 and it's three minutes after sick. So I'm just looking, making sure. Yeah, I think I got it all together. All right, good evening everyone. Welcome to the first meeting of the RDAF in 2021, the year that will solve all of our problems. And look, I can dream. And we have tonight, I think a fairly, it's not a light exactly agenda, but it shouldn't take us forever to get through it. It's really a planning meeting, I think as much as anything. But let us start with our introductions. And I have finally, after almost a year, figured out how to do this. And there's like a whole list of people on the spot. I'm just gonna go down that. And ask you to introduce yourselves, please. Tyler. Good evening everyone. Hello? Hello. Can you hear me? Yeah. Okay. Good evening everyone. Tyler Allen, DCW, sorry. Sorry, Family Services Division, Adolescent Service Director. A little out of it tonight. Perfect. Jessica. Jessica? Hi everyone. I'm just unmuting, unmuting. Oh, okay. Can't hear you. Hi, happy new year everybody. I'm Jessica Brown. I'm the Managing Attorney of the Public Defender Office for Chittenden County. And I'm an at-large member of this panel. This panel. Ah, okay. I can hear you now. Oh. It's Chris. Chris. Lawrence, please. There's a lot of cameras. Chris, you, or Karen, and Robin, I don't know who it is, but someone's got a real echoey. If you're not talking, we should probably all mute. That's probably true. Chris, we had a hard time with that, but we know you're here representing Karen and Robin from the Crime Research Group, correct? Roger that, sir. Got it. Thank you. Curtis. Yes. How is everyone tonight? Curtis Reid from Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Diversity. I can only be with you for an hour tonight, so. Thank you. Susanna. Hello, Susanna Davis, Racial Equity Director for the state here as an observer. Judge Grierson. Good evening, everybody. Good to see everyone. Happy new year. I can only be with you for the same hour that Curtis can, but I know there were a couple of you that were on the Justice Reinvestment Meeting yesterday, but for those of you who weren't, our leader, Aetan, did a fantastic job in making the case as to why the legislature should fund the work that we know needs to be done. I mean, Aetan, I told you before, it was just. Thank you. It was really something to hear, and I told Aetan, it made me proud to be a member of the RDAB group and that he was our leader. It was that good. Thank you. Thank you. Wow. Loretta Saki, Loretta, please. Hello, Loretta Saki. I'm with CSG Justice Center Policy Analyst, and I would echo Judge Grierson saying that Aetan, we've talked separately, but you did an amazing job as per usual, and I definitely appreciate the work that's going into this, so really excited. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Madeleine Dardot. Hey, folks. Madeleine Dardot, I'm also a policy analyst with the CSG Justice Center. Great. Elizabeth Morris. Hi, y'all. Elizabeth Morris, Juvenile Justice Coordinator within DCFFSD, an observer here, and I also would like to echo, I was looking into the Justice for Investment meeting and I was very happy to see you on the agenda, and also you did a fantastic job. Thank you. Thank you. Pepper. James Pepper, I'm from the Department of State's Turnies and Sheriffs. Now, Aetan, as I mentioned, you just have to make that same speech about 100,000 more times in order for anyone to really digest what you were saying, but I think it was a great start. And it will happen, but... Believe me, I know you're already on the agenda for like six committees, I feel like. I guess. Yeah. Oh, Lord. Sarah Friedman. Oh. Hi, I'm Sarah. Yep, Sarah Friedman. Also with the CSG Justice Center with Madeleine and Loretta as an observer, and yeah, I mean, it's hard to follow up, but echoing thanks to Aetan for attending the meeting and really, really representing ARDAP well and hoping that to continue working with you all to get these policies passed. Thank you. David Scherer. Yes, David Scherer with the Attorney General's Office and Aetan, we chatted briefly, but my thanks to you as well. Really excellent work and excited for the session. Yep, thanks. Sheila. Sheila emailed and mentioned she's having trouble finding a link. I'm trying to get that to her all. You're gonna help her? Okay. I'm here. I'm here. Sheila. Sheila Linton. She, her at-large community member and the Root Social Justice Center representative. Thank you. Julio. Julio Thompson, Attorney General's Office, Civil Rights Unit. I'm not on the ARDAP, but I'm a big fan of your work. So I'm here to listen and chime in if needed, but probably not. Rebecca. Rebecca Turner, hopefully working with a better mic this time. So I don't sound like I'm coming from underwater. Who am I? Defender General's Designee panel member. And guess, not only should you be prepared to repeat that 1,000 times over, as Pepper said, and that it was fantastic, that we all need to hear it over and over and over again because that is what we're all about, which is dismantling and really trying to do structural change. So here we are, happy new year. Thank you. And Monica. Hi, everyone. Monica Wieber, I'm with the Department of Corrections and I had the distinct pleasure of following Atan yesterday after he made that lovely and passionate remarks around ARDAP. And I'm sure nobody was paying attention to me when I was talking, but I would love to actually have the written because I know you write down what you say and I would love to be able to read it and just absorb it more because it was just so powerful. I'll write it. It's actually in an outline form, but it's fine. Well, but my outlines are pretty