 any motion? So hearing none is there a motion to accept the agenda? Okay thank you Commissioner Hansen. Is there a second? Second. Okay all in favor of the approval of the agenda say aye. Aye. I'm not sure Commissioner Cox if you can hear us because we can't hear you. So I don't know if you have your audio on or not but just just checking okay. Recognizing Commissioner Keefe. Okay thank you. Okay item 2.1 is approval of minutes from the regular Commission meeting of February 27th. Any changes? Okay that's that we can definitely do that. That's the change. Shannon I think the change is that absent. Can you repeat that one more time? Absent with notification. Oh yes that has to be. Oh there we go. Absent with notification to the Commission at the prior meeting that I would be out of the country. Okay absent with prior notification. Okay any other changes? I move to accept the minutes from that March 26 meeting. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by Commissioner Keefe all in favor of the approval of the minutes say aye. Aye. Item 3.1 is public forum as in every meeting I request I don't know if there's anyone he oh yes so we have at least one person in person and I just want to make sure if there is anyone on zoom I'm not seeing anyone. Okay all right so we'll start with the in person person first and then we'll move to the zoom so please come ahead and address the Commission please recognize say who you are your name and then just be cognizant of the time of the Commission. Thank you. Thank you Commissioners good to be back. I know a lot has changed since the last time that I was here in person and some of these changes based on my view as a private citizen has been going the right trend however there are still some deficiencies when it comes to public safety here in our city but at the same time I recognize some of the key changes that are happening slowly but surely namely some of the parts where I would love to see because we're gonna be having also new administration that will be incoming and in the next few weeks and so I could very well see some changes happening to that aspect as well so as an individual I've been advocating for a trust-building process in terms of addressing and also compassionate way of addressing public safety in so far as to say that I remain concerned as a private citizen again and I do see some of the what do you call rebuilding the police department is concerned some of the key changes that are happening that in that sector from the equity standpoint some of the new police officers that are being recruited in order to reflect the citizens of this city and the new incoming American families as well as the immigrants as well and migrants and so on and so forth however I personally remain concerned to the extent of interactions during response time as well as during any other engagements indeed the department has hired a public facing person who do appear during NPA meetings which I applaud the chief for making that decision to have that individual be there but I would love to see additional steps taken in order to address the deficiency of the trust-building process between minorities as well as the department itself some of the key things that I'm looking at is when instances do happen and minority folks and I said this I think multiple times not to regurgitate or anything like that I've said this in the past when minority folks or folks who are of immigrant backgrounds and so on do want to reach out to for assistance they're much more likely hesitant to do so just because of the views that they have when it comes to public safety response and the level of interaction that they can get from not just police department but any other public safety social services department so I would like to see and I know the chief did mention a you know some cookouts that used to happen in the past you know that would kind of like the break the ice moment for members of the community as well as public safety folks so the amount of them that have been here in this city I've seen some positive aspect happening but I also feel like few things are slowly dragging their feet and not necessarily happening to the extent I would have loved to see it happen I did have personal experiences as a private citizen on instance that happened recently and I remain concerned so to speak and I would love to see when members of public safety in respect of what department they are from fire to police to Howard Center to social services for the community members to have a better much more welcoming interaction indeed there are certain departments that do have certain policies to be followed on how to respond to incidents and how to interact with members of the public but based on my the job that I do as a process in this city and just as an individual interacting building that trust that I've built with members of the community and the conversation that I've had with them directly gave me a pause on what can be done to genuinely breach the gap of trust as it were because 99.9% when incident happens and I asked young adults why are they not reaching out to social services or fire department or PD as it were and they are really hesitant to even like even address it to the point where they literally just walk away from you and I'm not gonna go into specifics but I do remember with one individual home I do remember PD responded to an incident in the past and I did ask him hey law enforcement is here would you like to speak to you about your experience on what happened in the past and he said hell no there's no in hell I'm gonna talk to anybody because nobody listens to me and on top of that I'm a person of color and that even puts me in a different category so I try to assure that individual that hey it's not what it seems and maybe if you spoke you know to folks you might be able to get better assistance I'll reach out to say you're like counselor or somebody who represents within the world that you live in to help that build that trust between you and public safety department so long story short I remain concerned frankly speaking but I do see some changes that are happening in the right directions with respect to opiate crisis as well as the level of thefts that has been happening in the city so I see some positive trends that are happening but I'm also remain concerned so I just wanted to share that with you and I'm hoping that as time goes on before the end of the year that the chief the from you know chief Murat the chief Lachance Howard Center directors or any social service director will kind of create a not a forum because it comes very bureaucratic and very formal I'm also not a cookout because it feels more like a feeding time but something in between where it's like a you know building the gap but also at the same time addressing some of the concerns just like how you do when you're having dinner with your family kind of set up so I thought I'll just put that out thank you thank you so much for your astute observation thank you so much we have two people online who would like to speak so if you would just say your name and address the commission yes okay thank you to the police commission I'm glad to be here I'm you know I'm a black girl so they're trying so hard to make me hate the police but I just can't like the idea of men and I guess women wanting to protect me just is I'm into it it's the vibe for me I mean I was the one that told you guys weeks ago years ago actually I should say I'm to get John Meri because I kept on seeing this man and behind elbows and I was like they should bring him up front and they finally listened to me so I'm glad to hi mr. Mira how are you okay so my question is that we now have a progressive mayor which is interesting and we'll see how that pans out but I'm really interested in creamy with a cop which is something that Joan presented now I know that Romeo was talking about how you know having police officers around is problematic which I don't understand how it's problematic first of all it's better for you to be friendly with a cop than with a public defender so that's what I always tell my people and I really think that we should have creamy with the cop we should be seeing police officers I am in a group chat of just some of the most prettiest women in Vermont and we were talking and I was talking to them about like you know we should be able to name drop police officers like if you bothered me sir while I'm going to my yoga class and my lemons I will call officer blah blah blah I grew up in South Burlington and we had Officer Kevin who was that very good-looking officer and it was great in times of crisis you know at the mall at the University mall to be like you know I'm gonna call Officer Kevin and things like that I think people should get in an area where they can name drop police officers like they name drop the mayor they name drop other people and you know with this whole diversity and inclusion I'm giving a idea so write pen and paper write it down because you will use them ideas is you know with the whole diversity and inclusion if these people want to claim that they want diversity and inclusion that we should be close to our police officers we should be knowing John Mira by name he should be reading to the children just like our lesbian mayors reading to the children I mean why not so we need to be able to have that relationship and people should be able to name drop officers there's no reason why these Burlington high school is right there and the police officer and police department is right there that there can't be buddy buddy with these kids I mean why not and again tell them it's better for you to be friendly with me than a public defender and I've been preaching lawfulness I'm all about lawfulness and now the governor has sold my idea about how we should be telling everybody that this lawless behavior is absolutely ridiculous on American and is ruining our you know the city so my advice to the the commission is try to pitch petition to our new mayor that we should have cream with the cup you know with that June teeth that they spent thousands of thousands of dollars on we should be seeing police officers having chicken like the rest of us eating with us sitting with us and we should be able to have I need to be able to list five police officers in Burlington by hand you know I should be like I'm gonna call officer this officer that if somebody tries me all I can say now is I'm gonna call John Mira on you you know and that does you know he is the chief so it does hit but you know we need to have more people like that and I'm telling you that is the secret that is the key people need to have slow infiltration of them in our community because they're here to protect us in here to serve us and why not give them that I mean they they give up their lives I mean women have to deal with their husband going to Burlington and risking their lives for these men to protect us I mean we should honor them I mean they're honorable men and women so I think that we need to start doing that again I've always been right I told you guys to hire John mirad I told you guys up oh there was a weirdo I was always right and I'm right about this so I think that that should be where the commission is focusing their energy on creamy with a cop is I would be so there if we have that oh my gosh you know and we need to also play you know John mirror was on TV playing that attractive actor pop there is a people love cops like I know people have I know the media try to make them as these racial killers and all these things their history is their history we're thinking about the future and the future is a kind relationship with the police I mean I want to talk they did falsely arrest me but we talked about that another time but still I won't hate them like I'm not gonna hate the people our society's created to protect me okay just because a couple of them was rogue so you know that's my thing I'm all for that I think we should the commission should try to figure out so infiltration I mean buddy buddy it's time for buddy systems it's time for you know that to see them again on Burlington walking the streets like they used to back in the day and we need that because like I had I'm in the group chat of release you know the selective you know the beautiful beautiful girls and brilliant and we're all concerned and we need to be able to know that when hot girl summer comes up that we are protected and we need to be able to list and tell you know if a guy comes up to us and we're feeling unsafe we need to be able to say we're gonna call officer blah blah blah so I think that we need to start doing that and the commission needs to start putting their focus on that and John Mira knows how to hire them because you know they're they're looking like real manly men I want to protect so I'm here for John Mira doing that I knew he was that guy I just didn't you know you guys had to catch up like always but that's my thing that's what I'm here to tell the commission we need to start pushing that and you know again if they care about diversity and inclusion like they alleged then we need to see them at those diversity and inclusion June 19 June what they do it in June for the black people okay I we heard you thank you so much for your comments always the truth no friend always the truth okay thank you so much I appreciate it I think we have one other speaker online hi can you hear me oh yes councilor Grant we can hear you thank you very much trying to figure out how to follow that but I just sent an email to the chairs of the commission I don't expect that you have read it I went it was just sent within the last hour essentially what I was trying to do was I was trying to locate the 2023 annual report and I can speak a little bit me counselor can you speak a little louder sure is this better yes okay thank you I was just saying that I sent an email to the chairs of the commission I don't expect that you would have read it by now because it was only sent within the last hour but I was looking for the 2023 annual report and also the Public Safety Committee met recently and we were reviewing the CNA spreadsheet and there was some areas that were tagged to the police commission that had not been updated in some time I believe Shannon will be working with you on this but I'm also available for assistance in terms of updating the document because we're trying to get it fully doc fully updated hopefully by our next Public Safety Committee mean that doesn't mean that everything on it has actually been completed but just so that we have an update in terms of an expectation of a final completion date and the status of where the items are I also had in addition of my chat with Shannon we talked about the ongoing issues for staffing of the police commission and I want you to let you know that I am talking to some people in the city starting with the Human Resources Department to see what we can do as we all know Shannon wears a number of hats looking to see if we can find someone who will be in the meetings with you operate zoom and handle the minutes as well as some additional tasks that you may need until the position is filled that will include being with you and staffing the these meetings I wanted to say on the chiefs report I appreciate the note regarding the calls of service but I'm still a little concerned about highlighting 21% when it's calls for service that aren't necessary crimes so I just wanted to put that out there but I do appreciate the note I appreciate the information on what's going on in Pittsburgh we do know that has been mentioned numerous times we are not the only city that has been affected by difficulties in the labor market and maintaining staff I do want to say that we have to continue to work on local solutions to work on building back the morale of our department the previous speaker talked about creamy with a cop Shannon and I yesterday actually talked about creamy with a cop I would be willing to help raise funds to do that event I believe we can get a lot of community involvement but I do want to see other community engagement as the first speaker spoke about that there is still not a community engagement plan and that continues to worry me these issues of trust are not going away and officers continue to repeatedly say that there is a lack of appreciation especially in an environment where they're taxed our officers attacks our team in the fire department is taxed so we just have to be really mindful of that and then the other thing was just an update on digital advertising I continue to really recommend that the human resources department work with the police department on digital advertising because I think