structures haven't been enough or sufficient. We talked last week about 25% of the agencies don't have the right policy, policies that haven't been updated since 2011, 2014, 2016. Also the policies don't even mention the non-collaboration with immigration enforcement. The record we'll testify in a few minutes that actually was inaccurate that they're all up to date. Entonces también mencionamos acerca de la falta de transparencia, como el entrenamiento a los policías, acerca de este tema en particular. There was also a lack of transparency about the trainings with the agencies and we see this happen. Y bueno, las violaciones siguen en varios testimonios, mis compañeros y yo, como se citaron bien, mencionado por ejemplo el caso de Orman López, in Vergeance, el caso de José Luis y Armando Franklin y bueno, también la semana pasada les compartí que yo vivía esto en carne propia, ¿verdad? Cuando el DNB proporcionó en mi caso y en otros casos información a la Agencia de AES, cuando también está cubierta la política del EFACP. And we also brought the violations for Kim. I talked last week about the case of Orman López in Vergeance, José Luis and Armando Franklin County and even about my own experience of discrimination with the DNB collaborating with ICE when the DNB should be covered by the EFACP. Todo esto resulta en una falta de confianza en que realmente todos están cumpliendo, ¿verdad? Y por ende, la comunidad inmigrante en Bermón no se siente cómoda en usar las agencias de policía. En ningún caso, ¿verdad? En casi ningún caso, por ejemplo, violencia doméstica, no a veces no se usen de recursos la violencia física en el lugar de trabajo y entre otros. Incluso algunos empleadores han resultado que amenazan a los trabajadores con llamar a la policía para el desalojo de las viviendas cuando han trabajado hoy por años o con la intención de deportarlos. En todos estos casos resulta en la falta de confianza para la policía porque no están cumpliendo y por ende, la comunidad, la comunidad inmigrante en Bermón no se siente cómoda en usar los recursos de las agencias. Nos vemos casos sobre violencia doméstica, violencia en el lugar de trabajo. Incluso algunos empleadores usan su poder a los trabajadores para llamar a la policía para protegerlos a los trabajadores o con la intención de deportarlos. So, based on this history, it's clear for us that an additional level of transparency and accountability will support the agencies to comply with the needs under the law. This amendment doesn't replace the structures of the compliance but increase more support. And we want to say that we trust the HRC as the independent agency to play this role. Lastly, I want to say that I believe in the values of Bermón and the USA Constitution for these steps that are really important for the community for our people. Lastly, I want to say that I believe in the values of Bermón and the USA Constitution for these steps that are really important for the community for our mic and community to move forward instead of backwards. Thank you. Muchas gracias. Thank you. Can you clarify more clearly from my memory the issue with the department of vehicles that affected the... Sí, bueno, como la agencia del BNB ha proporcionado información, en mi caso y en otros, en una campaña de las agencias de inmigración, el ICE, para deportar a líderes de la comunidad migrante aquí en el Escobar de Bermón. Entonces, ellos dieron información básica y necesaria que hemos dado con toda la confianza de la agencia del Estado. So the BNB has been collaborating, in my case and other cases, to learn information that we gave them, trusted them in this campaign of ICE targeting leaders in the community in Bermón. And that was one of the things that I wanted to bring. I know she's not here right now but we could remind her to look at how the BNB gets not caught up somehow in all of this instead of looking at Bermón State Police, for example, who may be doing an exemplary job at BNB at the same time. It's not caught up in any of this yet there. Because they are under a fair amount of pressure. Well, they're not enforcement agents but not the BNB that gave up on information. So as we're looking at providing identification for a migrant so that they can do their job and work, we are allowing the BNB to spread the responsibility to follow the fair in the Department of Police and Politics and other policies. So I think they need to be included somehow here. That's why I was trying to get at it. I realize the Department of Motor Vehicles is better than the law, of course, but I meant the Department itself. So for the movie to having the offenders get IDs from the BNB same and mutually. Yes, Senator White. So I think some responsibility in that a number of years ago, I was in the car and I was listening to the issue of migrant workers and I live in Wyndham County. We have very good dairy farms and I said wouldn't it be a great idea if we could get driver's license for them? So I introduced the bill and it kind of backfired. So this doesn't really go to the broader issue about the fair and partial policing policy because there are many people who aren't in the migrant community who are affected by it. But I keep thinking that we need to make sure that you get some kind of work visas to actually, there isn't this issue and I know Alison Easton, who's in the Department agency that they was working on that. That we have to, we need to do this but we also need to pursue, continue