 Um, a couple of summers ago and I just think that we are moving in the right direction. And I very, very much appreciate it because I know that some changes need to be made in the Burlington police department. And I think the direction we're going in is very positive. So thank you. Thank you. I appreciate hearing that. Thank you. Is there anybody else in attendance and participants that would like to speak. Please raise your hand and you'll be permitted. I am not seeing or hearing any, any hands being raised right now. So I will close the public forum. And we'll be on. I'm not sure, but is, is miss Simmons in the attendees. I'm not. She just texted me. She wasn't sure she had the right link. So I just forward her the link again. So we should be hearing from her momentarily. All right, sounds good. Chief, how are you doing? Sorry, everybody. Hi, how are you? I was. Taking a call. We had a, well, it's public information. Now there was a burglary at the mayor's house. And so I am addressing that. Glad you're doing well. Thank you. I hope you're well too. Is everybody safe. John. Yes, nobody, nobody was home when it happened. And obviously, I mean, it happened, it was reported just before five o'clock. So it's really early still in so far as just doing what we do at a scene like that to send up our ID unit to take fingerprints, impressions, try to see if it matches anything that else is that's happening. There've been a spate of burglaries. Both here and in South Burlington recently. We're going to have to do a canvas to determine whether or not there's video around, whether anybody has a ring camera, whether the person headed out to main street and went east or west. If they went west, do they go down and pass any businesses? If they went east to they, is there camera stuff on UVM? And then, you know, what do we get inside? Then the victims have to do an inventory and determine whether or not anything was taken, what was taken. And, et cetera. Thank you. Definitely. If you're talking to us, you're muted. I'm just waiting to get in, Shannon. If you're there, can you let her in? I don't see her name in the, in the attendees though. Is she under a different name? Good question. Oh, there she is now. Okay. There we go. Perfect. Hi Heather. Thank you so much. I'm going to just take a minute to introduce you. So for all of those who are. The attendees and panelists. This is, I'm really happy to introduce Heather Simmons. She is the new executive director of the Vermont police academy. I recently heard her speak at a fair and partial policing committee meeting of the Vermont state police. And I thought we would all benefit from hearing from her about what she is thinking about. And I'm just going to turn it over to her. She's going to talk for about 20 minutes. If anybody has questions. I don't know if the Q and A is working. And so. What you can do is raise your hand and we'll call on you at the end of this and you can ask your questions. Heather, thank you so much for being here. Thank you. And thank you for the invitation. It took me a little minute to. Get hooked in and no surprise. Operator error. I'm sure on my end. Give me some advice. If you don't mind, Stephanie, so I can. Can you see everyone and I can't. So you can see the commissioners and the chief. If then in the top right of your zoom, you'll see attendees and there are 12 attendees and you could click on that. If you'd like to see them. So there's roughly about 20 people, 22 people. But you can only, you can only see the panelists. Okay. That's okay. You guys bear with me. Think, and I might have some. Up in the top is there the top right hand corner. If you hover, does it say view? Can you change your view? Are you trying to see everyone all in one spring? Yeah. Yeah. If you change it and change it to gallery. I know. Why isn't that showing up? All right. Well, it's late and everyone works very hard. And so I'm just going to pretend like I'm. With a completely friendly audience, even though I can't see you. And thank you very much for the invitation. And as Stephanie said, I am the executive director of the Vermont Colonel justice council and the Vermont police academy. And this is not just an honor, but it's also, I think one of many opportunities that we're all having as leaders and community members. And participants and. The change that's happening with what we can do, not just in the state, but also in the state. There's so much happening right now that it's, I think very hard to keep up. Also at the same time, I've never been more focused on how important it is. And I think it's, you know, the change that's happening with what we can do, not just in the state, but also with how we connect with communities. And. And being part of educating each other and change. There's so much happening right now that it's, there's so much happening right now that it's, you know, there's so much happening right now that it's, how important it is to be resilient and to have stamina. And that's what I'm seeing with each of the courageous leaders that are participating, not just in. Community meetings, like the one that you're having right now, the work that's happening across the state with regards to legislation. There's so much happening right now that it's, you know, having a good attitude. So that's the focus of. Using multi-generational talents to be innovative. To be a part of accountability. And moving things that makes sense. In addition to all of that. There are people who are waiting for us. And that's what I know has been part of my focus in this of the people, the children and the vulnerable who are counting on us to not act as if it's an emergency but to move with urgency to make decisions and to create opportunities for change. That said, I think that there is an enormous amounts of not just political counterintuitive, counterintuitive decision making, but in addition to that, we're just, we're leaning into all wanting the same thing and at the same time having to make sure that we protect the piece of the pie that we're responsible for. And I think that that's really what we do best, which is to do our jobs well. And my interest and participating as a leader at the Academy is around how we connect the change that we wanna have happen to become and continue to be the most trauma-informed, adult learning center and a profession that's critical. That is at times getting forgotten about. And that's been a little bit of not just a transition and learning for me as a leader, but also as a woman, as a mom, as a citizen and also as a long-time, I would state government worker for almost 30 years at the Department of Corrections and having to take parts and pieces of a career where I learned over time that leadership has very little to do with rank and everything to do with courage. And that is a lesson that I don't want our younger people to learn because we don't get it right at the top. And wasting time with lessons learned is part of my commitment, not just to the position, but to the work. That's just what I would call maybe a little bit of an infomercial in terms of who I am that's not connected to my resume on paper. What I also know is that there is a hard charge for change and it's coming from everywhere as it should. There is, as many of you might know, expanded Vermont Criminal Justice Council that went from 12 members to 24 members, that the chair and the two vice chairs are quite committed into making sure that we not just move through decision-making and oversight of the police academy, but a full understanding of all parts and pieces that fall under the new council, which includes Act 56 and professional regulation. And that's a subcommittee that was started up in April when I first began the position. In addition to all that are approximate, and I say approximately because we're trying to condense things, 17 subcommittees and work groups underneath the council that are all public notice meetings that have agendas that require membership and participation and full focus on how their mission connects with the council mission. One of the things that was very exciting about this invitation from Stephanie and thank you very much for the invitation is the idea that we can begin planning around adult learning and law enforcement that's connected to community and ways that we haven't done in the past. That includes things like fully understanding that we can change the profession and keep the parts that are really working and connect that to proficiency and to competency. And that comes with the question of, what do we want law enforcement to be able to do? When we can answer that question and be evidence-based training, then we're talking about best practices that allows for us to build skills and show that we have skills and the things that law enforcement does really well. And I'm not saying that everyone does it really well but I'm very proud to live in a state that has one academy, only one. And there's only a couple, I think Maine is the other one and I kind of want to say it's only Maine. One academy means that we can decide all of us together what we want law enforcement to be to do and that additionally allows us to support a workforce that's doing right by us and they are doing right by us. And it's kind of sad to not hear about the things that we, they are already doing. And some of that has to do with the resources and the opportunity to put that evidence also to work. We're very good at tracking data and we're very good at talking about data, what I learned in my career in corrections and what I want to say out loud to all of you is that we're not so good at tracking what we got in front of. We're not as good as I want us to be and being able to show what didn't happen because of the skills, the proficiency, the caring and the commitment and the discipline of the people who do the work because they want to be part of protecting communities and pulling people together. That would be my dream in terms of a retirement plan and that's certainly something that I want