that can help us with some lateral transfers but regarding the ad that was placed and the feedback that we got on the ad I think that's fantastic and that's great to see that we're recruiting in different ways that is all that I have right now the new council is working on committee assignments I have asked and hope to be continuing on the public safety committee we'll know that in an official capacity and then follow up some on some other things when that happens thank you so much for your time thank you for grand the the BPD annual report I believe was posted on the police commission the civic clerk last year and I can send you the actual date that it was posted so it is available already but I can certainly share that with you I haven't had a chance to read your email you are correct about that so I I'll get back to you definitely my apologies no no that's fine I knew that I just sent it so I didn't have the expectation no I'll try to respond to it so I'm not looking for the BPD police report I'm looking for the police commission's annual report oh I see I don't think we have instituted we we did not produce one I believe in 2023 I can tell you because that would I would be the one who would probably produce it we lost our staff member I believe in May 2023 and it has been a heavy lift for the two commissioners to do what we have been tasked to do so I can certainly put together something quickly but it's it's it'll depend I think I'll have to talk to the fellow commissioners and see if they can weigh in and if they have time to help me do that I'd be happy to put something together so I don't know if anyone else has any thoughts about that okay so do you in terms of getting the the data for last year do you know or have you set talk with the data team about when you're going to get that data maybe it would make sense at this late juncture to do a report right I can you and I can meet or we can you know I'll talk to the other commissioners and see how they feel about that we are we have a lot of tasks in front of us and just to go from one one point to another takes an ordinate amount of time so considering that I will try to do what I can I'll get back to you okay happy to have a meeting about it thank you thank you okay that concludes our public forum I assume there's no one else there were just two speakers correct correct okay thank you Shannon item 4.1 and 4.2 chiefs report followed by departmental directive DD 40 revisions we will hear from the chief today about the revisions of DD 40 I'm just doing this at one point so we don't have to stop and go but give commissioners ample time to review the changes and have it back on the agenda and we can talk about that whether we want to do it for April meeting or May meeting I feel like I need a little time I had I had only a few an hour on it and I think we definitely need a little more time for deliberations floors your chief thank you thank you so much so I'll start with the chiefs report and I think Shannon's going to share it via zoom thank you so there's there our lovely waterfront our first slide talks about the eclipse and where we are and my eyes are getting worse by the day so our maximum staffing for the eclipse event is 40 that is what we've got for not only sworn employees but non-sworn employees available on that day that's equivalent to what we had last year for the 3rd of July although it's a little shorter because last year we were able to get five law enforcement officers from other departments we will not be able to do that this year simply because every department is utilizing all of its people we are you know normally in the old days and Detective Joe Coro is here the president of the of the BPOA in the old days we would field as many as you know 60 or 70 officers for the 3rd of July we'd field even more than that for the marathon although not all BPD the marathon routinely would bring in officers and sheriff's deputies from other departments 40 is is what we have we're pretty confident that if the numbers are what we expect for a 3rd of July that we will be able to maintain the closed off lanes that we will be using they're shown in this map battery street into park street into the belt will be closed to traffic other than a shuttle bus emergency vehicles and the belt will be used for parking so vehicles will be able to get to the belt to Vermont 127 and then park on Vermont 127 for a fee I believe and then take advantage of a shuttle bus that will be running from there up and down this closed off lane in order to get people to the waterfront for events we'll be able to maintain that with with the number of officers we have we'll be able to keep people safe down at the waterfront where the primary location is for official Burlington events we'll have officers on scene there our emergency response unit will be on scene there and then we will also have a certain number of officers on shift a sergeant and and for to cover the rest of the city and at crowds of up to about 30,000 we should be able to move through the city the way we can on for example the 3rd of July and if it gets bigger than if it gets if we end up with more than that however we're not certain what we will or will not face we're not really familiar with crowds larger than that even at its height the pre pandemic 3rd of July didn't have crowds quite that sized and the other issue of course is that we're not certain how quickly or or how all at once people will be moving into or out of the city the 3rd of July is a little different they trickle in over the course of the day North Beach for example is usually pretty darn crowded well into the early part of the day especially if it's a beautiful 3rd of July but for the downtown waterfront they come in let's say starting around five o'clock it really starts to get full then they all leave at once as soon as the fireworks are over everybody leaves at once we don't anticipate that being a factor for this we anticipate people kind of trickling in during the day and then also once the event itself is over they will sort of trickle out after that and people aren't necessarily just going to turn around and say saw it and leave hopefully there will be additional events to keep them that will help us spread the traffic out but should everybody suddenly decide no we're done we saw it it's cold it's muddy and I'm done getting having that many people try to leave the city is going to be an experience that we've probably not faced before the closest thing that we know about is is the sort of somewhat infamous final fish concert that happened in Coventry Vermont back in 2004 it wasn't in fact their final concert but you had lots of folks who were great fans of Tray Anastasiou and his and his band and they were heading up there to see it they got to the point where it was clear that the interstate was not moving because you can only get so many people off the interstate exit up there and as a result they said it's I you know I'm I'm more than the traffic isn't moving the concert starts in 45 minutes I'm still three four miles away from that exit I can walk that in 45 minutes I'm just going to put my car on the side of the highway and go and that's what they did and then they went to the concert they were there for the length of it maybe for periods of time after and then people you know trickled back and took their cars one by one that is something that we need to be aware of if we're going to get closer to the 10 day and then the five-day forecast and once that five-day forecast is really clear about what our weather is or is not going to be we'll have a better picture of whether or not we can expect really large crowds from from Boston from New York City and and what will happen with those crowds we we just don't know but what I can tell you is that if we are talking 75 000 plus people in the city we cannot guarantee the traffic grid and we we probably can't even guarantee the emergency lane at that point and if it's more than that we probably can't guarantee that emergency vehicles will be able to move through the city if the city is that blocked and I've experienced this in New York there are parts of New York and parts of a day where even lights and sirens cannot get you through the number of cars that are there and and that is going to be a challenge for us but one that we are we're going to do the best that we can there's some really great events planned obscure a btv is is what bca is doing Zach Williamson who works for bca has been just amazing we've been having meetings about this for months now and we are prepared to have a you know a day that a lot of people talk about these events is as sort of almost life changing once in a lifetime it's really amazing to see this celestial event occur and so we're hopeful for that next slide please Shannon no do people have any questions I was just curious yeah of course people have any questions about the what's going to happen in the eclipse or for any thoughts so you have my question was you don't know if it's going to be you just don't know about the numbers it's an unknown is that what you're here yes it is wide we know that most hotels are booked out we know that they've crossed the threshold I believe for debooking for if people find out that it's you know that it is it's going to be a totally fogged in day that says it's just tea storms and snow expected on April 8th in Vermont if we've crossed that threshold so there's a certain number that's coming no matter what the big question that is unresolved is how many are going to come from other places Montreal is just on the edge of the zone so I don't think we'll see much from the north but Boston is well outside of it New York City is well outside of it and if those areas are you know Connecticut if the entirety of the the New England seaboard decides to come north to Vermont we're gonna be in for it and we're gonna see you know if if people are if that many people are coming and you think for example that you wake up on on Monday and say I think I'll go up there and even your five six hours ahead you may not make it there may be traffic jams on the interstates all the way back to certain levels and the reason I ask is because you know I live on King Street yeah and I that's something that we have actually been talking about all our neighbors yeah is what's going to happen between Perkins Pier and up to middle school that whole area and we are concerned because you know as you know we are always concerned in that neighborhood for various other reasons but that we actually met to discuss and do you have any suggestions for these neighborhood groups I mean I was going to talk to King Street youth center sure and see if they have you know any thoughts on any precautions that we can take well the schools have agreed not to to meet that day at all initially they were going to do a half day and and frankly sending everybody home at noonish on a day like this would have been even worse so I'm glad that they have chosen to to cancel the whole day I recognize that that is a difficulty for some parents I know that some people are not going to go to work that day and I certainly don't want to recommend anybody skipping work and I also I I do not feel comfortable telling businesses what they should or should not think about with regard to staying open or not the possibility of making some you know some real revenue on a day where we could have lots and lots of people I certainly think that we're it's in our best interest to have our service sector at work that day but can they get in or out is going to be a question I have questions about whether or not we will be able to get our evening shift in if it is as crowded and gridlocked as people say you know when you're coming from your home you don't have lights and sirens and so how are people going to get in I am going to be instructing folks who are there on the day shift to expect to be held over for for a fair amount of time that said it could be a fizzle this could be a y2k kind of event where everybody thinks it's going to be one thing and it turns out not to be that at all because of weather or because it's just you know yes there are a lot of people but they're not so many people that we have you know literal traffic jams everywhere I do not know the answer all I know is that what we've decided to do with regard to closing off certain streets for the sake of making certain that those move and that we can bring for example emergency vehicles from our northern neighbors on that route and get them to the hospital that we've had a closed off route for pedestrians to be able to bring them from the hotels and from church street down to the waterfront without needing cars the fact that we put the cars on the belt not another place is the reason we shut 127 to anything other than emergency traffic is because we don't have a lot of places in the city where we can park cars in April for example North Beach is not a part you can't put your car there it will sink ditto the where we usually put cars on the waterfront for the 3rd of July there's a big open field that's right next to foam brewer they're entitled to use that if they want but I can't imagine that they will they would have just it would be one big rut and and one big mud season so those kinds of things we're trying to keep them away from that but there are other places that are going to be you know Shelburne Museum is planning an event so people may stop there seven maybe seven gets traffic jammed around that as it does for example when they have a big concert in their bowl how far back does that go does it go all the way to charlotte does it go all the way you know do we have traffic all the way from from our border with south brilings and all the way to the the Shelburne Museum we don't know this yet we just don't and I my advice to folks who are here is find a place to watch it from here you're lucky that you live in a city where you will be able to see it uh if the king street center opens up I think their roof is is available you know maybe they are willing um but stay home to the best to the extent that you can uh and uh you know find places to do that and the next slide says that much right the the Vermont Agency of Transportation's advice is basically uh hunker down stay in town for your locals and uh clear the way stay another day for your visitors like don't leave don't think you're going to come in on Monday morning and leave on Monday night plan for for trying to figure out a way to stay uh that said that may be easier said than done too because it's uh the hotels are taken next please thank you um this is our headcount uh we're not we have not moved in the right direction recently we had uh brought in one police officer for the February 2024 class but we have lost some officers as well um we uh lost an officer to uh an officer resigned to return to Texas where he was from I mentioned that to you in a previous meeting um another officer just resigned to go back to Florida where he was from he was a recruit officer the Texas officer was a lateral officer who had been a police officer before um the recruit officer just found he did not imagine how much paperwork there would be and this is a complaint among officers around the the department um you know the the amount of paperwork we do is is pretty incredible and I think uh again you know I think the officer coral would agree with the detective coral would agree with that um this particular recruit officer you know they had a video camera of a they had video of a person putting stolen items into a backpack they arrested the man they took the backpack they applied for a search warrant for the backpack and every one of those steps was sort of surprising to him um although these are the steps that are required by the fourth amendment and by our courts but then once the search warrant for the backpack was granted every single piece of it had to everything that was inside had to be taken out and laboriously inventoried and photographed one piece by one piece it wasn't just dump it out and see whether the thing we're looking for is there uh and that too was sort of something that he was just like I I don't I did not understand this and he'd been a school teacher in Florida he'd certainly been in professions that had a certain amount of paperwork involved just he did not expect this amount um it was a tough loss though for he was a I think he had the makings of a good police officer uh and we have another officer who's not reflected in this who will be reflected on the April 1st count um who uh has left us for UVM I think he's he's uh in the process for a job there uh I think the pace in Burlington was a little bit uh high and UVM