filled in. I could have. Well, thank you all for swelling my head. Have a nice evening and see you next month. But who have I forgotten? I'm looking at, oh, I'm Representative LaLonde. Yeah, thank you. Just joined, just gonna listen in as I've been trying to do with your meetings. I really appreciate it, thanks. Okay, great. I think we have everyone. No, Atan, your partner. Oh my God, my partner. Oh, this is really embarrassing and I'm not gonna live this down. No, no, I can't wait. Oh, Tamara's gonna suck. Captain Scribner, could you please introduce yourself? I don't know who you are. I'm Julie Scribner, Captain with Vermont State Police and co-director of Baron and Partial Policing and Community Affairs with Atan. And I'm here as proxy for Commissioner Shirley. Well, all right, that was fun. Hi, Julie. Okay, moving right along, let's go to announcements. Does anyone have any that need to come out now? The only thing I would say is I wanted to thank everybody for the support. It really, particularly at this moment in history, it really bows me. It's been a hard few days and just hearing the kindness from you all is really, it matters a lot, thank you. It's an honor to work with you and that's a platitude, but I mean it deeply. I really do. Anyway, yes, David, David, can you talk about membership for us? Sure, so. Thank you. The statute that created this panel is a little bit confusingly written in terms of the terms of each of us on the panel, but to the extent that it may be the case that anybody's term is expiring, and then there's sort of two groups of people that are appointed in different manners. One group is our community representatives and the other group are the representatives of the various state agencies. I want to let folks know that it is the Attorney General's intention to reappoint the five current community members representing communities of color from around the state as it states in the statute. So we'll make that formal, we'll send out letters in the next week or so. If you don't want to be reappointed, please let me know, no need to do that now, but you can email or call at some other time. And with respect to the members representing state agencies, we'll probably send out a letter that makes it the default that you'll stay on just so that we don't have some dead time or we haven't heard, in case we don't hear back for a while, we'll probably send something out that says, unless we hear otherwise, we will assume that ex-person who's currently serving will remain the representative to the RDAB. So that's the plan going forward. I wanted to let everybody know that. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me. Thank you. Great, thank you, David. The other thing, and I just want to put this in here about that, I think this is actually, I'm really glad that the Attorney General did this. Whoever we would get in here now, there'd be a little bit of training that would need to happen given that there are so many initiatives that we've sort of started that are actually underway. And that's really gonna be difficult to do during a pandemic. And several epidemiologists that I know, and yes, I actually know epidemiologists, don't ask. But they're talking about, this really may look like early summer before we have anything like what used to be called normal. So that would be through the current legislative session. And it just feels like this is slightly weird, but at the same time, also it facilitates work and is productive. You're about to hear about what's going on right now. And it's kind of exciting. And it does seem that it would be counterproductive to change up the cast of characters in the midst of change, which as you all know, was frankly a bit slow to get going. And now it's going. And so I think that the Attorney General, I don't want to put words in his mouth as thinking, but it might be a bad idea to interfere with the flow right now. And we're just gonna cope and revisit this when it gets to a point that we can all be around each other and talk to each other without threatening each other's lives. So that's that. Any questions, comments, discussion? Okay. The next thing up is a discussion, an update on the recent report that we submitted on the 1st of December. And Rebecca's gonna lead off on that. Okay. Well, we've just talked a lot about the most recent meeting, which was yesterday, but let me start off with, I guess there was one other meeting or presentation that A-Ton did. And I was able to, I think, testify with A-Ton on that. Yep. That was December 11th, right? December 11th, I'm just going back to my calendar, trying to find that. And I believe that was before the Joint Justice Oversight Committee. Is that right? It was. And for those who may not be familiar with who is on the Joint Justice Oversight Committee, they are, of course, members of the state legislature, and please, others on this call can correct me, but members from the Senate Judiciary, House Judiciary Committees, Corrections and Institutions Committee, basically folks who are really focused on this area. And they got to hear us give a little bit of a summary and a lot of what A-Ton testified yesterday to a different, some overlapping members, but a different group yesterday, but showing the same thing. I think there at the end of that, what's significant to share with this group is that Senator Sears indicated that it sounded like we should, we were suggesting drafting language for a bill for this session on data collection. And we said, yes. And we again confirmed that it would, we have Connecticut as a model and that was what the report indicated with the appendix. And so my understanding