to pursue that because you shouldn't be living in a shelter. I just needed to say that there are other things that we need to do for the migrant community in Vermont outside of the fair and partial policing policy. If I may, you're completely right and I think one thing that we make important right now is that a lot of people don't leave the farms or don't have access to different things and as Ricky explained, I've coordinated the pipeline of migrant justice and I received phone calls and we've been working a lot with service providers for any kind of trauma, sexual violence, violence on the workplace. People are really afraid to call the police because they hear that even if my partner is an abuser and I reach out to the police they're going to end up deported because they're going to do this collaboration and with the direct license we do a lot of education about how to take care of the licenses that helps really the community to be not only out of the shadows but to be integrated because we don't have family here so we need our community to feel as a family. So I think it's really important to understand that without HRC and you say they can get the records, there's information that they can get but nobody's doing this and when we get the information from the agencies that are not complying with the FIP it's as the ones that are being affected by this that we have to go and seek for these things and come over and over again to you every time saying this is not complying, this is not complying we're still not only with our experiences but because we have to go and search for it so that's why we are supporting this amendment because we need an agency that's really going to do the job. I will not say a lot of that but say it was misuse of the information. Yeah. Hi. I have another question. Thank you very much for coming back we'll continue to look at this. Thank you. We need to So unfortunately we have a partner so we have a plan for people who are coming from the state but there also if you look at it it's strong it's not difficult we try to provide workers who are sorry for us but that's not going to go on this is a natural that's my personal opinion our next witness is the executive director of the one criminal justice training chief of the police department Good morning for the record Yes. Executive director of the criminal justice training council as I mentioned last week we supported the bills that passed for the house we do have some concerns with the HRC amendment particularly particularly with the base on an assertion that current enforcement mechanisms are either non-existent or ineffective I heard about some HCs being out of compliance in early February I think in this room when a representative from under justice said they found the number of them I never ever received a call for micro justice never received any information about who these agencies were what was the level of non-compliance I only saw specifics last Thursday when the 13 policies were presented to your committee so I returned to my office and on Friday morning contacted committee assistant got copies of all the policies and made that a Friday project to reach out to all the agencies by midday Friday everybody had who was who had the current policy had adopted the policy let me break that down for you the 13 were already compliant they weren't non-compliant two of the three became compliant after micro justice had their policy but were called the third one the compliance since March of 2018 has no idea why they were single though it was being non-compliant and micro justice got whatever version of the previous policy that they used so those three were already compliant that got into our policy there were several others who were working under what was believed to be the compliant policy that stateless had in early 2019 to BSB close to the chief's office revised our policy and brought it into compliance with legislation that information hadn't made it to the agencies that were using the BSB policy when I spoke with those agencies they immediately adopted the council policy that there were a couple of agencies that were using the 2016 essential version thinking it was compliant thinking it was compliant immediately adopted the council policy one agency did exactly what Senator Wake pointed out last week did not include the entire policy because they had bits and pieces of the council policy covered in other sections and in order to keep things simple they would simply knowing what was covered they excised it from the current policy so we had a conversation about cross-referencing and there was a section in there that they didn't include because they didn't think it applied to them so we had a conversation about that that agency has since revised our policy and submitted it to the attorney general's office for reading on it before we went to the AG's office was that I think the AG will find it compliant and as I said here this morning it is I believe we have 100% compliance among these agencies now it's important to know about the effects first I have never ever received compliance this was self initiated based on information from attending the hearing last week the second thing that I think is important is that none of these agencies had failed to adopt the policy by policy and policies even though outdated for the most part are still very robust policies and were essentially either the earlier version of ESB policy or the earlier