was a little bit slower and more appealing and then we have another officer who won't be reflected on April 1st but we will be reflected on May 1st who is a 25 year veteran I had I had fully anticipated that departure uh we weren't going to keep him forever he was out at the airport and you know 25 years after 25 basically you are now paying the city to show up you are no longer making your pension any larger and so there's an element that is uh why am I still doing this um he is still a loss he had a tremendous amount of experience you could always rely on him out there at the airport to know what he was doing uh it'll be it's a shame he's already off of the uh rosters but he's still on our headcount and this headcount talks about anybody we are currently paying or at any given moment too so for example that 92 officers that we had uh on July 1st 2020 um that included one officer who was on terminal leave and one officer who was on long-term injury and so technically we had 90 at that time effective uh our the distance between our total headcount and our effective headcount has grown a lot I've talked about that before that growth uh the spread has has increased because officers are are tired we have more officers out on injury we have more officers out on military leave um you know if if your military recruiter I mean not recruiter but your bosses are saying hey would you take this detail sometimes they jump at it now when they might not have before it's an opportunity to get to get a breather next thank you what we're doing to try to address this is you know we are working to rebuild I knew that we would have a certain amount of losses that's always been built into our uh to at least to my modeling um known and unknown losses losses that are 10 year based so I know they're coming and losses that I just can't know which officer but someone is not going to make it through an academy class someone is going to decide you know it's time for me to go uh at some point so I've built those in uh nevertheless we did experience a little bit more than I thought in this most recent couple months and we also did not get as many in to our academy class as I had hoped so we're a little bit off the modeling what are we doing to address that well uh advertising um Anhad Bajwa our recruitment coordinator uh managed to get us a full page centerfold ad in uh tab in New York City we are looking heavily to recruit laterals from that region um this is the tabloid it's not one that I necessarily read myself but it is the one that everybody down there does uh this is what civil servants read on the trains and it's in the break rooms at the PD and uh we had a full page right in the center and I was uh very very uh excited about that and we've already gotten nibbles from people and even a visit from an interested applicant from New York City so that's great this is a different picture uh that says similar to that that graphic um this is dictated this is uh pegged to the 15th as always as opposed to the the big graph that shows is always pegged to the first um as of the 15th we have 67 total and 55 of them are available right now that's actually better because the 55 available includes a number of officers who were not considered available because they were on fto and all of our fto's except for one I believe have graduated um meaning that they're now solo officers and can be considered available slash effective uh which is great um the other numbers are the numbers that we have and so I think right now we're actually at 23 officers on patrol or maybe even 24 but I think it's 23 next please incident volume so uh you know this says very clearly that incidents are not crimes not automatically but our incident volume is nevertheless indicative of how often the public calls and wants assistance the vast majority of incidents are calls for service from the public every now and then we create our own an officer says I'm going to go do a foot patrol show me on foot patrol but I'm also available for calls that's an incident that's created for that foot patrol uh but then if if somebody on the marketplace calls and says it Ken's pizza says you know uh we have a larsonated report then we're we're going to go up there and that's a new incident for that officer um the majority of incidents are calls from the public and this is indicative that the public is calling us I think that we are seeing them call us more for for one reason which is that I think they are less likely than they were a year or two years ago to think I don't want to call them because I know they're understaffed and they're overburdened I think that people are sort of moving past that impulse however I don't think they're fully past it and I think this is still an undercount of calls I think that that uh it is more calls than we saw in 2019 or 2018 for that matter but I don't think it's as many as we would see if it were 2018 or 2019 where it never even occurred to people to wonder whether or not to bother calling people called when they called and the cops went to every call um and I think that we are still seeing a slight undercount I just don't think it's as pronounced an undercount as we saw in in 2022 or 2023 next please oh I'm sorry can you go back to that one Shannon I'm really quickly I'm sorry one thing that you'll see there is that you know we are still seeing double digits in stacked calls that is a function of the priority response plan but we are seeing only single digit online reporting and we used to have double digit online reporting we have really curtailed the number of online reports significantly cut it in half as a matter of fact uh next please the priority response plan this is a grounding slide it's in every document just so that we so people can see and understand which ones go and which ones don't go uh either to priority one or priority two uh this is the Pittsburgh slide uh that that um counselor Grant mentioned in uh the public comment so you know it's true that we are not the only city that has experienced a headcount decrease but I think that for me the point of these numbers is that our numbers are far far worse by percentage and by ratio than Pittsburgh's or Austin Texas which also had to create a priority response model or any number of other cities that have had to do it we you know I I do not like that priority response model I know the public doesn't like the priority response model I know that it is a frustrating thing I can't wait to get rid of it I don't imagine that we can until we get very close to 80 if not 80 or above um but maybe maybe high 70s is is a possibility the officers don't like it um but uh you know when you look at our numbers versus Pittsburgh's and you think that Pittsburgh is doing this um and in some ways in a more absolutist kind of way and than ours was uh I think it says something theirs is we just won't go at all ours is will go is until we don't have enough officers on the shift available to go and then we move to the model um and and we're doing that with very different numbers now again it's it's hard to make these comparisons Pittsburgh has you know 900 has 300,000 people and and we do not uh and our size makes a lot of comparison challenging because we are in many ways a big city and in many ways we are not um and uh you you get into some of the the uh you know inadequacy of small numbers when you're trying to compare but next please selected Valkor incidents for the year it's it's worth noting that very few of these are up 23 percent over last year and and that does cause pause what you know where is the increase coming from it's if it's not from these well I think the increase is coming from you know do you see a couple things larceny unfortunately is up um but you see uh you know assault simple is up by one that hardly counts assault aggravated is up quite a bit over last years at this point um but what is it that's causing a 23 percent increase it is calls for service that don't necessarily translate into these kinds of categories most of which are more serious incidents the reason we've been tracking these here for for for two or three years now is so that we can see a through line of these incidents that are generally more impactful on the community mental health issues or something that that are impactful aggregated larceny is something uh obviously the big crimes what what the FBI would call the the major crimes or the seven major crimes robbery and sexual assault and aggravated assault and uh homicide those are things we track I don't track homicide on this it's not worth tracking a category that is that small and doesn't necessarily tell us a lot although 2022 definitely made me rethink that um our gunfire is worse this year at at this point in the year than it was even in 2022 which was the worst year and yet I I can't tell you exactly why the nature of the three incidents that have that had occurred as of March 15th um are less concerning to me than the trends that we saw in 2021 and that that continued into 2022 um I don't see this being a huge year for gunfire even though right now it appears like it would if at this very early stage it would look like it's about to be worse I don't see that nor do I see you know overdoses are down um uh they're still way too high but they're down from last year's numbers I don't see us seeing the same degree of overdose that we saw last year I see the big challenge for our community this year as houselessness and the attendant issues that surround houselessness it's not a crime to be homeless uh but people who are homeless do tend to find themselves committing certain kinds of crimes open air drug use certain kinds of theft uh and that is something that we're going to see uh continue this year I don't see a solution to that anytime why are you not concerned about that gunfire number uh because I think that what because what we're seeing right now is not uh we made arrests in in those cases uh one or two of them were were sort of accidental slash they were they were not shootings per se um but you know this actually does not I don't believe this captures the uh attempted murder that happened right out on main street where that young man was shot at other young man and also then was inexplicably uh released on conditions for the weekend um that is not captured by this uh those crimes are still with us and and they there is a possibility that it could go in that direction but we've made very important arrests of the people that were driving gunfire in the previous years that's why we saw a decrease from 2022 to 2023 and that's why I still feel that that general uh that that general fact is going to dictate where 2024 goes overall and so I don't at this at this early stage that is not concerning me I not to say that I don't take it seriously not to say that we don't have the officers they came I mean you know the detective team comes in and works 24 hours straight to get an arrest and get a case um they they hit uh the you know again each of them each of the incidents has resulted in a person being struck this year has had arrests made with it um the only thing and actually I think all I think all four of the incidents thus far have had arrests made uh and that makes a difference too but um I can't otherwise explain why I'm not at this moment yeah because I'm just thinking that's my biggest priority and that's just from a very statistical perspective it appears to me oh my god what's next right yeah but I'm no no you explained it very well you actually explained that there is there's a backstory to this which is that these gunfires don't happen context less that there is a history behind and I think yeah my understanding you correctly yes you have been able to trace it back to certain elements yes okay understood um priority one incidents uh you'll see it's it's a little lower than it was in 23 at this stage but it's right in there you really can't you can't see any different any deviation yet it's a little bit too too early to tell where it's going to go uh but we did see increases over the years and now next yes thanks Shannon um so this slide if you if you get the PDF online uh each one of those terms you know St. Paul Street and Walnut Street and North Champlain Street those lead to links uh that will take you to the press releases about those specific incidents as will the money laundering and the hundreds of thousands of dollars seized and the multiple firearms recovered we are seeing a real change in overdose right now that is good news um the trend right now is that it will be lower than 2023 which was absolutely unconscionable the height of 2023 um it may right now even be lower you know it's quite possible that it's not going to experience the huge uptick that you saw in 2022 which coincided somewhat with the first phase of the hotel program ending and and I believe a large number of people coming into Burlington and and from not from out of the state but from other parts of Vermont into Burlington at the end of the hotel program and then beginning to use drugs in the open uh and the and it also coincides with as this slide talks about the introduction of something that was called the new Philly Dope um and that was shown to be in early 2022 to be primarily or significantly xylazine or or Trank as it's called in the streets uh that caused a uptick in overdose because it is a pretty particularly vicious drug it also creates symptoms that are far more noticeable to passerby as troubling and problematic and cause people to to call for emergency response more often um unfortunately you know we don't see heroin is harder to get these days because there's too much there's it's all fentanyl and for a while it is largely xylazine I think we've significantly disrupted the amount of xylazine in the system that doesn't mean that it can't return but the drug unit in particular has done really great work uh large scale seizures tens of thousands of uh of bags and and uh and bags of fentanyl etc um and what we saw with regard to to heroin heroin creates an overdose that unless it's a person actually overdoses falls down and begins to have difficulty breathing and getting oxygen um that's the extreme the use of it doesn't necessarily flag people it's somebody just nodding off on a park bench uh somebody might say that guy doesn't look good but they might not call it in either xylazine tended to cause overdoses that made people very upset to witness them and we ended up with a lot of calls um so uh you know I'm I believe that 2024 is not going to be what we saw in 2023 with regard to drugs in the same way that I do believe the numbers aside right now that 2024 is not going to be what we saw in 2022 with regard to gunfire there are lots of I hate to say this but a lot of tiktok videos that police officers in new york are now documenting just to understand the impact of xylazine just that's the only way yeah and I've been sort of watching some of those just to understand how people act on it um and I think you may have recently heard of cases where people are on xylazine and they they they cannot control themselves and they're either pushing other people on the into you know it's just it seems it's creating almost recreating almost psychotic episodes in people so it is very scary not only for police officers but also for the community I think in general both xylazine and and also meth tend to create more erratic behavior in users than just heroin or or even fentanyl heroin um that said you know I I don't think any of these is necessarily something that creates um you know the the sort of I think there's stories out there of people on PCP for example or or things people who who can't be stopped in various ways and and we certainly saw I remember in New York that was something that there was a product called K2 uh it was also called synthetic marijuana uh there were stories of I remember a very horrific story of a guy who when ESU attempted to enter his apartment using a sawzall to get through the door he was barricaded inside with somebody uh he gripped the sawzall blade as it came through the door um those stories they do exist they're out there I don't think that that is indicative of the vast majority of people who use these substances I think I did say tiktok no I know I know and and who knows what tiktok is or isn't trying to sell us uh if if you believe those you know potential conspiracies too but I think you know the vast majority of these people are suffering in terrible terrible ways and the big thing that we saw is xylazine wasn't necessarily different kinds of behavior but horrible wounds horrible uh you know things that needed to be treated in ways that the drugs in and of themselves alone which are bad