in A-Ton, please, please add on, but that Senator Sears intended, left that meeting on December 11th asking legislative council to start work drafting on legislation modeled on the Connecticut bill. And then others who are much more experienced on sort of the drafting, that would, that was a December 11th state, right? I know, you know, the new session has officially started. We are seeing bills introduced that data collection bill has not yet been introduced. And based on Senator Sears' indication in late December or December 11th to do it, Pepper, David, Julio, what's your, or Judge Glearson, what's your sense of a timeframe when we could expect introduction of that bill? It's hard to say. I know they have a drafting deadline in early February, but there's legislative kind of machinations to just put in a placeholder bill. And of course, you know, they could just say, there's gonna be a racial disparities bill and give it a number and just kind of leave a subject line. So obviously, you know, bills that pass before what's called crossover, which is usually, you know, the first week of March, it coincides with town meeting day week. You know, those are the bills that really advance through the legislative process in the first half of the biennium. So I would imagine that a bill will be introduced, testimony will be taken and it will be passed through one body, one chamber prior to town meeting day. So that's the kind of initial steps that have to happen. But that was very positive views. I think that was, from my perspective, the very best news we could have gotten on December 11th. Commitment from seven to seven. I'm just gonna say that we were giddy. Rebecca and I were texting. There's no other word for it, giddy. Well, after so much work has been put in. So then let's fast forward to the second, I think, touchdown with the legislature and more, which was yesterdays, which is where people who have sat in and listened to a town testify, that was before the joint, no, justice reinvestment to working group, but others are much more better positioned to explain who is in that group. But that is broader than just members of the legislature that includes, you know, sort of cabinet level folks from the various executive agencies, my boss, the defender general, department of corrections, commissioner, is DCF commissioner on there? I don't think so. No. Chief Justice Ryber of the Vermont Supreme Court was there. Judge Grierson. Judge Grierson was there. And Pepper and David, I don't know if you were there. Of course, Sarah Friedman and Loretta here, and Monica, of course, testified yesterday, instrumental in presenting materials related beyond the RADAPS report, but RADAPS was part of that agenda, and Etan again testified there. I recall that there was some questions about funding. And funding and how to be efficient about it, did we consider, you know, recommendations as to how to fund this efficiently, even our spaghetti chart? Senator Sears, I also recalled expressed an interest in seeing if Etan or we could connect with Connecticut to invite them to go and speak. And then I know that, and maybe it was the other meeting, whether it was representative grad, Senator Sears indicated that they were hoping, planning to have Etan back to those particular committees, the judiciary committees in the Senate and the House to again present on the report. So. And it's actually kind of interesting. This leads really well. Thank you, because it turns out there was another meeting with House Judiciary on Friday of last week. And I was asked on Thursday if I could be there. And of course, you know, yes. And it was kind of a meet and greet, but representative grad indicated that she would be working with Senator Sears. If I didn't get that wrong, she's indicated that she would be working with Senator Sears on this legislation. She also indicated yesterday, and this is something that we need to think about now, that Senator Sears' committee and her committee, House Judiciary, would like to meet with us. I mean, they want to come to one of our Zoom upaloozas. And I think given what Pepper you're saying and that this should, this is obviously going to happen likely sooner rather than later. I did my best to say like not tomorrow night, please, because I kind of wanted to give everyone a heads up, but you know, something was going to happen and not just suddenly have 30 people here that we didn't know and hadn't been prepared for. But I would like to ask you all now, would you like me to issue basically what I would call a soft invitation only because I can't answer for them, but a soft invitation for next month's meeting, which will be on the 9th of February. I would get specifics about what they're hoping to get from us, and I would certainly relay them to you. And so my, I guess I'm proposing, even though I'm the chair and not supposed to, that somebody else can propose that I'm just thinking out loud that it would be nice to in fact write to them and say how about next month, the 9th of February between six and 8 p.m. Anyone's discussion? This might be out of order, but we have the former vice chair and ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee. And he might have some insight as to whether that would be tenable for, to get those, it's a big group. So, he might, I'm having a little, let him put them on, if he puts you on the spot. Yeah, no, that's fine. I'm not, I wasn't the vice chair ranking member. I'm not, I'm not this term because I'm on the leadership team as an assistant majority leader, but any of that still in the Judiciary Committee. And I have talked to Maxine and she has mentioned this and having Zoom