version of council policy but the audit policy there was one agency that had changed the leadership and the leadership change wasn't aware of the requirement for the adoption of the policy so when I brought that individual to speed immediately adopted the council policy so the even though we had we'll say 10 out of compliance because of those 13 were in compliance nobody didn't have a proposal and I would say the common threat that I saw out of contacted agencies was that they were simply unaware of changes in policies so when I would send out an email talking about compliance about the new policy if they had what they thought was a compliance status policy then they assumed it stated compliance so it was a little bit of an indication process so that piece of it is pretty effective agencies are very responsive let's talk about the enforcement practice most of you on the committee remember all the discussions and before about that resulted in Act 36 of 2017 went into effect in July 1 last year Act 36 set dramatically expanded the categories of misconduct that law enforcement was going to engage in and separated criminal conduct professional misconduct and offenses against council processes failure to abide by state requirement was specifically added in that language to capture just such offenses if an agency was simply mistaken that's an education process if an agency had reduced one of these policies then my response to that one there's also a mechanism built into Act 36 that misconduct can range anywhere from a verbal warning by the council to including recertification regardless of how much time is passed so in Act 36 Act 36 is a very robust act Senator White said that agencies are mandated to report an accident misconduct to us and they are required to compliance so if an agency had received a complaint of misconduct reference to one of their officers that agency had is required by law if failure to conduct the investigation becomes an action of both actions comment briefly I would like to focus on what I understand what you're saying but I guess I looked at your list of the 13 communities and I want to pick on Ludlow because Senator Nick is not the only person in Ludlow the Ludlow police department was operating under a very old policy I spoke in chief buildings about the changes to the policy he immediately adopted the concept of policy verbatim I mean that's great but evidently the Ludlow police didn't see the model policy as a priority and it took migrant justice medicine and you calling the chief in order to get it there you need a better means of communicating that this is an important policy point and I have sensed that you recognize the importance of these policies you've been a leader in this sometimes you get typecasts you have been a leader and it's unfortunate with police departments just oh okay I have an old policy I'll adopt and do one thank you for calling goodbye and who knows what goes on tomorrow on the Ludlow so I guess that would be a comment and going back to the amendment from the human rights commission I think we all agree that narrowing it would be probably something we ought to do but do you have any comments on that particular policy well I think that I kind of had one comment about Ludlow and just in general I'm curious why they wouldn't it was impossible for me to determine that you didn't get the information I think that a mechanism where agencies had to submit the policies to the council but they didn't see it as a priority actually you covered mine oh great minds think alike we're we'll find tonight that's what we say in call we had a good shot yeah we have 82 so there are agencies that probably didn't do it like Ludlow but 13 out of 82 I mean I'm just saying that many of them have taken this very seriously the majority of that 13 took it seriously there was really a confusion about their version of mine or not that's we share concerns that that's extremely broad we're also concerned that there's kind of a conflation of responsibilities to the council's responsibility to address these as they come in the enforcement mechanism actually exists within the council at this point do that 56 would you have suggestions on narrowing that? give me some time to work on it I have some suggestions we will obviously not finish our work on this both today any other questions for Rick? Rick thank you for going through taking the time to go through these 13 agencies sharing with us the responses which I think are indicative of some confusion here but you know there were many as you said who had already had adopted for some reason the next criticism they insured from the attorney general's office not a department do we put it under the immigration? well it was there had been proposals over the years about the ability to vote or maybe legislatively elected which I think is what they do well it's still an independently elected official so that's right thank you very much the attorney general does not oppose any concept something along the lines of what the Human Rights Commission has suggested here at the same time it's the attorney general's position that is his top priority to pass H518 as it was passed by the house and as we testified at last week H518 does a number of very important things that we think it is essential to move forward and if an amendment along these lines ends up potentially derailing the bill it is the priority of the attorney general to make sure that H518 does