enough don't need to be treated and uh that's really what what what our takeaway has been although I certainly would defer to Joe do you want to come and say anything Joe about this particular topic yeah come on I know you're not here for that but Joe is on the Joe is a detective in the drug unit and is going to know more than I and and may contradict some of what I've just said which would be fine by me because it's more accurate information no I think the chief was pretty um on point with what he was talking about related to um Trank or xylazine it's mostly what you see is the person you know either there a lot of times the videos you'll see as people hanging over they'll be standing up they'll be completely bent over just kind of standing there um you can't really talk to them they're kind of out of it uh that's mostly what you see and then the sores are the big part um and then actually detoxing from xylazine after a lot of those sores have gone away they then get sores in places unexpectedly that will come back as the xylazine's leaving the body for good so it's a it's a very um difficult thing to see and it's very hard on people's bodies um but the good news is is if they actually are able to get off xylazine that they can completely recover from it over time it does take a while um and we've seen a lot of it in the last you know year and a half two years and it's from what I from what we can see first hand it's definitely uh I wouldn't say gone but it's very close to gone so I think at this point it's slightly going to be in the a lot of the fentanyl is is xylazine an opiate it's actually a tranquilizer a uh veterinary tranquilizer so uh our does xylazine get people addicted or is it the underlying fentanyl or opiate so xylazine itself is is a little bit it is very addictive the actual uh the issue is is after you've taken it similar to like fentanyl or heroin coming off of it is so um terrible that most people just would rather stay on it because they don't want to experience the detoxing effects of it um so that's usually why everybody that I've spoken with about it their personal experiences why they take so long to get off is because uh it's so awful to get off of thank you I think if I can add commissioner garrison go ahead yeah I think if I can add um you know the work I'm doing I'm also seeing a lot of people uh can you speak up oh yeah sure I'll get closer I said with the work that I'm doing I'm also seeing a lot of people um you know getting treatment now which is great um and I do see this drug trend you know being less than what it was last year by bar so um you know it's good work from the police station you know the work they're doing um kind of scene so uh yeah I I just wanted to add that in there they're also seeing right now uh sources that we can't necessarily share publicly but um there's a pretty less of it in the system of people for example rapid tests for whatever reason uh treatment courts or other kinds of things it seems to be less and that's a good thing doesn't mean that it can't return um much of it up here was coming from organizing trafficking organizations that that our team had a remarkable amount of success in in tackling um we don't get long-term arrests or excuse me incarceration from some of those uh the feds do but a lot of times they get released you know uh after the arrest but then they don't come back necessarily for a bit but somebody fills that gap eventually right that has been the nature of the uh of law enforcement's sort of battle with drugs for quite some time somebody fills the gap um the hope is that at least maybe this particular product is not going to continue to be something people seek like the that the market forces will actually create an absence of this particular product and and you know fentanyl is bad on it in its own way but we at least I would say that people would take fentanyl over this is I was in most days it's just much less awful for the body even though it's awful itself um so any questions about the chief's report or yeah this isn't about the chief's report but I had a question um that everyone on the police commission and city council and 800 other people received this very like threatening scary email and I'm just wondering um I'm sure that you all looked into it or or knew not to or whatever but I'm wondering if there is a um would we expect normally to get a response um from the police to say checked it out it's all good that's a terrific question I actually didn't receive it directly I wasn't on that list I ended up getting it it was forwarded to me by council president paul um you know we the the vermont intelligence center had published something about emails like that the day before and and the week before um and therefore we had reason to believe that it was not uh as as frightening as as it you know sounded um we did liaise with the people who were directly mentioned in it uh and we're able to to make certain that they were safe and that they felt that they had been uh that all precautions had been taken but ultimately I think that that was something it went it went to media as well but we didn't make it into a I feel I feel there are times where where you are giving someone what they want if you make a story out of something like that and I don't want to know and I I completely respect that because um and I actually have to say that I respected the media this is also about media ethics which is you know there is sometimes these stories are can be more about you know what we call in media no notoriety right and I and I think that's a good way of doing it but I think what the commission would have liked yeah maybe just a one-line email from you saying hey this is you know don't worry ignore it okay that's a great point and no I did not I did give such an email to a couple counselors who had reached out to me directly and with whom I spoke but you're correct that I didn't I didn't take it on myself to like recreate the list that had been given uh and then sort of hit the equivalent of a reply all um it's also clear that there were larger lists than even those right so the one on which your names were there were other that because I I had inquiries about it from people who weren't on that list the one that I got the one that was forwarded to me had you know 15 names or 30 names or however many there were others out there that were getting it as well and I don't know so I wouldn't have been able to get everybody at 183 names was it that many I think am I correct you should feel kind of left out I I do I think my name was there with a Burlington vt.gov address and that is not our email address our email system is separate so the fact that we're bpdvt.org is why we didn't get them but I saw a couple employees names there I think it was a stripped list of city employees and people with city emails and it was just sort of cut and pasted in so but I you're correct I I should have sent something I would say to the commission and the city counselors and the mayor I think that would be like the basic sure and we don't and not even to anybody else you know so the council and the mayor obviously I did I did not to the commission and I apologize for that okay no that's any any oh sorry go ahead no dd40 yeah I'll move to dd40 so dd40 dd40 is our department directive 40 and it covers it covers corrupt excuse me it covers internal investigations and citizen complaints and it is online it's available online as it currently exists the current version I think is about seven pages long it is a it was signed by then chief of police Michael Scherling so it's got some miles on it it was flagged by the cna organization as something that was in significant need of of rewrite and review and it frankly does not capture how we conduct any of those things at this stage it is it is not what we do we are largely guided by I think the most significant piece of of guidance for how we take in complaints and then deal with them is our agreement with the police commission from August of 2020 another significant piece is an executive order that was promulgated by mayor Weinberger in September of 2020 we have a body worn camera policy that was agreed to by the police commission and the department in August of 2021 we have changes that have been made to how we proceed with internal investigations because of these we now make every single complaint it goes directly not every single the vast majority of citizen complaints come through the complaint portal online and those go to you at the exact same time as they come to the police department so the notification is instantaneous anything that comes to us in another manner is sent by the deputy chief of administration easily within five business days usually much faster than that to commissioner kief and so all of those things are changes we no longer wait till our meetings to review these things they're shared with you much more quickly than that for certain event incidents there's body camera made available to all of you immediately and so all of those changes had happened and frankly i did have a discussion with uh with josh diamond who was who is doing a lot of the work for the joint committee of the charter change committee and the ordinance committee that was reviewing our disciplinary processes in the charter and one of the points that he made to me that resonated was the fact that yeah you guys are doing a lot better than you used to you're doing much more than you used to you're doing many innovative things that are far and away different than and better than other agencies in our region and even nationally but it's not all in one place and so i said okay let's put it in one place and this document which is 30 pages and not seven uh is indicative of the difference of what we are doing i have not changed much from dd7 uh what i've done with regard excuse me not dd7 dd 40 the existing dd 40 um i've moved around a lot of parts of it because it's not in in sequence to what we do anymore i've changed some titles we don't have what's called an office of quality control in dd 40 it just it's not what we we have there's nobody really remembers that term at all to be honest uh that was a point of contention that i had not contention but a point of of edification that i had with deputy chief matt sullivan you know four years ago when when uh sully was promoted to deputy chief he's like we don't even have this i don't know what this is talking about um okay it works this way so this document spells that out um it incorporates all of the pieces that are in the agreement with the police commission it incorporates many uh of the points that were made in the cna report around um uh around dd 40 and uh investigations internal investigations and citizen complaints in general um it uh you know it's a it's a full-on update uh it it identifies new means for citizens to file complaints uh it talks about uh the how an internal affairs section work it does not detail a specific internal affairs that was a point of contention i had with cna uh and and raised it in my review of their materials which i presented to them and made public uh and their response was that's your problem i basically said who is supposed to be a dedicated internal affairs team in an agency that doesn't have enough people to do what it's doing uh and they said that's your problem um and i said okay well you know we can have officers who are especially trained in it and all superv all lieutenants are they go to ia school uh certainly deputy chief labarge is is one of the best investigators and sort of investigative supervisors i've ever seen at work and and uh deputy chief labreck has been to ia school our lieutenants have been to ia school so for more serious matters we that's what we're going to do we're going to use them would it be better to have an entirely dedicated team sure but that is a very big department that can do that right ia b is the internal affairs bureau in the new york city police department it is a separate part of the police department it's got its own three star chief it's got its own inspectors and captains and lieutenants uh but it's handling a 35 36 thousand person agency actually 55 000 person once you count all of the professional employees as well as sworn employees we just we don't have that and nor do we have the volume you'd have somebody sitting around a lot uh and not doing that kind of work i know that it's it's it's a lot of work for you to keep up with commissioner kief i i'm i'm amazed that you do all you know to track all these things um but even so i i think you'd acknowledge that that's not a full time what you're doing is more than you should have to do and it's more than than a public servant you know a voluntary public servant should have to be doing but it's not a full time job if it were a person i don't believe you'd say that and forgive me if i'm speaking for you um and we wouldn't have a full time job for a person conducting internal investigations either uh so that notion i i don't for particularly agree with but i do agree with you know the idea of revising the the the policies that all complaints are documented including those that we would call invalid um uh creating a policy that directs the complaints are handed by the first line and which ones which ones go to first line supervisors and which ones go to higher level supervisors this policy does that this draft this new draft does that um this new policy uh very clearly delineates the nature of of how these investigations work and it wasn't just the cna document that i looked at i i looked very very closely at your documents around um the your response to the charter change and not just the official one that you were posted but there were a number that you shared with me and i'm grateful for that that talked about you know individual commissioners thoughts about different kinds of things um and you know some of the things that were mentioned in there are definitely present in here uh strengthens the commission's monitoring role helping to improve police performance and public safety i think if you look at section eight page 12 you'll see exactly that um and you know specifically it says uh uh that it it creates a very specific role for the police commission um in in section eight in the very beginning it says the chief of police must share a recommendation for discipline with the police commission prior to finalizing that discipline that is that role of you know strengthening the monitoring role i section uh ix section nine page 15 is an entire section about the board of police commissioners which doesn't exist in the current dv-40 and it basically reiterates what's in the agreement from august 2020 and that also is included as an appendix the the agreement itself um there is a request uh for um you know allegations of category be misconduct against the chief there is now a a section of this in in nine f on page 17 that explicitly spells out what happens when the chief is the one being accused of misconduct and how the police commission takes that on um it explicitly talks about act 56 and our our obligations to report up the chain to the state with regard to licensing etc um one of the things that is not in the charter change response document that's posted online but was a part of the documents you provided for me was a a request for a mapping process one thing that was said is we really need to map what we're doing now this new draft of dv-40 is a map it is a it is a roadmap it's a complex one but it actually includes in in appendix three on page 24 it has an honest to gosh map it's got a flow chart that really does show exactly what it is that we're doing and uh is is indicative of like you want to see the process right there there you can see it um ditto transparency sharing with the public uh this includes in in section six g and h on page 10 um plans for just that for both uh a a data documentation a statistical summary that is in g and public transparency of following the model of the vermont state police and talking about every bia so every internal investigation and we wouldn't call them bias anymore we would simply call them internal investigations bia used to stand for sort of bureau of internal affairs but it was why would why do you call the investigation by the name of the entity conducting it so it's an invest it's an internal and and the notion here is that you have supervisory reviews for lower level things that are that can be looked at by any supervisor sergeant um uh or lieutenant then you have administrative reviews which are more elaborate and if they what happens is what transitions it is do we need to interview officers and give them noticed interviews and observe their