to pay closer attention to as a executive director and I think that there are a lot of possibilities there and if you look at agencies who are proactive, if you take it like, I wish I could see you guys. Girl smiling at you. All right, thank you, thank you. I think that we're missing a little piece of the pie when it comes to how much folks are counting on this profession and the ways that we either long for in the past or we hoped that would happen and the potential that we have. And I can't say that I know the job of a law enforcement officer, but I do understand training and I know that training is the first thing to get cut. It's the last thing to get funded and it's at the top of the list of where we put blame when something goes wrong. We're also redefining training in a way that we sometimes don't know whether it's a training or a meeting and if we go back a little bit, what I'm dating myself, but if I go back, I recall training was a place that you went. It was an honor to go there. It was an honor to have access to it because there were no cell phones. There was no such thing as Google and there were no computers. And so training was the only place that you could find out what happened between the policy and the implementation operationally. And so there's a lot of traditional thinking over decades around training and what that means. Access one, two, how do we compensate for skill building and how does that connect to professional development? We're cultivating a profession right now where we are relying more on inspiration than anything else and we should. We have to move with our heart in addition to everything else. And when I say that, I think with permission because the lawmakers are focused on the law and I am too and the researchers and the data and analysts are focused on that. And so from where I sit, I have permission to look at what I know moves people and that is the ability to create change, to sustain things that work and to implement best practices. And there's an enormous amount of this good faith work that I know is evidence-based happening across the state. There are lots of parts and pieces to this. I've been learning a profession and a job at the same time. That's requiring a lot of patience from my partners and my colleagues. Chiefs have been incredibly supportive. The Vermont State Police has been incredibly supportive. The leadership around law enforcement has showed up and said, how can we support you? Particularly since they have asked me and invited me to lead an academy, understanding that I don't fit the model. The model is uniform. The model is predominantly male. The model is armed. The model also in Vermont is change and access to change, change thinking and moving forward. And this isn't a sound bite, it truly isn't. I really do believe that the courageous leadership that's happening in this state is gonna get us from feeling a little bit behind to completely ahead. And ahead isn't, and I'm not saying that we're not competitive, but it's also okay to say it out loud that there are things that Vermont is getting in front of that other states either can't or won't or haven't had the opportunity to wrap their head around. This can happen in this state. And this is already happening. The things that I would like to see is tracking of things that work. When we know that de-escalation, that's the start point of backing down on a situation. But there's a lot that happens before de-escalation and those are the things that I'm worried about when we have a law enforcement crisis, when we can't staff enough of our police departments, that means less people being present and showing up and solving problems that will never happen that we don't know about because we don't track them because that is what policing is. Being visible, being coaches and making sure that the uniform and the authority with the uniform also comes with safety. I'm not, this is not lip service. I understand there are problems that we have to address and I understand the giant responsibility that comes with training. Training has to have outcomes. Training cannot be called a meeting if it's a meeting. We cannot continue to say awareness training is enough. I'm talking about leaders in this state right now, including and especially Chief Murad and many other chiefs who are making sure that training includes evidence-based measurable outcomes and this is in support of the talent that we're recruiting. This isn't necessarily for our communities. It should, the outcome, like the total goal is that communities are safer, that newer new Americans are welcome and understand a different kind of authority, but training outcomes from perspective of leadership and law enforcement in this state has to do with acknowledging out loud that we can measure everything, that it is not just about feeling good, that we can put training skills and competencies on building relationships and contact theory and getting in front of things before they go south in the same way that we do with a use of force training, with firearms training and there's a lot. I'm hearing a lot, understandably, that the Academy has a lot of hours dedicated to firearms and that is true. I have the schedule and I've seen the schedule and that's a lot of hours. I will tell you also that only every, we should not reduce those hours. The majority of that time spent in that topic should be around the burden and responsibility of carrying a firearm, the responsibility of how you take care of each other, how you build the skills around that responsibility and, God forbid, having to use it. Those are some of the myths that I think we can get in front of and bust up, if you will, which is that it's not about hurting anyone, it's about making sure that we do not. It's about understanding the full responsibility of not the ability, but the burden that someone takes on when they choose this career and remembering who we are bringing on while we do that. They're young and maybe, I think, I've done a bit of work, not just in corrections, but in this position as well as understanding how we can sometimes underestimate the generation before us that there's a bad habit of saying, well, you know, they don't understand whoever the day is. And I'm not getting into marginalized, I'm not getting into marginalized communities, BIPOC communities, all of that is very important discussion, but on the most basic level, just understanding that young people think differently. That means new innovation, that we have had a habit of quieting in a way because we stick to things that we know are tradition, we stick to things that we know are going to work. And I also think that that's important. And when I see Vermonters, and when I say Vermonters, I mean anyone visiting and living in Vermont, having a voice around the kinds of outcomes that they wanna see, not just in law enforcement, but also in the way that we wanna be welcoming, supportive, building resilience, so that we can also support outside of our Vermont borders, that we wanna market and brand a way of living that is not just inclusive, but creative, then we're on the right track. And the leadership in this state is in front of that. And the leadership supporting law enforcement is in front of that. And we have a lot of work to do. We have an enormous amount of work to do to make sure that we shine light on the need for resources, the need to prioritize how important it is that we have trust first. We can't do anything without trust. We can try, we can put money on it, and we can change the schedule and we can recreate statutes and we can decide training should look like A or B or C, but without trust, we're ineffective. And at the most practical level, we should wanna start there. And that is what I'm seeing. That's why I think it's very exciting that everyone is discussing this profession at the same time. I think it's very exciting that we're seeing commitment from leadership in state government everywhere and municipalities with town managers. I know that there are bumps in the road. I know that there is conflict in terms of the path that we take and the journey that we go and no buts. And where we're gonna be the best is that we understand that conflict is necessary for change. High conflict interrupts us. And for me as executive director, that is the focus that I have on how we move, not just pre-service training, but in-service training and being the hub of change in Pittsburgh at the academy or in the strategic plan for training in general. High conflict means that when we're so angry that we can't get curious, no change is happening. Our expectations of recruits, our expectations of the workforce is that there is a steady, calm intervention that's the least restrictive, the least forceful and produces some level of calm so that people can go to the next step. That's absolutely possible. And I believe that it's possible and I know that we have to support that with resources and like thinking around how we get there. I know it's been incredibly difficult for Burlington. It's incredibly difficult across the country. I worry that we're pulling, we're recruiting people into a profession where we don't totally understand what it is and we can't explain what it is, which is why again, let me go back to where I started, which is the fuel is gonna be around inspiration and it's gonna be around trust and it's gonna be around outcomes. This is really just where I'm starting and the few short months that I've been in this position and working with 12 staff who serve approximately 1,500 law enforcement officers across the state with regards to training. And that's pretty small. That's a core group that is held accountable for not just a newly developed Act 56 professional regulation subcommittee but also 17 subcommittees underneath that, a level three basic training that we were not supposed to start until February but we started in October. We're doing back-to-back academies. We function operationally off volunteers. Every trainer that comes to the academy for 16 weeks, if it's pre-basic training that includes the additional post-basic or however way we frame it up. I know I don't have a lot of time tonight so I won't totally drill it down but we are reliant on every police department and the Vermont State Police and the sheriffs to assist us in training. That means we have many trainers working on their own time or over time off their own agency. This is one of the most special places in the country in terms of our opportunity to standardize, to supervise and to come together about what our expectations are. But I want you to know that these folks are doing it in addition to everything else. In addition to suffering from staff shortages that are at the level of sleep deprivation and not being able to show up in their own towns. We're still open. We're open for business. And that's because of the dedication of the chiefs and the trainers, the sheriffs and the Vermont State Police who are making sure that we keep moving and being patient with me as a leader trying to bring in some change, some stability while, some stability and while rocking the boat at the same time. That's a lot. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna leave it there and see if there are any questions or if there's anything folks would like to say. Thanks Heather, thanks so much. So I don't know if you are still yet able to get to the gallery view so that you can see everyone but while you do that, I'll just check and see if any commissioners have questions or comments for the chief. I'm gonna jump in then maybe as they process this. I'm gonna ask you a couple of questions. You don't mind and you can answer them sequentially. First of all, I think people would be really interested in understanding what you mean by a trauma informed academy and what that would look like. Also you had meant, I think in general people would be interested in understanding what, when you talk about this as a moment of change, what changes you're thinking of with regard to training or that you see that there's a demand for a need for. Yeah, thanks Stephanie. So trauma informed can be trauma responsive, trauma informed can be a verb, it can be a noun, I've certainly heard it in the training world, trauma training, it also piggybacks a lot of some of the traditional thinking around taking one word and making it an entire training and no one knows what it means. Old school would be like diversity training. You wouldn't know, we wouldn't know whether you were going into sexual harassment training or inclusivity, implicit explicit bias training. Trauma informed from the perspective of the police academy for us, means that we are including the skills that are required to make sure we are delivering content to the recruits, assist them in connecting not just with the community but with victims and to help chiefs and leaders build those relationships. In addition to that, trauma informed strategies for me include the way that we train and how we recruit and how we onboard new employees into an agency that we've got to be a little bit more innovative and make sure that we understand the different strategies that we can use and the needs of the adult learner. I can get a little more detailed if you like, but that's the basic premise for me. Let me just then just add this that a lot of us when we think of trauma informed, it is dealing with people who do have trauma. I want to maybe broaden that. There's a lot of discussion about the need for mental health training for officers. So just thinking about what would, are you all thinking about expanding training on understanding trauma that people, the police interact with might have as well as mental health training. You and I talked a little bit about this last night. Yeah, thanks Stephanie for the prompt. So again, mental health training. So at the most basic level, it is meeting somebody where they are allowed, no matter what, to keep their dignity. There is no reason for anyone to give it up. And that means slowing things down and it could be slowing things down in terms of how we deliver content in a training. It is the best practices that we see across the state where things go well. Again, if there isn't a problem that we hear about, it's probably a problem prevented by the trauma informed skills that whoever showed up at the scene or answered the call got in front of. And that includes the very beginning that also includes dispatch. It is the way that we understand what's happening, the way that we show listening skills, the way that we show that we're paying attention. This is not complicated in many ways. We all wanna be heard. We all wanna do the best job that we can do no matter what we do. And at the end of it, it's really gonna come down to, am I understood? Do I feel like I've been understood? When we're working in high liability work, feelings sometimes don't get to take precedence because discretionary decision making comes in and people need to act quickly. But there's so much we can do to rapid assess before we get to that place. There's some research with regards to the medical profession where the average amount of time that doctors would spend with a patient is around 11 seconds before they cut them off like cut us off in terms of what like how do we feel? And we're cut off at 11 seconds on average. And what we also found out is that if we let them let us go for six seconds more, that's all we needed to get out what we have to say. That's essentially the best policing work that is trauma-informed that is connected to the efforts that we have to make with regards to mental health, with regards to de-escalation skills that the things that we know have worked forever need to have language attached to them and skills that we can measure and support that also recognizes the work that's already getting done. And there are like there is terrific talent everywhere in every profession that does this. Agencies are embedding mental health workers into the field and making sure that we combine efforts and skills in order to intervene. I also wanna make sure that we remember that we don't need to diagnose someone. We just need to intervene at the lowest level until we can go to the next step. And whatever that next step is, is going to be surrounded by the skills with everyone who's involved. And escalation also is measurable. We can go from zero to 100 in just a couple of seconds. But a lot of that is predictable behavior. A lot of that has to do with the circumstances that we're surrounded with. And this is what law enforcement can and does do very well all the time. We don't hear about that as much. When we capture it and we train it, we coach it and we support the workforce, then we're gonna create more interest in the profession and we're gonna create more interest in how seamless this can be and should be. Thanks. Do any commissioners have questions or comments? Susie. First of all, thank you very much for your presentation. And I think what you're basically saying in terms of trauma-informed care is that you don't expect the police to be therapists, but to be able to recognize symptoms of people experiencing trauma or have had trauma and then being able to work with them in a way that doesn't re-traumatize them and keeps them safe and the officers safe. Would that be true? Yes, you should have said that, not me. Thanks. Thanks, Susie. Anybody else? Yes, Chief Murad. And then just those in the audience, I see some hands up, feel free to put your hand up and we'll call on you after Chief Murad. So in your capacity with the council and not just at the academy, but with the council as well, can you tell us a little bit about some of the new mandated rules around data collection or certification or training for in-service officers? Yes. Thank you, Chief. So, progress. And part of progress is shining some light on some things that need to change. So there is a rules committee that's a subcommittee of the Vermont Criminal Justice Council that is looking at rules that are outdated, rules that we need to change slightly. That includes taking a look at entrance testing, how we're measuring the applicant's status for a recruit that wants to attend the academy. Or, and when I say attend the academy, that's been a large part of the conversation which is when we measure for proficiency, when we measure for the ability to be in law enforcement to work in this field, what are we looking for in terms of skills? How do we look at background checks? How do we measure a person's, not just their psychological hardiness, but also their readiness to learn? Because really, from my perspective, graduating from a police academy means that you are ready to learn more. It is the first step, not the end, like that's not the end of the journey. And that is, I think that's something that we all have to work together to understand is that there is a tendency to say, well, officers should know this, so we should just train it at the academy. And if we train it, whatever the it is, that once they have it, then it's all finished. And that's really not the case. That is the first step in getting ready for a career that will grow into various levels of competency and levels of proficiency to train, coach, get better and specialize, because this is a profession that goes in many different directions. And I think your other question, Chief, was with regards to end service, and there's some work we have to do with regards to end service. Are we looking to make sure that we mandate content, or are we looking to make sure that we have kept up skills that are required and we need to see proficiency in, and how do we add content given that best practices and policing is changing all the time? End services is the most effective way to, one, see where your leaders are. And two, check for willingness with regards to change but most importantly, how do we check for competency and end service along the way when we mandate training? Showing up isn't training. Showing a different way to do business and seeing success is evidence