get passed as it was passed by the house with regard to some of the enforcement investigation issues the attorney general's office does have a statutory role in acting consultation with the criminal justice training council to make sure that agencies are in compliance that is an obligation that we take very seriously we take it seriously because it is the law and we're obligated to follow the law but just as importantly we take it seriously because of the incredibly important policy concerns that underlie the fair and impartial policing policy immigration aspects of that policy fair and impartial policing is incredibly important for the credibility and trust of community members in Vermont and the immigration piece is essential to ensuring that everybody who is in Vermont trusts the Vermont police exactly and one of the reasons that I appreciate our attorney general being independently elected and the point is that the attorney general is not beholding to the effective branch and I'm curious as to whether or not the attorney general could have dealt with the Department of Motor Vehicles liable for releasing the information on Enrique and other people with similar status to us I mean that you know it just bothers me that we were able to do that and it wasn't the first time that it's happened so Senator at this moment the attorney general's office is involved in litigation on that exact issue so I shouldn't ask you a question that's right I'm obligated not to make some civic comments sort of like the reason that Donald Trump can't release the tax maybe I'm exactly the same but the um I will say the attorney general I think I'm really zeroing in here on that because we can do all we want there all the cooperation we want from the law enforcement under this mistrust that legitimately comes putting together a licensing proposal to allow people to leave as normal as possible as members of the law community and then having that information turned over to the immigration services it just undercuts all the efforts that are being made and makes a proposal like this seem more necessary and that is not suggesting it isn't but we've already talked about the crime that I will say that's part of the problem there is mistrusting of it absolutely and we I'm glad to hear that it's under litigation um and the trust issue is the key issue here and with HRC role or better HRC role um I do want to assure the committee and ensure everybody that the attorney general takes very seriously ensuring that these policies are being implemented uh assuming something like this passes we will have a new July 1 deadline to ensure compliance to the extent that we don't already have direct outreach with agencies I've no doubt executive director got there and myself will be working to be absolutely sure that we have compliance on the part of each agency I think the training issue that was brought up is also really important uh and director got there has been working hard to implement training both on the sort of unbiased policing aspect as well as on the immigration policy aspect and our office has been will be working with state police to uh do additional trainings beyond which were required with regard to heat incidents fair and partial policing um and immigration policy issues which have not been are not been running yet but will be held at barracks around the state in order to make it easy for local agencies to attend uh and the director of our civil rights division will be assisting with those training so all those pieces aren't really important is stuff that we're working hard to advance and I just want to assure the committee of our commitment to those issues uh in addition to other efforts that may come into play here so I don't know that the aging has any role in this at all but it seems to both of my kids who are adults work at um resort areas one in Montana and one here and they have what they call the international comp every year to work in the ski industry and for the most part I mean they're they're here legally so they don't have an issue around immigration and the policy they may have an issue around fair and partial police but they don't have so is there is the aging have any role in trying to figure out a way um I think that the latest we can do in the next 1700 um undocumented migrant workers in our um mostly the area industry why why is it so impossible to get some kind of work visas for the there are they're called H1 vines or something that people get to come here because their technology experts are working the ski industry I don't understand why that is so impossible to do and that was before the secret administration so yes and we agree that's a serious concern that is really a federal issue in terms of the visa problem and it is outside of our career certainly we agree as an policy that that should be accessible and would help in a myriad of ways unfortunately our office doesn't have any direct authority on that it is the federal right so now let me think Alice I don't know that she was able to get any place but I know that she was working for the ag agency to try to do our business for example as a veteran for years it was a Japanese-American partnership that makes story calls on foreign cars for one so when you say I'm buying foreign cars I'm the producer I'm actually buying a story with a major benefit but they allow workers to come over for four years they become residents of the community they're involved in