garrity rights then it needs to be an administrative uh uh investigation excuse me an administrative review rather uh an administrative review not a supervisor review and it must be conducted by a lieutenant does it show a pattern of certain kinds of crimes does it show or not crimes but allegations does it say that there is you know a serious allegation in here like this is a significant use of force allegation or a significant um uh you know uh a abuse of authority allegation all right well transition it out of supervisor review into administrative review and if you then get to the point where no it's likely that there's going to be significant discipline out of this i'm looking at this and i'm seeing that there's enough smoke here that i'm pretty certain i'm gonna find fire and there's very likely to be serious discipline or the possibility of that discipline then you transition to internal investigation um and there's stipulations here for what happens if you say no i there's full on there's a there's strong evidence of a crime here and that shouldn't be us this should be the Vermont state police or the attorney general's office or the state's attorney's office and how we do that but it also talks about how you can dial things down as well because if you get to the stage where something has been investigated by an external party for example and found to have no policy violation and no uh law legal violation why would that remain an internal investigation in the department uh if if if credible entities have done that review you can dial that back down to something different a different kind of review for example in a use of force we review every single use of force um and there are it's it's looked at it's it's got a multi-layer review uh but if there's improprieties discovered then it transitions to something else but if those improprieties are dispelled by a third party before you even really begin the use of force review why would you maintain it as an internal investigation just it's a it's now a use of force review and we're going to look at the way we look at any so those are some of the things that are in there it is i you know i knew when i gave it to you guys about i think it was more than a week ago but it wasn't you know i said i didn't i didn't like throw it at you the night before the session but i knew darn well that this was a lot and i didn't expect for for a vote um but i'm hopeful that we can get one because i think that signing off on this and having this be our definitive new policy all it would largely do is codify where we are now shared it with the union the union did not weigh in on it with regard to opinions and ideas and that's going to be you know part of the next stage as well before having it be signed off on but i did share it with them and make certain that they looked at it and could review it etc and i am confident that this all that what this does is codify what we're currently doing so i just have a couple questions um um and i definitely need more time with this uh and a couple that just jumped out at me they're kind of picky you but in um on page three under lower level infractions one of d is improper care and maintenance of equipment and we we we changed um ddo one recently to make clear that failing to maintain custody and control of weapons criminal justice information systems or encrypted technology may also constitute a violation of rule 18 neglect of duty and i know they don't have to line up completely but um i just wondered and i know that the this is preface with include but not limited to sure and these are just examples but i wonder if in 2 d where it says neglect of duty we might just to be extra clear that everyone knows what we're talking about here that we might want to add um a d3 which is um which aligns with ddo one oh that'd be great that's a great idea um the other comment is um although this this section here is taken directly from the cba so uh from the collective bargaining agreement that we have with the burlington police officers associations so f infractions lines up literally with that okay it maybe it causes problems then but i just want to point out that we we just um made that change the other one is a little bit more maybe just want to think about i don't know where this language came from maybe it exists someplace else um but i think we need to be a little careful about how we say this where you were invalid complaint includes complaints that are clearly related to a complainant's mental health and are indicative of a delusion or fantasy i just want to make sure that we're not saying that people that have um that that are suffering from a mental health issue or even delusions and fantasy don't also have some valid complaints um and i want to make sure that you know we can tease that out and um say it in a way that um maybe it's not even necessary to even include this phrase in there but um i wouldn't want someone who is a delusional because of their illness who also has a valid complaint to not have their complaint um be considered valid yeah no i wouldn't want that either and i i think i mean we deal with people who have chronic mental health issues all the time and we do take complaints from them but i i i don't believe that it's fair to officers to take a complaint when somebody says that the officer's radio waves inside my head have caused me to to you know go pee in the hall which we've seen we've seen those actually those exact i get that and i just think that maybe there's just think about maybe there's another way of saying this so that sure so that it's not you wouldn't read it and think that you're just going to dismiss people's complaints or maybe it's fine but that occurred right i think i think i i'm with commissioner oski on this one is is can we have a language that's less stigmatized i think maybe i you know you and i can talk about like giving you some ideas about that i'd love i'd love some ideas for that rather than because you know i my first reaction when we were talking is that we have been receiving emails from people quite a quite a few emails sort of just describing the whatever bpd has been you know putting all kinds of things in their head and all that stuff so how do we balance that here is somebody who's clearly delusional or has some challenges yeah how do you balance that with the language i mean i i think that the and our indicative of delusion or fantasy was the key for me but if that is language that is troubling to to you and if there are different suggestions for how to improve that i'm all ears did that come from someplace else or was that new no i believe that's that's relatively that's new in in line with how we have been treating such kinds of complaints i know i get i totally get it i just want to make sure that we're no that's not from for example from a cba so from the cba we can't that language is language that should remain we don't have to use it in here but we can't change i would recommend at least that we not change that language because it is part of the cba um the language that is directly from the existing dd 40 we can have at that as long as we agree to it i tried to change as little of it as possible in order to minimize the need for anybody to to to have arguments about it or concerns about it um but we can change it and in fact is this body's authority to approve you know recommend and approve those changes um but i uh but anyway yeah so so this particular did not come from either the cba or the existing dd 40 first i would uh i think one of the overarching recommendations from cna was a whole rewrite of dd 40 and we'd like to commend the department and yourself and your team it is certainly an entire rewrite uh and very very comprehensive um thank you for clarifying the point on the recommendation that a separate bi our bureau within the department be created i think that explanation makes sense um i think one of the things just a little more time for our side would be just to line up with the cna recommendations and what was done one of the ones that i i recall and maybe you could speak to this was i think they had concern that the chief was both sort of the gatekeeper the intake for complaints as well as the adjudicator has how has that been addressed uh in the current draft so i don't i don't remember that phrasing being part of it um i know that there was uh if that exists in the report it may be in the text of the report but it's not in the um in the specific recommendations shannon provided those specific recommendations to me and there wasn't anything to that effect like uh uh saying that that the intake shouldn't be this i mean the same as the um as the final report uh that is something that we could contemplate that that the emails that don't come to me but instead go only to the deputy chief of administration or deputy chief of uh of operations and then the the members of the commission who do receive it i think it's is it just you chair or is it you and you and commissioner kief um to take the chief of police off those emails that's possible um i don't know what necessarily would be certain they're going to show it to me you know very shortly anyway but i suppose that if if it for example what were if it was about me i guess there would be an opportunity that that's a problem that i'm also receiving it but uh i i would eventually probably receive it anyway all anyway i i don't know it's possible for the commission to have a special meeting um around this um if we need to i mean i can no no i mean it's it's it was just something that um i can send an email and i know i saw it um i'm i'm very happy to forward uh the the piece that shannon sent me um that has all the you know i'm looking at the print out here that is all the specific recommendations and again that's different from text inside and and obviously they're going to be more expansive that is the authors of the cna report are going to be more expansive in in the paragraph text sections than they are necessarily in the the you know the numerical recommendations but in the numerical recommendations i don't see anything like that and i didn't review all of the text as i was doing this i reviewed the recommend the numerical recommendations okay and anyway we don't have time to get hung up on the detail um so uh again we could address that in our in the next round of discussions the um i think one of the and it's on the agenda for later you know at this point i think there are some existential questions about the role of the commission in regards to the charter change so i was just wondering the extent to which would it be i mean i can i having a sense some things may change i think the complaints policy from 2020 could be streamlined somewhat in practice um and that's something that i think may come out of these discussions so i'm just wondering the extent to which those pieces that have been sort of incorporated into this um i don't think we want to slow down the the process i'll get more to the point uh for example the discussions the briefings we've been trying to work more through through written uh communication as opposed to briefings and executive session i think what i've seen in practice over the last year and a half is for we need to keep pace with the with the department the department is is doing thorough investigations really in a timely manner we don't want to be a slow that process down for example in a more serious case i think uh detective coro raised this at the December 26 meeting you know you have officers waiting for a disposition if you know there's if there's a requirement that you have to brief the commission verbally and there isn't a quorum and this thing slips because executive session needs to be rescheduled you know is that really working the best interest of all so i don't have the answers and clearly we want to talk about that but just to raise the point that if some of these things again the role of the commission is is being discussed through charter change there are some things in practice that i think we've seen and perhaps we could have a discussion with uh with dc labarge on how we could keep that more streamlined that may be reflected in in some of the implementing procedures of the policy so just putting it out there that we don't i would not want to hold up getting dd 40 voted on because i think it has some really important significant reforms but if there's some pieces about what the commission is doing in its review that may need that may need change but we also don't want to put a clog in the in the process so i'm just putting it out there yeah um and just for consideration or maybe there's a way that we could you know say perhaps some of the commission's procedures are going to be revised in consultation with the department and you know maybe just put a caveat that these i feel they're largely standalone anyway and i don't think they really get to the real core of the reforms that you've that you've put in already so just just putting it out there yeah that's terrific as i said uh you know on on page 12 at the very bottom it talks about the in certain instances of discipline described in nine c2 the chief of police must share a recommendation for discipline with the police commission fire prior to finalizing that discipline um and then if you look at nine and c2 it this is from the agreement and what it talks about is you know higher level complaints that are likely to revolve to uh any conduct for which suspension or termination is recommended um and so that's not you know that that's not a lot that that's pretty serious even even the cases that you all have have seen um that have been brought to you in the appeals process have mostly been about written reprimand not suspension or termination now we get those two and there have been officers terminated uh i don't that's not a fun part of anybody's job but there have been both in officers employees terminated um and you know if it was disciplinary we we've brought that to you as well uh but um that must requirement is a relatively you know it's a it's a relatively narrow set of circumstances just just going back to what commissioner kief is saying that and i think commissioner cox just texted me about this too the 14 day i think somewhere in there again that that that time frame um from i think that's something the commission also has to kind of deliberate on as well because sometimes we don't have enough people we can't even have a quorum within 14 days and to keep the officers hanging meanwhile because we can't get a quorum seems somewhat problematic to me i think so i think somewhere sometime i think we have to look at this time frame and uh decide how we want how far we want to go and how is that making sense commissioner kief yeah i mean i think it's less a question of there's a deficiency in dd 40 is just the extent to which we don't want to be a delay in the process so it's maintaining that uh transparency and accountability having those reviews but having those reviews done in a way that's not uh you know hamstringing the department's investigation and in its desire to have a timely adjudication of these complaints yeah a couple of questions first i just wanted to thank you for doing this rewrite um it's really thorough and i love that sorry i love that you have i don't like talking in a microphone but okay um i love that you've pulled together all the documents that were out there and put them in one place i think that was one of my concerns with the charter change when it came up was that there didn't seem to be a lot of understanding about how things currently worked and i feel like this document helps to clarify that and if i'm reading it collect correctly it sounds like um it lays out the whole process up to the point uh and this is how i read it so please chief tell me if this is incorrect um the concept that we spent a lot of time talking about with the charter change about an independent panel the place that i would see that coming in would be uh when you go through and i don't have the page references for you the process where you have made a recommendation to the commission and the commission has had the opportunity to accept it or ask you for more information or reject it and then you have the opportunity to say you will accept what the commission would like changed in the in the very what i imagine would be very very rare circumstance that that didn't resolve it says that the that if there is a disagreement still between the commission and the chief that it would go to the mayor and then it doesn't actually say what would happen there but in my mind as i read this i thought that's where this charter change thing that they spent a lot of time on