makes this a lot more doable for us to be able to jump onto a meeting. So I think extending that invitation would make a lot of sense. So. Great. Yeah. All right. Thank you. Any other discussion from people and about this? I just said, this is Sheila. I just think it's, Hi. I just think it's a great idea because I think it creates more accessibility for the public as well, that it's a set time for us where we all are scheduled already. And it's a set time where many people might know that we are meeting and be able to sort of carve that out of their night and be able to ask the questions and get the information that they need. So I would really encourage us to do that invite. Great. Okay. You wanna vote? Somebody make a motion. I'll make a motion that we invite, are we inviting Representative Grad and Senator Sears? Is that what we're saying or are we saying the House Judiciary Committee folks? The two judiciary committees, House and Senate. Okay. So I invite us to invite the House and the judiciary Senate to our next RDOT meeting on, I think you said maybe February 9th. Nice. Yeah. That was it. Second. Oh, second. Thank you. All in favor. Hi. Hi. Hi. All opposed. All abstentions. Got it. Okay. Motion's carried. And I will invite them. I will work on that tomorrow morning and get that out. I will keep you in the loop as things go on to get specifics about what they might like to talk about and so on and move things ahead. So that will probably be our main focus for next month. So just so you know that that makes our next item that much more, I won't say urgent, but just something that we really need to be thinking about. Although depending on what happens with the judiciary committees next month, this may get put aside as well. I want to remind you this, we're talking about next steps now. We're on to that second item of the agenda. I want to remind us where we were before Act 148, which seems like, I don't know, several millennia ago, I think there were dinosaurs walking around. We had decided to, as a group, to sort of work on the report that we did almost just over a year ago for December 2019. We had talked about amplifying it, you'll remember, I think, that taking parts of it and really drilling down more deeply. We had the metaphor, in my head I remember it being David's metaphor, but of course it gets used a lot, that it was a report from 30,000 feet. And we were sort of disguising that as a group, we should perhaps take sections of it and really get that down to maybe 5,000 feet. What I remember very, very clearly was Jessica adding at that moment, that it would be likely that the consensus that we reached with our first report would probably disappear when we went further down into a deeper dive. And I'm not sure why I got stuck on that, but I kind of think that's true, and I think that that's interesting. I think that could make this actually a very interesting, not merely exercise, but product. Along with that, oddly, given the emphasis that was on data in Act 54, which you'll remember was the act that started our first report, we've already, I think, inadvertently amplified that report's concern with data. We just did a big, deep dive on data. I think we can kind of leave data for right now. I mean, I don't know about the rest of you. I'm kind of set for now with, I mean, maybe I don't know what's gonna happen after we get those judiciary people in here, but for the moment, I'm all set with data. So what I'm thinking here is, in a sense, that first part of that big report in December of 2019 is in fact done. We've already done that if we are really still thinking that we wanna go back to that original report and amplify sections of it. And that's why I bring this up now. We've done that work. We've sort of got a quote-unquote clean slate. I say that very advisedly. Should we continue with that task? And further, how do we do so if we decide to do so, given that the legislature may have needs of us, which may be revealed really quite soon. But I was just thinking that I wanted to bring that up now because it's important for us to, I think, protect that work product. A lot of work went into that first report. A lot of things that were in that report are actually now in process of becoming. I won't say because of us, I think it may be more of a zeitgeist kind of thing, but I won't say that we're not playing a role here, but there are things that are moving. It may, and that's why I sent it out to you all for tonight to look at, to consider, to provoke some thinking about what you might think about next steps. So now I get to shut up and you get to think about next steps out loud. That's working. Hey, Tom, it's Rebecca. I'll start off with something actually a tiny step, which is next steps being literally an upcoming sentencing commission meeting date, January 25th and the agenda that we expect to be going out soon. It's just me with Pepper and George Zona who's the chair of that commission includes a discussion on the RDAAP report just filed. And you will be, heads up to this panel, you will be anticipating invited by the chair to join and to discuss. So another opportunity, not just an opportunity to talk about that report, but again, and help me hear those others on this panel concite this statute specifically to the extent that there is some overlapping work with the sentencing commission that's expected by the legislature. I think this is sort of a beginning of that, right, Pepper? Yeah, what I would add is that actually our December 1st, RDAAP report, the 2020 version was going, the audience was the joint justice oversight and the Vermont Sentencing Commission because the Vermont Sentencing