of great training. Did I miss one part? Did I? I think you touched on the data collection part. I mean, the new rules as far as the back end of Valkor are the way in which that's exporting everything and the rules that are coming out of the council to do that. Yeah, I think I was subconsciously avoiding that question. Yeah, so we have just contracted with the National Police Foundation who is gonna assist us and not just taking a look at what like one is the police academy and the council, the appropriate place to house all this data. What do we do with it? How do we collect it? And what's the decision making process from that point? And that has been a bit of a lift in the last few years from what I understand that's gonna be a bigger conversation. And honestly, Chief, I said to Stephanie last night, if we get into a big data discussion from where I sit, there are other people that could and should do that. I'm not avoiding it. It's just that I see my role very clearly in this is that we need to make sure that we respond to that through training and mandates that make sense to get in front of problems that we're identifying from data. I know I didn't answer your question. It was a good try. It's good, yeah. I know, I can't see it anymore. I did promise you that we wouldn't ask you about data, so thank you. I mean, you can, but for me, it's really just around how many people should and what can I bring to it? And really not avoiding it, and it's just, I know my lane and it's to support the great work that is happening and to make sure that I respond to it and lean into it in terms of intervention, prevention and problem solving. Smart leaders don't do everything. Smart leaders bring people who have that expertise to the core and work with them. You don't have to know everything, right? Thank you, that's what I meant to say. Let me, so we are almost out of time for this segment, but I'd like to ask if Shannon could elevate Rachel Jolly to the panel sheet, email some excellent questions. And while she's doing that, Milo has her hand up and I just, if you could, if we could keep this brief so that we can hear from Rachel and maybe spend about seven more minutes on these questions, thanks. Milo, go ahead. Thank you. One quick question I had was, when you talked about how important funding was, but sometimes funding is the first to get cut, I'm just wondering like what type of training gets cut and have you found yourself having to fight for certain things? And I also wondered if you could comment in general with regards to implicit bias training and how much is done at the academy level, thank you. Thank you, and those are great questions and help me track a little bit because I think I essentially heard three. So the first thing is, yeah, in my experience, training is the first thing to get cut, but it's also not what's happening right now. I from this position have been getting an enormous amount of support with regards to the question of what is needed, how can we help and what would you like to do? And that is pretty uncommon in the training world, particularly in the criminal justice world. And I think that that just comes from basic tradition around like when you, people get busy and they wanna put a solution on a problem and understanding training, which is transferring information and competency that impacts culture, it isn't always fully appreciated. And no complaints, I'm committed to it. It's a hard place to be if I've worked in a profession where it's a lot quote unquote cooler to do other things like be on special teams or be quote unquote boots on the ground. What training does if it's done right is it takes, it takes concepts, it takes awareness and it takes the challenge of shifting culture, moves through policy change, and then operation, if you wanna know whether you can operationalize a policy or not, then try to train it. And in a healthy agency, your trainers will be your greatest messengers because they can take the message, the mission shift, the culture and show how it's going to change the day to day world. And that's where training breaks down. If we cannot convince the workforce that it's doable, then the workforce doesn't believe in the change. And like I said earlier, employees for the most part want to do a good job and want to know when they're doing a good job. And that's the critical component of an academy of in-service or any high liability area where you have to see results and the results aren't in the classroom and they're not on the range and they're not in the scenarios. The results are what you see when you see trust in the community, when you see change and vision change and it's measurable. That's when training is a success and implicit and explicit bias training is more important now than ever, but there are a lot of subsets of that, which is what is the history of policing? What is the history of incarceration? What does discretionary decision-making actually mean? And how does that burden lie? Not just on community members and children and law enforcement and everyone in the criminal justice system, but where discretion meets up with working in good faith and goes wrong, can, can if resourced and supported, can make a difference in the training environment, if that makes sense. And the content, sometimes context is the most important part of delivering a message for change. And that means that we pull people in rather than just announce what it is. And again, that's what it is. And again, it comes back to being part of the team and being inspired. I think that Milo probably maybe could follow up with you about the implicit bias training, but why don't we hear from Rachel since we're almost out of time. Rachel, do you wanna go ahead with your questions? Sure, can you hear me okay? Yes. Great, thanks, Heather, for coming and I'm sorry that you can't see everybody because that would be probably pretty unsettling as a speaker, but I have four questions which I know we don't have time for. So I'm gonna try and narrow it down to one or two. And I'm curious, one, you talked a lot about Vermont being good at getting ahead of some issues and I'm wondering if you could just say more about that and what issues specifically and where you think Vermont police have gotten ahead of them and in what way? We'll start with that one and if we have time for a second. I've got my pen out thinking I was gonna have to write them all down. Well, that's a good question because ahead of hope, right? I mean, it's not really a competitive business. However, when I think of ahead, I think of innovation and the ability to try something in one place and then it can go statewide and that's the beauty of living in a small state that it's not hard by virtue of the size of the state and the population and the togetherness of leadership to make one idea go everywhere, which would be harder in a bigger state. That's from the most practical level. I think that there is a sentiment around change, kindness, community, transformation, climate. Those all feed into what I would consider to be a basic common mission that we maybe don't always talk about every day because each of us has our own responsibility, but they do link up and those are areas where when I say ahead, I mean, you kind of can't have one without the other. If we kind of just naturally lean in to wanting to be a place that we don't just wanna live but that we wanna welcome anybody who would like to visit and live here. And those recruitment efforts can't just be in one profession and not all of them. We live in what's traditionally a divided system. But in Vermont, you might be a corrections officer, you might be a law enforcement officer and go to our parent teacher conference and wait outside in the hallway for your next meeting with the teacher. And it might be somebody that you arrested or that you supervised in a unit and a facility. That is a challenge for a professional but that's also the gift that we have which is to meet up and understand that we are not putting people in places but that we are all here together and we're all in the same place that we can have several different roles. That we can be a justice involved and be part of a profession and part of a community and a parent and a coach. We can be all of those things at the same time. That is what I see in terms of the opportunity for Vermont to get out in front by virtue of circumstance, by virtue of unwritten mission that we don't have language to yet. And I'm not shy about saying that because culture is the strongest thing and when it's good and it's kind and it's built on trust and change then we can capitalize on that. That's just one part of where I was coming from but again, it's one of four questions and Stephanie said we're free on time. All right, I'll try and fit in one more if I have time. Yes, I had a question. Okay, so you've talked a lot about culture change which I very much appreciate the kind of time and timeline that that takes and we're usually talking about years and certainly with talking about the history of policing there is a deep culture there if you're interested in dramatic change. I'm curious if you can talk about restorative justice per se or even trauma informed. Both of those kind of have underlying principles that would be dramatic culture change for policing culture and the academy even the 16 weeks of the academy. I'm curious if you can say anything specific to curriculum specifics or anything about the culture at large around those two topics, trauma informed or restorative justice or both and how those would integrate into this culture change you're talking about. Okay, yes. Let me first of all say I don't know everyone. I don't know everyone who's on this meeting and so I do make some assumptions and have been making them through this entire conversation that we all have some sort of basic level of understanding of language and language for me around like the buzzwords that we kind of develop as we go along in our work. Restorative justice can be a verb, it can be