would come into play is that correct i think that is correct i think that if if that component of the charter change proposal were to be adopted that's where it would go so that's in nine uh basically comes in on nine after nine e so that would be on page seventeen some place after after that and and that again the majority of section nine is essentially the agreement from 2020 i think i certainly didn't there's nothing in there that changes anything with meaning but there are some things that just the agreement itself is included as an appendix to look at um but the the section of nine is nine that is section nine is is the agreement and where the agreement currently ends is is that it ends with the sense that uh by charter all is currently the chief's decision at the end uh what happens and so there's a mechanism for you know disagreement here's here's why our disagreement exists here's the chief's response to that disagreement which either convinces or doesn't convince and if the the body remains unconvinced the police commission remains unconvinced it goes to the mayor but under the current charter it's true the mayor cannot compel the chief to to change that disciplinary determination um and uh you know so that is why the the charter change recommendation does propose that that body uh that panel um and i just wanted to see if i was reading it correctly because i think it's important to put this into perspective why this rewritten dd 40 is so important because it provides i think a lot of what people were hoping to gain through that process and i think it's i think it's a really important to consider them together in order to be able to understand the whole overview of what's currently happening so i'm really pleased that people will be able to look at this i was also really pleased about the part that you put in about transparency because that had certainly been one of my concerns about how do we inform the public so all these good things happen good process happens and how does the public find out that the process has happened and what the result was so i was very happy to see section g and section h on page 10 and i also wanted to make sure and wondered if you could talk just a bit about those two provisions chief sure because i want to make sure i understand them thoroughly and um if what i understood was from the statistical summary was basically something you would be giving to like the commission and and that that would include even a very low level like supervisory review and then the part outlined in h was really the piece that that i had been asking for in my comments the public transparency um which is a six month report that would allow the public to just see some basic very basic details that the what the complaint was the basic nature of it and then how it was resolved so i just wondered if you could just talk for briefly about those two things i absolutely can so g is largely in dd 40 already uh the description of that statistical summary is in dd 40 as it currently exists it's just not something that we really i don't think we do enough uh we we share it with you now rather than internally so there is no statistical summary that's that's provided internally to uh the for example the training unit or not the deputy chief of administration the chief of police and the deputy chief of operations are dialed into the entirety of the complaint list and have access to it and do if they notice something is it needs to be addressed they do um we have had you know uh there are multiple disciplinary cases where and you often are i think i've shared these with you where it occasions messages and retraining immediately inside where we remind everybody about what their obligations are because a complaint was made that did not that where the an allegation was made that there wasn't uh that certain trainings weren't being followed um and we we pretty much immediately take note of that uh i you know um so we we have been doing those things but the creation of the statistical summary not so much we instead follow the chart and you duplicate the chart to make certain that that we're both on the same page there's been at least one instance in my memory in which we'd forgotten an incident that came in and you had it uh because it got it came to all of us and we said oops you're right we are missing you know citizen complaint 22 of of 2023 um whatever i'm making that number up um i have my phone out because i was going to try to find i'd sent it to the chiefs uh and shannon which was the vsp version of uh their report um yeah i was actually going to ask you about that because i was looking at this the state police have a citizen advisory board and on their page you can click on the month and you can see a short report of anything that has come before them and um i thought it was really useful model for us and for people to see that that might be a good way for the our police department to do that as well so the vsp for example here has uh they have a total of the number of cases from january 1st 2023 through june 30th 2023 and this was released to the public on march 18th 2024 um and it consists of a background says why they're doing it it consists of some notes on terminologies internally generated complaint made by a co-worker an employee of the of the department of vsp um the vermont state police externally generated indicates a complaint was made by someone outside the department um it talks about the those sort of uh where those cases go and and that they're reported to the vermont criminal justice council certain ones are and then it gives a statistical total internally generated cases total 13 how many were founded that is found to have happened 11 unfounded one other one externally generated cases there were five how many were founded zero how many were unfounded two how many were other three now this says to me although it doesn't say it in here specifically that they are only talking about what we would call either internal affairs or maybe administrative reviews they are not talking about supervisor reviews there's no way a 300 plus person agency that's dealing with people around the entire state only has 11 incident or 13 incidents of or actually i'm sorry externally generated cases is five only has five instances in which somebody wrote and said trooper jones was not nice to me on my vehicle stop now that to us would be a supervisor review initially and if upon reviewing it with with other parties and you as well we said look we watched it and trooper jones didn't do anything wrong we're not turning that into an internal investigation they must get more than five of those kinds of cases i just don't believe they could not and therefore i think this is five true internal affairs levels cases and and that we could easily do as well so here's an example of one externally here's one of those externally generated cases this is the totality of the data they provide on it one externally generated january 2023 synopsis inquiry into an allegation that a trooper participated in an off duty physical altercation outcome the member resigned before the completed investigation could be reviewed and adjudicated by the commissioner of the department of public safety that's the totality of it now we could meet that level of transparency easily and provide that for for you and for the public and and if that becomes a part of this rule we would that would be an additional piece to it the you know we've already done it once there is an existing version of of the spreadsheet with which we share that we share with you there is a an anonymized public version of it was shared in 2020 during the early stages of what later became the charter change proposal so it was sort of proposed by i believe then city councilor freeman and it was under discussion not by the charter change and ordinance committees but instead by the i want to say was the public safety committee and perhaps the police commission acting as a joint committee but nevertheless then city attorney eileen blackwood presented a lot of material on how citizen oversight worked in other places and we as a part of that made a public release of not just the bia level stuff but everything up to about 2020 i think so included 2018 2019 and 2020 um and so something like this what the vsp does is something that we would be willing to to to explore we'd obviously have to work it out with we'd talk with the bpoa um and and you but you know that's an example of probably one of the things that i would admit that is an add-in that is not the vast majority of this and i hope i've been clear that i i didn't say that i didn't add anything i i said i tried my best to just say what we're currently doing but that one would be an example of something that's new and would be something that they therefore would definitely want to weigh in on yeah and i think that level of detail is appropriate i don't think it needs to be the kind of detail that for instances in your use of force reports it doesn't need to get to the full incident i think personally speaking i think that would be as efficient the idea is for the public to see that when a complaint is made that there is a process and what the outcome of the process is i think that helps with building you know trust by having that kind of transparency because you're already doing this work you're already doing this good work and i don't think that the public a lot of times realizes it's happening um if i remember i'm sorry i i just i i just had um and maybe commissioner kief can sort of remind me of that there was a discussion at some point on the commission that bpd and the commission work together to create some kind of a document which would also be the burlington police commission uh report to sort of say what are the complaints you know sort of give a blueprint of what we had received and it never it didn't happen last year because we just don't have the resources and the time from all of us to create that um so i wonder if it's a discussion also for us to have um you know in moving forward if we want to let bpd do that the you know keep track of those complaints and we review them rather than us produce a a report entirely again sort of basically duplicating that work until we have actually you know sort of support staff and everything i mean that's something i'm just thinking out loud for other people to weigh in yeah i think that makes sense i i had just a couple more quick comments on the dd 40 um i didn't see anything in their chief about and and just tell me if this is something you thought about and and doesn't fit but having another police agency asked to step in and conduct an investigation you know how you were talking about how you didn't have your own internal affairs bureau and i wondered if that was a practice that bpd currently did sometimes and whether that was would fit somewhere in this policy i think i think it does mention it in the policy um and let me see if i can find that section uh uh it does talk about um it talks about the idea of being of things being able to refer nothing here shall prevent officers or or employees from referring things to entities outside the department if they believe that the issue here other reporting venues nothing described herein shall prevent an employee from reporting criminality to an appropriate law enforcement entity other than the bpd such as the vermont state police the office of the chitin county state's attorney the office of the vermont attorney general the united state's attorney's office for the district of vermont or federal law enforcement agencies such as the federal bureau of investigation so that allows employee allegations to be made elsewhere i mean they already can do so but that makes it very explicit um and then with regard to the idea of moving cases to those entities it talks about um let's see it says something about instances in which there is a crime suspected and how that review will take place and when reviewer investigation so this is uh it is yes it is two uh f and it is on page six at the top um and it's f one uh upon review so in in f it says upon receiving an online complaint a written citizens complaint and here i would add i i've made some additions to this i've been looking at it since i sent it to you but i would add here a complaint from the mayor's office city councilor police commission or a supervisors notification of an internal complaint the chief of police will determine whether a supervisor review an administrative review or an internal investigation is appropriate the chief of police will forward all relevant information to the deputy chief of administration who will sign a supervisor to conduct the appropriate review or investigation and then one underneath it says um if a complaint appears to involve possible criminal conduct and i would actually just rephrase that to say if the review determines that a complaint may involve possible criminal conduct comma the chief of police will refer to the vermont state police for investigation and or consult with the chitlin county state's attorney's office to determine appropriate next steps so it does have that in there right now um i i've tweaked the language a little bit that is in this version not in this version but like you can see my i've been there's blue notes on this i've been making notes and and you know adding things to it um i i'm you know i think that part of what we could discuss right now is is how you want me to proceed with that if i have additional things that i've like tweaks that i've added you want me to start doing them in track changes i i started a document using dd 40 as it exists and making it track changes and the entire thing was a track change because this is 30 pages instead of seven so it was just it would have been a big old sloppy mess and me myself i find track changes sometimes to be very difficult to use and problematic that said there's a reason that we use them and they're very effective as well so i think what i would see what i would propose now is that if this is acceptable to you in the sense of we're happy that you've done this and we can't and in any means by any means say that we're approving it but we are you know we would like to continue moving forward with this that i would then say okay well this is our new baseline our foundation i'll start tracking changes from there and provide you with versions that track changes and for that matter with the bpoa and others to say that you know so we can moving from this point say here's how we're we're changing it editing it uh and that would be sort of a suggestion i would wholeheartedly accept that suggestion i think it's a great suggestion we can certainly move forward with that i'm not hearing anything from any other commissioners about that i think we will revisit we'll have to revisit at least once during our april meeting to get to some consensus go ahead commissioner that was just yeah i agree i'll call this the zero draft and yeah going forward all track change perfect yeah i didn't i don't have any opinion on the track changes but um just and i just wondered chief is that consistent with what other departments in the region do like i'm thinking from a public standpoint let's say for some reason somebody makes a complaint against your deputy chief and somebody in the public feels that that it's not going to be fairly investigated if it's investigated by somebody employed by bpd i see and so i'm not necessarily saying this is conduct that would rise to a criminal level investigation but in terms of the public feeling that in the appropriate circumstance you might reach out to another municipality or the state police um and ask them to conduct whatever sort of internal investigation you've thought was necessary yeah i see now the difference that you're speaking of yeah um uh so obviously if there's going to be a criminal level of of you know that's an easier call that's a pretty bright line a criminal investigation we generally don't do criminal investigations into our own employees unless it comes from an internal investigation that we're conducting and then we would then pass that off um if criminality were determined uh and i think you you you've all been privy to for example a case where there was some evidence there that could potentially be and we referred that to a local state's attorney to say do you think and the response was no uh and we took it back what you're describing is you know for certain levels of employee and we really would be the deputy chiefs or or others um would we do that i myself would not i i i myself wouldn't at this stage i i myself would say that no if it's if it's like the subordinates are support i i will