Commission has some follow-up work. If there are specific legislative recommendations around changing sentencing practices or developing sentencing guidelines that could alleviate some of the racial disparities that we've identified in the report, I think it might be potentially, I mean, I don't know how much the report got into, our report got into that, but the Sentencing Commission has a supplemental report based on our report that's due February 26th. So, yes, we were on a call yesterday with Rebecca and the chair of the Sentencing Commission and we remembered that aspect to Act 148 and we decided that we should probably invite you, Aitan or other members of the panel as well to the next Sentencing Commission meeting to discuss kind of next steps with our 2020 report. And that next meeting is January 25th from 1 to 1.30 to 3.30. That time. That time. And again, that's a February report deadline for the Sentencing Commission, but as Pepper just said, there's a lot of overlapping thinking ideas on reform suggestions that are being talked about. And on that agenda again, others on this call who are on that commission not yet sent out finalizing it, but it's new business. Again, what we're talking about areas where we think could have the greatest impact. And of course, the Sentencing Commission is broader than addressing specifically racial inequities, but there's some overlap. It is a public meeting though. So anyone here who's interested, just know that date. And it's again, January 25th. What time, Pepper? It's from 1.30 to 3.30 via Zoom, but I think that the new business section will be towards the end of that. And I am the kind of a convener and secretary to the Sentencing Commission. So I'm happy to send that link to everyone on this meeting. Something that you'd like. There's a lot of overlap with this group in the Sentencing Commission. Should I just, Pepper, do you want me to just send you the list for our panel here and you can send it out. Sort of weed out people who are already on the Sentencing Commission and the rest of us can get. Okay, we'll do. I will be in the morning. Okay. So, back to that report. 2019 one, did I send that out? Did anyone have some thoughts that they want to put out here now? This is sort of the planning meeting. And we may, if we don't get anywhere, I have some ideas, but I just thought that if you had some things that would spark some good conversation, this would be a good time to put it through. If not, you may want to take it. I sent it out to everyone again. It lives on my hard drive. I mean, it's like I have an alias on my desktop so I can just pull it up because one never knows. Sheila, you've got a question. Yeah, I think it's maybe more of a comment slash question about my thoughts on the report. So I started going through the report again and I was a little bit hesitant because I didn't want to like rehash everything in this space and then people be like, what are you doing? And so, but I think that's a little bit of an opportunity that's being given of what we, what has been written, what do we want to extend on is what I'm understanding. What has shifted even potentially that might change a little bit or alter a little bit of our thinking or ideas or things like that. So, okay, so if that's one of the questions, so something to help spark. I have it just for transparency. I haven't read through the whole thing again but I have been going through it and one of the first things that came to mind was I felt like when we were writing that report we were very focused on the adult side of things and not on the juvenile. And therefore we didn't operate in that lens and navigating that narrative as much. And so therefore DCF wasn't as an entity and juvenile wasn't represented as much. And I know that I'm part of a group that's really working to establish an on a statewide ombudsman office. That'll be for families and children specifically with oversight and accountability to DCF. And I know that in this specific report we talked about the Human Rights Commission being that role for us that that would be the most appropriate, the words we use is both appropriate entity acknowledging that they have nowhere near the resources in order to do that. And it's still within a current system that exists even though that is said to be independent. So I'm just wondering if we can shift that conversation into again a statewide ombudsman office outside of the Human Rights Commission that again will have oversight and accountability such as what people are already working on within the state that's aligning with DCF. And really mirroring those two entities since we're talking about the juvenile justice system we're talking about the adult system there's no reason to necessarily reinvent the wheel even though this is more in the sphere of child protection and family and whatever. I think that there is support potentially to shift that to more than just that. And I just wanted to put that out there to the group. It sounds like that might be something that after next month when we have this big meeting that we've suddenly planned that that might be a good idea to have some of the people that you're working with come like in March come to us and have a conversation about that. Is that something that you could pull? Yeah, that might be something that could happen. That's a possibility, yes. Okay, that sounds like a good idea to start working. That's one place to go. Great, I like that. Thank you. And then I just had a question about how, so again, I'm just gonna be super transparent. I'm a really busy person and I don't have time to be in everybody's calendar pockets. And so I know that