a noun, it can be a panel, it can be an initiative, it's a training, it's just like anything else. At the core, restorative justice is about repairing harm and repairing harm has to do with repairing harm with people and people who are damaged and hurt have trauma. There's no getting out of painful experiences. There's no getting out of that anymore. There's no getting out of it at work. There's no getting out of it in our childhood. There's no getting out of it in our education system. We are raising children who understand what an active shooter is. We are now living in a country that it is unavoidable that we are at risk, whether it's COVID or abuse in the home or fear on the street and fear of is as debilitating as the thing that might happen. This is what we all know as the chilling effect, right? Restorative to me is our gift to repair, to show up, to be present and to build trust again. And when we can do that in combined efforts, whether it's in the Department of Children and Family Services with the court system, with law enforcement, with corrections, whether it's in the church, the school, when we use terms like pipeline and risk, what we're really talking about is we all intuitively have learned, which is things we wanna avoid. And when we can't avoid them, there is another process which is restorative and the police academy and the policing profession is doing that all the time. What we have to do is really capture what works and make sure that we are putting it everywhere and putting language to it so that we all know what that means. I'm pausing there because this is a topic that I believe strongly in and could go on forever. And I know that you, whoever's on this meeting has already worked a full day, maybe a couple of shifts or is volunteering or have people waiting on you. And that's to me also a very critical part of what restorative justice and trauma-informed work is when you're doing more to make sure that we're not okay until everyone is okay. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry, Stephanie, I muted. I have to repeat the whole thing over again. Thanks Heather so much and thanks Rachel. I think we have to move on on our agenda, but I really appreciate you coming Heather tonight and for sharing with us the work that you're doing. It's really appreciated by all of us. Thanks so much. Thank you and look. Thank you. Yeah, thanks everybody. You can find me, you know where I am and I'm sorry I didn't get to see you, but I feel you. Thanks Heather. You were smiling the whole time. Have a great night. All right, you too. Thank you Heather. Bye. Bye. All right. Appreciate that a lot. Thank you very much for sitting with us. Moving on with the agenda. We just do the chief support. So with that, the floor is yours. Thank you for your help. Thank you. And with your permission, I'm going to share my screen for just a moment please. Bear away. Thank you very much for the opportunity to be with you all and share some year end data because this is, you know, we're in January and so we've been able to see the entirety of the year now, which is great. And we can take a look at how the year shaped up in some trends. I will start with a picture of where we are with regard to headcount, which is just a continuing issue. Obviously we had some great momentum on this issue at the end of the year with regard to the retention incentives and the recruitment incentives particularly and also with regard to a change in the council's decision to reauthorize a higher number of officers. Thanks very much to this body and its support on that topic. And yet we are still down. We bumped up a little bit in October, November because of a higher and then we lost Deputy Chief Sullivan. As of February 1st, this only goes through January 1st but as of February 1st, this will drop three more and we will be down. We have three pending departures and we will be down to 60 effective officers. Here is our incidents again. As I say each month, I include this simply because this is gonna be a public posted document and people who are seeing the document for the first time may need to reference this and the incidents that we deal with. Incidents are not all crimes of course but these are how we track the calls, generally calls for service from the public but also proactive efforts that officers make with regard to their daily work. And here we get to the beginning of the year end data and where we are. As you see, 2021 was drastically down for incidents. It is down a lot. However, as we've said before, a significant portion of that decrease, not so much from 2020 to 2021 but from 2016 through 2019, the majority of that increase just over half came from changes in officer proactivity, particularly around traffic stops. As if you look here too, you'll see that actually the overall incident volume increased over the second half of the year, my bad, the wrong slide, increased over the second half of the year that it went slightly up from 2020 to 2021 and we're seeing that trend continue in December a little bit. Obviously we're very, very, or excuse me, in January, we're very early in the year. Overall, in the second half of the year during which the priority response plan existed, we ended up stacking or putting into priority response 15% of our incidents. This is one, another way of looking at total incidents. So this is a table and this here is the graphic representation of them and they're down, they're down a lot. Again, incidents are not the same as crimes by any means. In fact, the majority of those incidents that we see on slide two are not crimes but they are things that call police officers out or instances in which the public is calling for police presence or police activity. Here priority one and these are also not all crimes but they certainly track more closely and you'll see here that there were more priority one calls in 2021 than in any year since 2016. And that's indicative, that is a key indicator of what we want officers for, need officers for and also what we can't divert to other kinds of resources. Use is a force, we've been tracking that. We ended the year a little bit higher than 2020 which is the lowest year to date but we're still much lower than in previous years and that too is a good thing. We actually do have the redaction specialist ready to go. It was supposed to be presented to the city council last night. It was not, it was presented to the board of finance who approved it. The city council moved it from the consent agenda to the deliberative agenda but then deliberations on other agenda items took a long time last night and as a result they have bumped the deliberative over the redaction specialist to next Monday. Here are our select incident category trends and we see how we've been moving for each of these throughout the year. These are Valcor incident trends. These are how we are categorizing in Valcor. They're going to differ a little bit from offense categories for example and from what we report to Nibers which is generally offense categories. We talked about Nibers in the last meeting. I gave a slide that talked about what Nibers is and also its data for the year because that had recently been promulgated. These are some violent crime incidents that we are looking at. Again, these are the Valcor responses to these and incidents as categorized by dispatch first and then by officers and then by investigators after. In fact, if investigation occurs each one of those entities dispatcher, officer, investigator can recategorize the incident based on additional information or what's happening but the end of the year stacks up in this way. It's a comparison of 2019 to 2021 excluding 2020 simply because it was an anomaly in an effort to get a different kind of trend. I took five year averages. So I took 2016 through 2020 including 2020 in those instances and compared them to 2021 so that we can see where 2021 is versus sort of an average of where things have been. And here's what we see for those. A couple of those categories are up significantly others are down. Domestic assault aggregated is down. That's felonious and misdemeanor. It's down a lot. That's a good thing. Even though domestic disturbances are actually up and domestic disturbances are incidents in which officers respond but don't necessarily find probable cause that a crime has committed and therefore don't make an arrest for an assault but they do respond because something key that neighbors into saying or somebody involved in the situation called police to say we need help. Those were up quite a bit. And yet despite that we've seen a decrease in domestic assault. Good thing. I think it has something to do with our DVPO and the follow-through that's provided by that DVPO and by our domestic violence victims advocate, Mary McAllister but we've seen an increase in assaults. Assault simple is down in this standard when I look at the five year average versus last year it was up if we looked at 2019 versus 2021 but aggravated assault is up either way and yet domestic assaults are down. So that's a good thing. These are the gunfire incidents. I hope that you can all look through it a little bit after we send this out. Again, I apologize for not getting these to you earlier in the day. I was crunching some of these numbers still this morning and then got sidetracked by several things. I apologize for that but we will send this out immediately. This is an opportunity to take a look at what gunfire incidents are. What we've seen a real increase over the past couple of years in is gunfire incidents that don't have effect. People just shooting, shooting at others but not hitting them, shooting recklessly in crowds during large parties. These are things that didn't happen in the city before and we do track them. There are instances in which people weren't hit. For example, in 2016 both of those gunfire incidents in 2016 did not involve anyone being struck and yet we never saw the kind of volume that we saw first in 2020 and then even more in 2021. This is a means