the community and they're all legally ready what your question is why aren't others treated in a similar fashion that are doing work on our dairy farms places in our resorts and that really is the failure of the federal immigration laws because they have that set up and I know in industries in the area where I came from in Massachusetts actually agreements with other countries to set workers into those technical kind of computer not computer but it's technical stuff that they do and they come from other countries they're allowed to work for a certain amount of time or money or something so it just it has been somewhat of confusion here that a particular, it seems like a particular workers are more discriminating against than others and that's what we're stuck with because of the failure of the congress to pass and the president to pass yes, our dairy workers are less important than our power to preserve no, I'm just saying there's a lot of fairness there because we don't have history of discrimination against other workers anyway, that was behind I know I was into directing crazy other should work together other questions for David David, thank you very much captain I almost said the tenets, sorry congratulations thank you yes, for the record, captain Gary Scott the state police, as they said last week, overall the state police in far public safety is holding the bill for, as mentioned last week, the Jack funding is significantly concerned we worked extensively with the AG's office to get our policy to meet the language that the Department of Justice would accept to get that funding and to particular what was mentioned today the human rights commission again we see it as any of you mentioned up there, kind of a broad overreach and we have internal policies that are very vibrant, IA process and our internal affairs process legislative mandate citizen advisory commission the state police advisory commission and we have a civilian review that occurs with complaints we have received no complaints the case that was mentioned earlier was not found to be in violation of the policy or the law everything was done to follow the policy so what is happening we put all our traffic stop data out cases are put out that way and there's going to be complaints when we deal with them we have a captain of fair and partial policing for the state police and it's obviously a priority for us in what we're doing I appreciate that is there any record on another group that's the young group pointing to another for example so we can pull that is it asked on the model policy part of it? not age specifically I would like some consideration for that too because there's another group that's frequently absolutely in the outreach we've done we've met with the Mexican consulate from Boston we've met with farmers throughout the state so we'll continue and we're not hearing the same complaints I do think that the model policy of what I'm defining bias policing is if it's motivated by an individual's actual worst group personal characteristics and personal characteristics doesn't include age but if they don't ask information isn't there do you mean on the traffic stops? yeah we can pull that though we're looking to go further than we have we'll continue to look at all that male, female, license plates license of private regarding the policy the proposal from the right so how is the law enforcement seen that? it would be a concern I mean just for the NCIC and who is looking at that that could be issues when you're talking about open records and the violation of the NCIC federal standards so an agency who came in and out of work through those types of things there's definitely concerns for that it's too broad it's too broad correct I have a question if a agency we have a model policy which is the floor then we have agencies talking about the floor if you're working in collaboration around the agency say it drug enforcement who should policies come into play? the officer falls they're independent agency policy or a state trooper working on the drug task force is doing working in Winooski for example they would fall state police precincts fall state police officers and that can create confusion sometimes within the agency other questions thank you very much for being here I appreciate it and I I'm going to come in and out oh wait you missed some of the testimony could you join us for about three minutes please I think the committee is looking at two things one is how an agency state government like the department of motor vehicles not the motor vehicles in fact the law enforcement are not that but the agency has thought that the government can share information with immigration and that shouldn't clear the date of our date or shouldn't so we might want something in statute on that and secondly hopefully after hearing the testimony we can work with the human rights commission ACLU Attorney General's office counsel and others on revising the proposal to make clear they will have access there are one of the points that Senator Bennett made it's clear that they would not have access to information in part of the investigation that is not allowed if they have something so anyway I hope oh yeah but that's the very information that they need to have I don't know how whether or not this is possible or whether we need to do something as many have stated it's important to get this bill to process the end of this we want to lose this bill at the same time