discipline subordinates as the chief of police in the same way that i would discipline anybody else in the department um and not farm that out uh obviously if if the complaint is about me there's a provision now for that and that is included in this it includes you know what happens and and it goes to you know it goes to the the vcjc and well in practice there's a case that went to another jurisdiction as well it's pending the yes there was yes uh i don't think that ever i think it ultimately went kicked back to this place and said we're not to do if i'm thinking that they're the same one would have to talk about an executive um but uh yes so uh the so for for me there's there are not me but for the chief of police there's a mechanism for anybody beneath the chief of police i myself would not uh send that to another entity um a different chief of police might so you know should that be something that's written in uh that would be something we can talk about and and debate and if you all decide yes that goes in there then that's what we would do i was just asking because i wanted to understand and i for me it would matter whether that was um done in other departments and if it were not if that's not the way other departments are set up then i certainly am not advocating a lot of other departments don't they conduct they don't have internal investigations at all they this the smaller departments some small departments in the state don't even really have true investigators and so there has recently been some efforts by vacop which stands for the vermont association of chiefs of police but vacop has set up some sort of volunteer programs where agencies in certain regions agree to you know if you have a thing you'll you'll send it and we'll we'll sort of that what they've almost done is create little koozies for so koozy is the chitinon unit for special investigations here in chitinon county it consists of detectives from a number of different entities we contribute to detectives and the supervisor who oversees koozy there's also a detective from from colchester and one from south burlington and one from there used to be one from uvmpd i don't know if there currently is they all take on really serious sex cases uh sex assault crimes against the very young against the elderly the reason i'm using them as an example is that they are their own entity uh they're full time in there in that entity because there are enough case volumes what vacop has tried to set up as something where it's not full time but you're on call as a detective from agency x and you hear that agency y has a case and you sort of fly in as a visiting iab detective and or internal affairs bureau detective and you take on that case and then ultimately it then goes back to however to the chief of that department or perhaps to the town manager because in some instances town managers and city managers not being elected have the final say rather than the chief of police um and that's how that would work but they don't have the investigatory capacity so they farm the investigatory responsibility out to a sort of rotating on-call group we don't have that need i mean we have the ability to conduct the investigation internally and i believe we have the integrity to to see it through internally as well but if that's not the consensus then you know we could we couldn't revisit it visit creating a new section in this that says that all right i'm just looking at the time yeah i'm sorry most it's almost eight o'clock and i don't want i don't want to have an ex we also have an executive session and i don't want to be here till 11 o'clock yeah and i know that detective coro is here and there is something in the agenda that he needs to tease here to address and we would like to hear from him about that so i want to move on um the next item is commissioner comments and i'd reintroduce this section in our agenda for commissioners to speak to the public about matters of important to them i'll go first and i know commissioner henson also has something to say um first i want to congratulate the mayor elect emma emma mulvaney stanok on being elected and look forward to working with her i will be present at the swearing-in ceremony for her and a host of new um and re-elected city councillors at the april for ceremony here at con toys at 6 p.m and i hope other commissioners will join me um i also hope that the mayor elect will make a commitment to direct resources to the police commission in the form of a part-time support staff while i appreciate the exemplary work that shan and tremell i hope i'm saying her last name right has done it is added work for her and beyond her full-time commitment to bpd it is also important that the commission has someone who can keep us connected to the public and vice versa on a regular basis this requires management of files onboarding of new commissioners managing our website none of which has been done since we lost our support staff um in october 2023 in fact we lost our support staff in august 2023 so it's really has been uh shannon who has done most of the work and in fact i think chief has ended up doing some of the clerical work along with me so i think that we hope that'll change and hopefully we'll meet with the um with the new mayor elect and request more resources commissioner hanson yes i just wanted to mention um and congratulate the new mayor elect as well and i would urge uh the new mayor elect that if there is um any questions about the performance of our current police chief that she reach out to the police commission um i am a little concerned that um our chief's contract i know comes up in june and i feel like it's really important for the stability of the police department to have continuity and so i do hope um that we can avoid having a police chief become a political hot topic and i hope that if the mayor elect has questions i just urge her to think about the stability of the department and to reach out to the police commission if we can be of any help in i feel like we have the closest view of the chief and his performance of his work and i do hope that um we can continue with the great work that's happening and provide some stability for our police department thank you anyone else has any comments commissioner garrison commissioner cox okay um item six is commission business uh 6.1 is review of february 2024 use of force reports i don't know if people have had a chance to go over all the um summaries and have any requests for viewing any of those use of force videos i know there are some pending from january 2024 um request pending from january 2024 meeting i know commissioner kief had requested a few viewing of a few body worn camera footage and i think what sorry go ahead just uh i feel a sense of deja vu we were here last month um could you please give us an update on the policy because that was what prevented the videos from being released so where are we if we so kind commissioner aski you want to respond to that or do you want me to go ahead and sort of give an update okay all right um yes i do have an update commissioner aski and i forwarded that forwarded the updated policy approved following our february meeting to bpoa and we are awaiting a response from them um and i hope bpoa will accept the current version since the commission has agreed to the parameters suggested by them um i hope to have the policy ready for vote and approval for the april meeting that's where we are meanwhile um i had contacted city attorney hailey mclanahan um and in fact chief mirad was cc'd on that and you actually asked a follow-up question and essentially it was told to both of us that bpd can release the request that you had made in january for i believe it was three cases three incidents to us um until the we agree on a policy would be poa okay so there's nothing stopping um dc labars from releasing that information to us that's that's the feeling that i got that was the city attorney's ruling so we'll we'll get those right and those are i i believe there are three incidents then yeah and and if we don't still have them on record dc labar jandor dc labreck will be in touch with you commissioner kief to remind which ones okay great thank you for the update and and work on those videos sorry that's fine um so i think i had do people have any questions about the um any of the use of force summaries i do not and i'm not seeing any any comments from commissioner cox either so looks like people do not have any requests either okay um 6.3 commission comment to the charter change committee i circulated a two-page document collating all the comments made by various commissioners and shannon uploaded them on the civic clerk there are many points of agreement and some differences um so as per the process approved at the commission january meeting um we would like to hear from bpoa followed by comments from the public detective coro thank you for your patience thank you commissioners um saying first from what you're just speaking about you'll be receiving a response from us related to the policy hopefully within the week um so you'll be receiving a response from us within the week about that policy um i just have your comments in front of me and i'm just going to kind of walk through them and give you my feedback on the ones that apply uh the first one retaining commission's appellate authority i don't really think we have much to say on this you already know our stance on the that happening i think we're in agreement on that as it relates to use of complaints monitored help commission we agree that you should have that you should have somebody that should be doing that um from there um the independent panel we've spoken about this at length with you um but i will say once again now that we have dd 40 that's at least in a draft form a new draft form and you and i think it's much easier to see what is being done in one place whereas before that was very difficult and the transparency wasn't really there it was hard to tell what was being done or what wasn't being done um i think i would like to hear both the committee and the commission's stance as they get through that 30 pages and i like that the conversation about the independent panel more after that um kind of get into that deeper our stance on the independent panel is still that it should be five not three i know the um contention before has been it'd be very difficult to get five people you need five three is too little and i think five gives you a bigger base of experience and a bigger base of uh ability to have that conversation um that's going to be needed uh i think we are on the right track when it comes to um the experience level it's needed it's going to need to be uh somewhat deeper than just 10 years of law enforcement experience there needs to be more in the background of that what does that law enforcement experience look like what are the parameters behind that law enforcement experience because 10 years of law enforcement experience is a good start but we all know that well we know and i'm sure you do too and you've seen it in different places that you've been um and people you've interacted with 10 years of law enforcement experience in a town of 500 or a thousand people compared to a town of 40,000, 100,000, 300,000 is very different the calls of service that are responded to are very different so that 10 years of law enforcement experience can vary substantially so i think there needs to be a few more parameters when it comes to that um but i think that's on the right track um going back to the i like this the adage if it's not broke don't fix it it's interesting that that's put in here that that was a quote made uh commissioner kief i like that because when i look at dd 40 that has been revised if it isn't broke don't fix it that's where the vpo stands right now let's be clear about that we're happy to talk about the charter change we understand that it's important and we believe in fair and equal representation and we believe in consistent um representation for our members the thing here is we think the process works very well as is currently and as i've said before and i'll continue to say my biggest worry here and our biggest worry as a body is lengthening a process which puts more stress on officers i think i've already given the example of officers in the past who have physically been ill in the amount of time that it took for a process to finish either that be an internal investigation um as well as all the things that go through your head officers that do this job members that do this job we don't do this it's not just a job to us we're called to do this um there is a lot of other choices in the world right now there's a lot of other options for careers we all know that uh you're taking on a lot of liability you're taking on a lot of stress and they continue to come and do this job every day i'm not i'm not interested in making their lives harder than they already are when it comes to stress and that is my big thing here having been through it myself having spent years going through the process continuing to go through the process currently um with the civil litigation i'm six years in a civil litigation i went through an internal investigation i've been through i've been witnesses to other internal investigations and i'm constantly a part of internal investigations as the bpoa president with officers i see how stressful it is for them i'm the one trying to calm them down most of the time when their biggest fear is that they may not have a job tomorrow whether that's completely out in left field but that is your biggest worry at that point time is that you will no longer have your career and they do care about you know how they are viewed at the end of that as well their reputation matters to them how they are viewed from the public matters to them all these things matter and it's very it's very stressful when you're going through that especially when it comes publicized and i'm getting off a little bit tangent but i just want to hit on this real quickly when your name hits hits the news for something along those lines and you have family members or friends calling you from across the country asking why is your name in the news for this thing that stresses you out uh when you see your name and assign that stress to you those things all stress you out but let's go back to just the internal investigation itself that's a very stressful time the longer that we push out internal investigation the more stress is on that officer the more services they're going to need uh and we may take an officer completely out of their job completely at that time they might not be able to do their function at that time due to the internal investigation so what i'm getting at with that is if it's not broke don't fix it that's the big one for me dd 40 the new dd 40 lays it out pretty well of all the things we can do but as we talk about going forward with this the the next thing that i'm going to talk about specifically is uh counselor travers once again this quote comes from you commissioner kief and from him uh like in the authority of the commission authority would conduct investigations into break glass in case of emergency that i completely understand there as you we've all said there can be situations where you need that extra level so that we can be certain when we're done that has been investigated correctly and everybody is on the same page with that what will the parameters be for that though can we just break that glass at any point in time what what is the parameters to break that glass i think that's something that would need to be broken down a little bit because you as i've said before your commission may not break that glass a lot but a commission in the future in a commission before you would have broken that glass every single time an incident arrived arose it would have been nope we need an independent investigation we need an independent investigation continually over and over and over and over that's what i'm afraid of and that's what i don't want to see uh because then it's going to turn into okay well if i get into an internal investigation that means that i will i will most likely i'm looking at you know six months for the investigation but then you add into the section part which is six months more i don't know i don't know the exact time frame because i don't know what it is and at that point it's then then you're looking at the retention issue of does this officer want to deal with that by working here so what do people do when they decide to work at a police department or anywhere for that matter if it's a public or a company that's more public and for us it's city government so it's very