of tackling gun crime and it's something that I want to investigate taking the department in a new direction for addressing these kinds of crimes. It comes out of a ceasefire method that was created largely by or has been most successfully evangelized by a researcher at John Jay College, a professor who is David Kennedy. David Kennedy has really pioneered this method. It's an incredibly, it can be an incredibly effective method. One of the issues, however, is that most urban locations where they have worked on ceasefire and felt the need to are focusing on shootings, not gunfire incidents, shootings where people have been struck and there's a lot more leverage from the law to be able to hold individuals accountable. I have recently gone through all of the gunfire incidents from 2021 and only a handful of those arrestees are still in custody. And one of them is going to be released in July or August for actually having shot someone. And other people have been released on conditions despite the fact that they were apprehended with solid evidence about having committed these gunfire incidents. Gunfire incidents don't end up with as much criminal justice outcome. And as a result, some of the leverage that goes into this method of tackling gun crime, the ceasefire method is lost because the ceasefire method really hinges on that leverage, which I guess is sort of redundant because levers generally have some kind of hinge, but the ceasefire method hinges on the leverage of being able to say we are as a community taking very seriously those who are repeatedly involved in gunfire incidents and need to be focused on. There are several people who were involved in several of last year's gunfire incidents. We see their names recurring in the investigations that we produce and the ability to hone in on those individuals and prevent them from escalating and continuing to behave in this way is what ceasefire is about. But again, it does require that leverage of saying we're going to, there's gotta be a carrot and a stick. And the carrot is jobs and the ability to give options to people who may not feel like they have any. The stick is incarceration. And without a victim, without somebody being struck, incarceration is not necessarily a likely prospect for someone who is shot, but hasn't shot someone. This is burglary and it's apropos tonight based on what's been happening in the city. We had remarkable success on burglary and we've lost that a little bit. One thing that is interesting about this chart to me as I look at this data and consider this data is the uniformity of the increase. It used to be that our Hill section, particularly around UVM was by far the locus of our burglary, huge locus of burglary. One of the many things that we did in that area was we had a very pronounced police presence including on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, our overtime shifts that were paid for in part by UVM and by the city to work together on noise patrol. But that noise patrol had the ancillary benefit of being a dissuasion for burglars and being present to police presence was roving. It was constant. There were patrols that were moving through those on vehicle and on foot. They were going up the doors and knocking when there were noise complaints that were proactively approaching locations before noise complaints actually came through. And that had an effect on burglary as did really, really concerted efforts by our detective bureau led by Lieutenant Jim Treed and drilling in on recidivists. Burglary is a crime that is oftentimes committed by disproportionately committed by recidivists. And because these people often do it again and again until they're caught, they have similar MOs. They often appear in the exact same clothing when we're lucky enough to get video of them. It is a situation in which getting one or two of those individuals and taking them out of circulation through either rehabilitation or through incarceration has really outsized effects. And it is also a crime that has a stronger connection to substance use disorder than many other crimes. Assault oftentimes comes out of, for example, sometimes alcohol, et cetera, but it's not connected to feeding a substance use disorder. Burglary is, burglary is often connected to feeding a substance use disorder. And when those individuals can be brought in to custody and then encouraged to get treatment and given access to treatment, it had a remarkable impact. That is what we see in 2018 and 2019, that drastic decrease. What we're seeing from 2020 to 2021, as I said, what's interesting about it to me is that it is uniform, it's across the city. We certainly have seen something in the South End and we certainly have seen a significant increase in the downtown that was driven by commercial burglaries during the pandemic and during stay home, stay safe, but it's uniform, it's across the board. There's no one area in town where we can focus the kinds of resources that we focused on the Hill section in order to see an immediate effect. And what's challenging about this and troubling about this is the fact that we also have far, far fewer officers. Our current road compliment, because out of those 63 effective officers we talked about, which will be 60 on February 1st, out of those 60 officers, we also have to have our compliment at the airport, our compliment in the detective bureau. There's supervisors in that. And what we end up with, with regard to numbers available for patrol is a total of fewer than 30. Fewer than 30 officers available for patrol spread across all shifts and all days of the week. And that ends up meaning oftentimes five or even fewer officers available for patrol on a given shift and fewer overnight and very few available to do over time details of the kind I described in the Hill section for noise, which had this ancillary effect on burglary. This year's Valcor, it's really not, we're only a couple of days into the year, the trends don't necessarily, we don't see much in the way of trend yet, but I thought that it would be interesting for you to look at once we send it to you and you can look at it with a little bit more detail. Here on the other hand, I think this is a little bit instructive. We see priority one incidents from 2016 through 2021 and the way in which they went down, down, down until 2021, they rose higher than any year since 2016. If we look at year to date for the same category, you can see that it bounces around a lot. And what this tells us is that trends like this take time to develop. And so is the fact that we were certainly higher than December, excuse me, than January of last year, which should be unsurprising considering that the pandemic and lockdown was in full effect in 2021, lower than 2020, where neither of those things was happening and where it was before the pandemic. So how is this gonna shape up for the year? I'm not sure yet, but I think it's indicative of the way in which data takes time to actually show pattern or trend. I wanted to just sort of talk a little bit about, again, the swearing ins that we did back in October and to talk about the new sworn, the new non-sworn positions, the community service officers, CSOs, there are two is shown here, but we now have a total of six CSOs and we have another two that are very close to being hired. So we'll have a total of eight. That's on track with what we talked about last year when we were authorized to make these hires through the public safety continuity plan that we put together and that was authorized last year, again, with your great support, with regard to the community service support liaisons, excuse me, the community support liaisons or CSOs, those are our three, they're incredibly effective and they're getting work all the time. They get to work every morning and there are emails waiting for them from officers who say, we went to this scene last night and we did what we could do, but we can't really do more, can you help? It is an incredible resource for us. It is really, really effective under the supervision of community support supervisor, Lacey Smith, we are seeing them be busy. They are doing great work. They are working with groups that are difficult for officers to reach and that oftentimes officers feel like they can't really get through to those individuals or see those situations through to completion and when they have those, they now have a resource to which they can refer those individuals and that is the CSOs. They are a terrific, terrific resource for us. And here's a further description of the CSOs and what they do and the parts with which they interact and it's the crisis in advocacy and intervention program. This is under a community support supervisor, Lacey Smith, her various team members. It also includes the police departments, domestic violence prevention officer. We are losing our domestic violence prevention officer to the Vermont state police. This is an officer with a long history with us. Many years of service and two years now as a domestic violence prevention officer or DVPO, he's done a terrific job in a very tough role, but we're losing him to the VSP for options and sort of career paths that we don't currently have that we did, but don't. Now I've replaced that and put a new officer in that role. I'm very hopeful that she is going to excel in it and I have high hopes for what she can do, but she doesn't work alone. We would not be anywhere without our domestic violence advocate, Mary McAllister, tremendous employee. There's a huge amount of work, not just on domestic violence, but also on monitoring court outcomes for us so that we know where the story has gone after officers or detectives have started that story. We, of course, have a victim service specialist through CEDO, that's Racial Jollies Territory, and they sit in the department and we have these community support liaisons that we talked about before, the CSLs. Really, really important work being done by our crisis advocacy and intervention programs and work that can and does mesh