public they're going to google it right that's the first thing i would do if i was going to a new job i'm going to google it and if the first thing i see at the top is this which is what's being talked about right now and i see that there's this added layer that i have to now go through i'm just going to say well i can go to south perlinson police department they don't have this added layer and i don't have to worry about that i have less stress i can go there i could do my job i can go home that's going to be that so it's just something to consider as we go forward when we're talking about timelines and parameters and really making it clear what those are going to be yeah so i would say we are very understanding of the fact that there needs to be that ability it's the same with the fact that we have the ability to appeal and arbitrate it's the same reason we have the ability to come to you and say we don't agree with this discipline we would like you to look at it and then if that we can't come to agreement there we move past that to arbitration i think that's a similar concept of what i'm seeing here and how i understand it i'm not going to speak on the council and all that you talk about that in great detail and i think it makes sense to have that somewhere where it's very clear dd 40 and if you have this separately um laying out that that needs to happen uh this was a great point raised i thought by commissioner kief um purpose and effect of the provision that higher level complaints may not be exposed until the commission is notified of the proposed disposition is not apparent does this mean the chief's disposition is not final unless commission agrees i would like some clarification on this too i think we would like some clarification on what this means where does the buck stop basically that's what we want to know um sorry i've read your i've read these like four or five times i'm just trying to make sure i'm falling i do go ahead no i i'm i'm going to just start i took some notes though i think you know kind of trying to understand this so it seems like there are two lines of thinking here one is you're concerned about the time yes right that seems to be like your biggest concern is that we have to or at least the in our recommendations to the to the joint committee that we should that's what we need to stress on the most um stress reduction time frame for officers that's what you are concerned with is the second part that i'm not exactly clear about you are are you saying investigating as in are you asking that we need to have some language or the joint committee needs to have some language about the parameters of the investigation like what is the investor when what are the conditions in which an investigation would happen yeah it's more when is the independent panel being what parameters causes us to add would trigger it yeah what triggers that because that's where i'm lost because okay the the worry that i would have is once again a commission chooses to trigger this every time because they don't agree with a piece of or they don't agree with the chief's decision every time we've seen in the past where there was some anti-police bias on the commission and in the council and when we saw that there was pushback on everything at that time period and that was very frustrating and very disheartening to us so we would just like there'd be parameters so that if that point comes where this commission shifts again and there is some frustration and there's um you know contention at least we have clear parameters of how we'll proceed forward and i think that's easy once we sit down and actually talk about it but it needs to happen uh it can't just be we have this panel use them at your whim whenever you decide to see fit there you have to meet some type of parameters to use that um we talked to you talk about commissioner hanson uh the sorry the commission the charter change speaks to the need for a commission to be non-political i think we can all agree that that's important um and when i say non-political as i said and i don't i know some people don't like when we bring up the past but the past is very important to us it's very important it's how we move forward in the past we've seen where it was political and it was very charged in anti-police it was very much like a police bias that we saw over and over and over and i'm hoping we don't see that going forward in the future at any point in time uh we just that all the all the bpoa is looking for is people to be reasonable and to think things out before they make a decision and not go into it with an immediate bias of as we've seen in the past this police officer did something wrong we just would ask for that benefit out of taking and looking at the whole um collective situation as you put into the policy totality of the circumstances that's what's important um the other policy uh we thought i just talked about at length the timeline for when the process will be resolved so i'm not going to harp on that um and then once again i will say again though we suggest five i still suggest five the bpoa suggests five people for this um and i think the amount of time for both the hr representative and the law enforcement officers is the right amount of time with some parameters behind that uh and then commissioner cox i have nothing against her her statements at all your statements at all um when it comes to having somebody on the on the panel that has um professional experience diversity equity inclusion work mental health policy or direct services i think that fits on a five person panel with at least two um two people with law enforcement experience one person with that experience an hr experience my thought would be on the fifth would be um somebody who has who is experiencing labor law so labor experience in labor law that would be my thought for the fifth person um i think that pretty much hits everything i didn't want to take up a ton of your time um i'm interested to see kind of what comes out of this going forward well thank you very much and uh if i may i you know i signaled before i think there's some existential questions and one that i have and i didn't make it into the two page summary um i sent a document early january to i think everyone in this room for me what i was what i was hoping for that we would get clarity is this independent panel yes what does it actually do what is its powers what are its its its duties roles obligations so when the mayor approved the city council resolution 7.09 in november of 2021 the issue that they wanted to address was and i quote the question of moving disciplinary authority from the chief of police to a body that is independent from the burlington police department this panel that i that is being proposed i have no idea what it is it doesn't say anything about that so in my mind you know if we're going to talk about we vote on two thirds to send it to a panel it says nothing to me i don't really know what that means i don't know what we're what the role of the commission is um and so i would you know i would at some point like to hear from and maybe we need now for the new counselors that come on board is there intent to establish a panel independent panel that is taking ultimate disciplinary authority or not because that really everything else kind of hinges on that frankly so you know i don't know what the position is maybe from the bpoa i mean it's pretty clear that it's not going to be the commission yes the commission is volunteers citizens doing really a watchdog function we have advisory you know role we can suggest things so this idea that there's a disagreement somehow we're litigating and i do take your point i would and i i really agree i feel what the commission needs to be is just a purely objective and independent body it should be neither uh anti or pro police exactly we're just looking at the facts um and i would actually say to commissioner hanson you know around the chief's appointment you know the commission took a position we're not weighing in on on that that is a political issue it's also human rights excuse me uh hr uh human resources and we didn't take a position so i really would not i would disagree with that statement that the mayor elect should come and talk to us i mean we're independent we're objective i think that's what we should be um and in terms of what this you know so this idea of framing it that we're in litigating with the with the chief we're in disagreement and and we're going to kick it up to a panel i don't really understand that so i would welcome your thoughts on what what this panel is and what what is it that we're trying to do with this charter change because i don't understand the bpoa from the beginning has been clear that we do not think we don't fully understand what the what the intent of the independent panel is either we don't see a need for the independent panel the only thing that we have somewhat understood or we believe we understand is the independent being somewhat of like an arbitrary like an ability to appeal and arbitrate that if you didn't agree with the chief's decision you could push it to this panel to reinvestigate that's how i'm interpreting it and that's how we have it as the bpoa has interpreted as well we don't see a need for it um and to go on to the next point the independent panel itself should not be the end all be all should not be the final decision maker that that doesn't make sense to us and uh that's the same with the fact that we don't we don't agree and we wholeheartedly are against the mayor having any say in discipline as well when it comes to the police department and the police officers at the police department we understand that is the case for the chief of police and that makes sense to us that is the mayor's sole sole ability in that situation the rest of the department should be managed and dealt with by the department head and the burlington police department and the police departments in general around the country are very different from the rest of the the public works in all the other departments and that has been and it's very clear in charter why that is the case and that will continue to be the case hopefully um it's very clear why that is the case and to say well the other department heads are you know all their employees are at the whim of the mayor very that's like apples orange is my point of view and i think that's kind of getting lost here a little bit um so i'm hoping that's continues to remain clear i would ask that if that is continued to be pushed by the committee uh that they show me other police departments around the country where that is the case where the mayor has say in what who the chief you know during disciplinary outcomes if the mayor is involved in those disciplinary outcomes i just want to read a text from uh commissioner cox um she essentially says that according to her the mayor referral doesn't work um and she says commissioner keith has been said saying that so many times um can you say my thought that's her thoughts um is that it is then it would be the independent panel not the mayor who we refer disagreements to is that correct i think is that the is that our understanding i think she's asking a question um it is the independent panel not the mayor who we refer disagreements to i think that would be based on the on the draft charter on the draft charter change yes yes commissioner cox and and the question is to what purpose yes to what purpose yes that is the question okay um thank you unless people have some other questions for detective coro he has been very patient for three hours now listening to um to us but thank you for your input we will take notes as we re refurbish this document before it's sent over to the to the join join committee um today we also would like to hear from comments from the public but i don't know if there's anybody i don't know if even thank you sir come ahead go ahead thank you missures i'm actually going to step out so have a great night okay yes thank you thank you thank you uh commissioner chair for granting me again to speak so um i'm glad that there's this part of the public engagement regarding uh what was just discussed and as a private citizen hearing from my perspective i remain a little bit concerned if not very concerned to a certain degree um not having a proper accountability for any department within public service the police department the fire department any department within city government has to have some sort of accountability or an oversight to make sure whether it's directly from the uh say department service report to the mayor uh the commission as i do understand the police commission though not necessarily a an oversight body but rather a department or rather commission that gives their suggestions to what they're thinking what's going on with respect to the department but i would love to see the panel that has been put together to have much more meaning and if that's not the case to leave that responsibility to the commission i'm a little bit concerned having almost two separate public oversight over the police department and on top of that you have the mayor as well so uh though i do welcome ppo it's you know a response to you i think the police department is no different than any other department yes they do have specific responsibilities to the public when it comes to public safety but i think they you know the department needs to be held responsible just as any other department would be with respect to the commission that is you know responsible overseeing the activities and how things are done and so on and so forth so listening to ppoa and some of the input that they that he just gave you the gentleman um i would have loved to see much more welcoming uh input you know that says uh i almost felt like you know that it's up to almost ppo to make the decision how you guys should view it their work versus you guys making the decisions of what needs to be done when it comes to taking care of complaints another thing that i've noted is that i haven't heard anything pertaining to what the complaints entail such as uh you know what do you call uh equity based complaints or title six or title six i believe that's what that is as well as 88 complaints if an officer um does not comply with those specific issues sound like they're responding to an issue say or the level of interaction they have say with somebody who has a disability or somebody of you know a person of color or like migrants so and so forth and there's some title six uh issues that have not been observed and a complaint was submitted within those lines i haven't seen the um and you correct me i could very well be wrong in that regard i haven't seen the dda 40 how that it addresses within that complaint what it's the specific officer or the chief or anybody underlying within that within that department how that is addressed through that dda 40 when it comes to complaint and not just complain broadly speaking but specific complaints uh pertaining to that specifically so thank you thank you so much and i'm i'm sorry i i did not realize that you were speaking as part of this discussion i thought you were just observing so so um that's why i hesitated for a moment in but thank you for your comments um as per the process that proved at the commission in january meeting we will continue to deliberate at the april 23rd police commission meeting and commissioners will vote on any proposal if needed if needed we can also choose to send the list of changes and or suggestions to the joint committee of city council after listening to uh the public and bpoa today um that pretty much concludes our public part of the of our uh meeting today is there a motion regarding special findings do we need an executive session okay can you give me the idea of what it relates to so that we can know what kind of executive session we have to go into uh both are personal matters okay thanks uh yes um i move for special finding that premature general public knowledge of the commission's hearing of personal matters would clearly place the state municipality or other public body or person involved at a substantial disadvantage is there a second so i'm sure kief any discussion hearing none all in favor say aye aye motion passes is there a motion to move into executive session then i move that the commission enter executive session based upon that special finding pursuant to one vsa 313 a one um second yep is there a second commissioner garrison any discussion hearing none all in favor say aye motion passes the commission will move into executive session and we will not return to a public session today thank you everyone thank you so much and the public