with what we see through the Howard Center and Street Outreach, through the Howard Center and First Call, and soon I think the city is working on a crisis response model that is something that also we'll be able to interact with and mesh with this capacity. And then I end with what I always end with, which is just a plea to those watching and those who see this on social media once it's posted to be a Burlington cop. We still have that $15,000 hiring incentive. We offer a great competitive salary and we offer a lot of opportunities. We do still have a narcotics officer. We have a detective bureau, a canine officer, youth officer is something that we don't currently have, but will again, I am hopeful, we have domestic violence officers. There are a lot of incredible things that this police department has to offer. And I want new, innovative, great team members to come knocking. And that is my presentation. I'll stop sharing now, unless actually, if anybody has any questions about any specific slides, I'll pop it up again. But if not, I'll hand over the mic. Okay, seeing none, I'll stop share. Thank you Chief. I believe Susie had her hand right for a question. I'm sorry, I didn't see that. I apologize. It was a late hand. I'm sorry. One of the things I didn't hear that I was expecting to hear when we were looking in comparing 220 to 221 is the increased heat in the country in general around politics, which I think also kind of plays into that larger scenario. Just a comment. Yeah, no, that's a great point. I do think that that, I think that there has been a lot of that. I generally try not to go into politics as far as how it affects us or not. But yeah, I think there's been, we've certainly seen it nationally, a huge amount of political tribalism and partisanship that is really causing societal rifts that a lot of commenters will say, we haven't seen since the 1860s or 1850s rather. I don't know how accurate that is, but we've seen some of it here. We absolutely have. I don't know whether or not I can quantify how it's affected those numbers that we saw or not, but it's certainly a component as is the pandemic of the general milieu in which all of us exist, this zeitgeist that has stresses and different kinds of pressures that we haven't felt before. Well, I think as our last guest said, it has to do with context, giving rise to action. Thank you. Sure. Any further questions or comments for the sheet? That's no problem. Not seeing or hearing any. With that, we shall move on to agenda item 6.01, which is a CNA committee update. So we met earlier on today and now, sorry, I'll start from the beginning. Our first meeting from the CNA committee was, that happened on January 4th, unfortunately, getting this process hasn't been ideal. One of the public safety committee members had a family emergency and wasn't able to be part of the meeting for weeks. And so that fall kind of got started slowly. And then last week, they didn't hold a meeting to do a kind of a reset and figure out the process moving forward. We met earlier on today, me, Lil, myself, Chief Mirad, and public safety committee and a couple other community stakeholders. And so now we'll move forward. The timeline isn't shifted. I believe we're going to turn, public safety committee is going to turn in the recommendations of the committee on the 31st of March, and moving forward, our timeline that we have for January can be applied to February. So we'll be dealing with section one next week, Tuesday, section two, the following Tuesday, so on and so forth for the first four, first four Tuesdays of that month. The Chief internally generated a matrix of the recommendations, obviously, in a report, shared that to board docs, which I would highly recommend if you want to take a peek at, and basically that matrix deals with every single recommendation and kind of assigns a value to it, whether it's a quick fix, I mean, it's easy to implement, and then a priority of one, two, and three. And so we, so the group kind of decided that probably the best way forward would be to have every single member generate a similar matrix to that. We can turn that into the city attorney within the next couple of days. They are going to put that data together and we will be able to see which, where we all agree on, and then we're going to agree on. So, so first thing to say, we all find consensus on the same thing, then that's done, then you kind of focus on the recommendations that do not have any consensus. So that will be the process moving forward. And yeah, we're going to see how it moves on. And if either Milo or John wants to further elaborate on that or contradiction, I just said, please, please speak up. Sir, I would just start with the background. It's really disturbing. Can everybody hear that? Maybe just me. Mr. Gommas, I think it might actually, maybe it's your jacket, maybe. Probably is, sorry, I'm freezing, so my apologies. I was just going to add with regards to the matrix that's on board docs, it's on board docs for the city council's public safety committee, not under the police commission. Correct, thank you for that clarification. And I'll add one other point. It's not public safety committee and police commission, just the public safety committee under their board docs. And I guess if any commissioners have any questions about this moving forward, I try to answer them as best as I can. Today it was kind of more or less the restarting of the process, so yeah. Thank you, Jibu. Yeah, not a problem. All right, yeah, I'm not seeing or hearing any. So I guess that agenda item is closed. And moving on to agenda item 6.02, also update in the roadmap. Sorry. I just didn't know if Susie wanted me to speak or... Go ahead, Cherine, go ahead. Yeah, so I own that we're off to a slow start this January. It was hard to get a first meeting set up and that's just, I was slow to get started doing that, but the chief and commissioner Cumberford and I have a meeting this Friday where we're going to start working on the... Commissioner Cumberford already has started this process, but as a group, we're going to start reviewing the policy. I don't have the exact name, and I don't want to get it wrong. Susie, do you... The mental... There's a mental health policy. Yeah, I can't remember the name. At the last meeting, we had talked about slowing down a little bit and looking at what the CNA suggestions were and also NACO suggestions. So that's where we are. Yeah, so we'll probably be doing some of that, but Friday's really where we are going to, I hope come up with the roadmap so we can get some work done this spring. The public will be involved in this process. It will be inclusive, you know, before any policy is put to a vote in front of the commission, it would be something that we share with the public and gather input. And we probably, as we work through policies, will be bringing on committee members who aren't necessarily on the commission, but bring expertise on the policy that's at hand. So that is it, unless the chief or anyone else wants to add anything. So if I just might add the two policies that are being worked on then are the departmental directive with regard to persons with disabilities as well as that of persons with diminished capacities. So the public can look at those directives on the police department website. And as Shereen said, CNA recommended some changes in these policies. And that will be taken into consideration along with the public. So I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good look that we get from stakeholders that will be part of this process. And just for the public out there, they're referring to DD 13.02 and DD 13.03. Thank you. Nothing else from me. Right. Okay. Thank you. I'm not seeing or hearing any. Moving on to the next item. 6.03. Co chair and or vice chair. Both. I will say that I. I had been flailing at the surface of the water. Under the responsibility and all the things that we have now taxed before us. And. I. Think that we could very much use. Another person in. In the. In a chair by share capacity. Just kind of help spread the load out. And. Before I get any further, I see Susan hand raised. I'll let you drop in. Yeah, I just wanted to say that, you know, the, the commission as a whole, I've only been on it since June. And I've seen lots and lots of change since June. And there are more things to do than I ever imagined there was going to be. And they're important things to do. We're revising policies. You know, we're supporting, you know, a more independent. Kind of a. A commission. We're trying to listen carefully to the communities, the many communities that we are responsible to. Listen to and represent. And so it's, it's, it's not that you're flailing. You know, you've done an exceptional job. It's more that we just the nature of the commission has shifted. And we just need more people on deck. I think that's really a more fair way to say it. It was not about any inadequacy in you, which is that there's too much to do. And. Full stop. I appreciate it. So I would like to make a motion. That we. We just, we decide to have co-chairs. That's part A and part B of the motion is that Stephanie would be a co-chair with you. She's been working very closely with you from the very beginning. I think so. This would just make it more official. And. Another thought is that this is the kind of. Cross racial kind of. Shared leadership that we want to be modeling in the community. So I'd like to make that motion that we, we move to having co-chairs. A second part of the motion is that Stephanie becomes. The co-chair to. Commissioner. I happily second that. That motion. Yes. For that motion. Is there any discussion on the floor? I'd like to hear people's thoughts about this. If that would be okay. I'll speak up, but I, I know, I, I mean, I can see how much work that you guys, the, both of you have put into this position and. The chair role. I think I support this. This idea. I think it. Allows each of you to actually be more productive. And, you know, not that you aren't already, but I just know there's a tremendous amount of work involved in. Especially now that we're, you know, going into the 21st century policing. So I, I support this. I think it's a great idea. And together, I think we'll just be stronger. Yeah, I agree. I'm grateful to both of you for being willing to serve in this rule and taboo. I would echo what Susie says. You've done an exceptional job. You have. You've been excellent in the role and I am grateful to Stephanie to support you. So you don't have to shoulder all of it because it really is too much for one person. Hi, this is a commissioner grant. I just want to agree with everything that was just said, thank you. So thanks for the vote of confidence and also. Thanks to Javu for all the work. And so I'd be happy to take this on. I would see it as a role of primarily just helping to coordinate and keep us organized and on track. Precisely because of the reasons everybody said so. Yeah. I guess it was that. Just reasons for a vote. All in favor of wanting. We know. Co-chair. Raise your hand to say hi. Hi. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That. I guess the question for Hailey. The Stephanie developed. We need a way in the vote. So you just some quick information. I was just reading into Robert's rules and like what the implications will be for having co-chairs, like who will run a meeting. How the voting will occur. And so that might just be a quick. Okay. So we have a lot of discussion for the commission just to kind of lay the expectation for that moving forward. But I think at this point, everybody gets a vote, whether you're. Whether you're not a nominee or not. Okay. I'll vote yes, then. All right. That vote is unanimous. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I just want to thank everybody. This is a really. Collaborative cohesive and caring group of people on this commission. And I felt that since the day I started. And I just want to thank you for all that you do and the way that you do it. I appreciate the kind words. All right then. I guess that closes that agenda item. Moving on to agenda items. Seven zero one. Hope everyone was able to look this over for the weekend. And I guess. Now would be a time to, I guess. I think we should be able to get through this. If there's any. Any videos that we'd like to look at. Or if nothing is jumping at you right now. Obviously. Yeah. We all have his email address. If something catches our eye that we would like to take a look at. But I'm sorry, Suzy, is your hand raised? Thank you. I didn't have a question. Yeah. Yeah, if I'm not seeing any, any questions or comments for DCDVAC right now, that will close that agenda item. Moving on to agenda item 8.01, Commendations received in the month of December 2021. And with that, I give the floor back to Shannon. Thank you so much, Chair Gommash. Stephanie, you're going to do fabulous in your new role. Thanks. Let's see. So going back, I'm sorry, just, I have to, I'm on a much smaller screen and computer, so I'll just scroll through some of these. Received a commendation for Officer Moran who responded to a call at a burg, for a burglary at his residence. And says that he was happy to report that Officer Moran responded quickly and was never dismissive to him. He listened carefully and investigated thoroughly. A commendation was received through Facebook. And I can't pull it up right this second. So I will send that over. We received a commendation for Corporal Christian Young. He helped this man's daughter out immensely. She just trying to read here. Sorry. In a car accident, I apologize. She was rattled and I cannot say enough good things about this individual. It's just amazing how amazing he and BFD reacted to the scene. It's employees like him that should be recognized as an outstanding member of the BPD. And those are the ones received through December. Awesome. Thank you very much for that. Moving on to agenda item 1901 commissioner updates or comments. I'm very sure you know what time this is. Sorry, comments or updates for us public. Here's your time. Susie. I'd like to report that we had a major accomplishment on the Brownington police commission by recently voting to have co-chairs. Thank you. Thank you. Awesome. I'm not seeing or hearing any hands right now. Moving on to. Actually, do you mind if I make a comment? Yeah, I, uh, this is always sort of awkward at the end of the meeting, especially when it's late and not wanting to take up time. But I really did appreciate the opportunity for reflection tonight in the chief's report about what some of the drivers are with regard to what's going on. Um, I, um, So I thought that was helpful. I also think it's really helpful. I guess again for us to recognize, uh, what, what, what things we're seeing that are the result of social dysfunction, if you will, uh, addiction, uh, poverty and so on and so forth and continue to kind of have that humane lens through which we see some of these incidents. But overall, I just really appreciated the ability for us to reflect on not only the specific data, but what's happening. But what we think is the drivers and the, uh, the, um, The team that the cave team, was that it, uh, chief mirad? Yeah. Uh, that was really impressive. I actually was not aware that that team was so, uh, extensive. And I think that's exactly the direction that we want to move in in this community. So I really appreciated that. The Cape, it's, it's Cape, but I'm very, I'm very, I'm very, very glad to hear you say that. Uh, it's something that is that we've been working on and building bit by bit for several years now, but we definitely, uh, were able to, I mean, we basically doubled its personnel through the creation of the CSL program. Um, and being able to give, uh, Lacey the lead on it and sort of take it where it needs to go has been, uh, tremendously effective. And we really are seeing results in that. Um, so I, yeah, thank you. Thank you very much for saying that. I think it's, it's a very important resource. Thank you. Um, awesome. Moving on to agenda item 10.01. Next meeting agenda item. Um, Uh, another, uh, another CNA committee update, um, a policy update. Um, and they're, depending on what happens at our meeting next week, we, um, Some recommendations, uh, CNA report are fairly straightforward just inserting possibly a line or two into, uh, the Department of Directives. Um, depending on how. Or depending on what we, uh, we come, what we agree on next week, I think that there could be some Department of Directives that could be updated very easily. If that is the case, we'll probably have that on the agenda item to pass to review that and possibly pass that. So yeah, those are the only three things that have on the agenda for next meeting. I just want to remind folks that tomorrow night, there's a meeting, uh, Executive Committee meeting at 6pm. Um, I don't think it would be a long meeting, but. I was going to get to that moment fairly. Okay. Sorry. I just wanted to make sure. All good. And I'm sorry. Sorry. So one other item that's on the agenda is that we're going to hear from chief. Sorry. Norma Hardy, who is the new police chief in Bridalboro. And in, in March, we'll be hearing from the ACLU on juvenile justice. I really appreciate having people come in and talk and share ideas. Um, I think it's been really beneficial to me personally in terms of. Wrapping my arms around, you know, a very different culture and world than that I usually live in. Um, and I've learned a lot. So thank you for, for all of those, uh, Enrichment activities we've been given. Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I should have said, go ahead. Can you just repeat the name of the person speaking next month? So I can put in my notes. Yes. Chief Norma Hardy. Awesome. Thank you. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off. What I should have said is that, um, Some commissioners will be meeting with the mayor later this week. And one of the questions will be what is the status of the staff of the city council? Um, And one of the things that I would like to share with you, certainly is the mental health summit. If you recall, uh, I believe in September, we passed a resolution urging the council, uh, and the city administration to conduct that. We heard that. That would be held at the end of January, but we still haven't had any word on it. And so, um, hopefully. We will be able to get that, uh, details on that so that we can get that done. Chief, do you know anything about it? I'm afraid I don't. I don't have any specific information about that. No. Okay. I think, I mean, I think it's at this point it's, it's in the council's hands. Is it not? We understood it was being run out of the mayor's office by Jordan Bridal. Okay. I will, I'll, I mean, I'm happy to follow up with Jordan tomorrow and try to determine where that might be. Great. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you. All right. Thank you. All right. During this meeting, um, actually this is a question for Haley. I'm seeing how we are going to do. Tomorrow. Should I just join a journey in this meeting? And have you as next. I can like, start. Do the whole meeting past tomorrow. Or should I just recess this and then pick up with. Right off the bat tomorrow. So, um, yeah, it does. I talk to the Shannon about this last week. I think it would make sense to just adjourn this meeting and then call a new meeting to order tomorrow. Um, with the understanding that the public portion will be very short. Okay. Awesome. Thank you. Awesome. Um, with that said, um, I would entertain a motion to adjourn the meeting. Motion to adjourn the meeting. Second. Any discussion. I'm not seeing or hearing any. All in favor of a during the meeting. Raise your hand if they I. Hi. Hi. Awesome. Thank you everyone in the public for joining in. Thank you for our guest speaker tonight. Chiefs for being here. Caleigh and Shannon. We'll see most of y'all tomorrow. Six PM for executive sessions. Until then, everyone a sleep tight. Be well.