we get these emails. Hey, somebody's asked me to testify and all these different things. I'm just wondering if there's any type of a more succinct way of having this in more layman terms and more succinct so we can offer this to the public? Like these are the committees that our DAP is directly interfacing with and this is why these are the representatives and these are the potential meetings or hearings that we might be called to testify about. Like I'm just wondering if there's, it's just so in this fast pace. And I understand that that's the way it works. And that's actually what I'm trying to dismantle here and create a different culture if that isn't obvious is that clearly that it doesn't work for most people and it doesn't work for the people who are most impacted to be able to show up in that space and to be able to do that. And so I'm just not only for myself but for others that I represent here on the committee, I'm just wondering if there are ways that even the state, not necessarily us doing the labor but the state could make this more accessible to us on the panel as well as to the general public. I'm not the person to answer that sadly. I am keeping up the, I mean, and you already know this Sheila, I mean, I'm keeping up the best I can, I get told them that I send out an email and I can certainly alter my practice around that but I'm not sure what that would look like. This is David, one thought that I have is that's a great question to ask when we have the judiciary committees with us next week, as the legislature really drives some of this very rapid response type of inquiry during the legislative session. I think it's a fair question to ask about how they can work on making schedules in a way that would be more inclusive of people who are most affected by many of the policies they're working on. Okay. All right, we got one question for next month. Uh, anybody else? We are going to be looking at an ombudsman office connected to DCF that Sheila's working on. That is one thing that we are looking at for next steps. Rebecca. I wanted to jump in and second what Sheila said about sort of this sort of second look of our report months later and agreeing that when I read it, I thought that the juvenile justice side of it got short-tripped completely and the bottom line is that children are different and how we think about reform should be absolutely focused and we don't do that. And so I think that whether it's bringing in this group that Sheila just mentioned to talk with us, I think more importantly, it's about just addressing what we think should be the top priorities for real reform in that and affecting juniors and juniors of color. The other thing, again, Sheila brought up about the ideal situation where we have real-time information that's accessible. One of the things, while she was speaking, I wanted to try to get in the chat and this gets beyond my technological ability. So others will probably be able to beat me to this, but I was trying to find the VT digger recently that reported on the recent Bradderboro report, which I'm sure everyone here, I got the link finally. And here, while there's a lot of things to unpackage with that article, which is really what's there is an impressive 250 plus page report that a local town council and others from that area can better speak to that project on what they produced on very similar overlapping issues that we're working on. But one of the things I was impressed with was that when I reached in there and tracked down the website for Bradderboro and the committee are equivalent effectively in Bradderboro, had their own webpage, that was amazing. And David, or maybe this is something we wait for next meeting, but to the extent the AGO can help us, somehow it was a great model. And granted, the other point was that I understand that the members are paid or some of the members were paid. So again, perhaps the difference of what funding a committee can bring, but that was, I thought that was a great model, that website. I don't know if others have that link handy can throw it into the chat, but that was great. Thank you. I would love to please speak on that. And yes, I have it, I've got the report right here. I was part of that. So here, I live in Bradderboro, for those of you who don't know me, and I was a part of the larger coalition, both as an individual and as an organization with the root who is a part of this coalition of most impacted people here in Bradderboro that came together to want to address community safety. And really the conversation started out as a defund police conversation, but obviously we noticed that that's a little bit of a touchy subject for people. And so when you talk about defunding, what do you replace it with? And then when we thought about what it meant for police, and we thought about, well, what does that mean? And that is really talking about community safety and whose responsibility as it is for community safety. It's not the police, it's all of ours. So we established a coalition of most impacted people, which included people of color, youth, psychiatrically labeled, people with different abilities, queer, trans folks, most impacted individuals who came together to talk about their experiences and to help form this. And Shay and Emily, who were the facilitators, you're right, Rebecca, they were paid, but they were paid a very, very little amount. Very, very little amount. And how they chose to use the rest of their budget was to only take a little bit for themselves to create an extreme amount of, they did extreme amount of work and obviously produced an excellent report. And the rest of the money, they actually paid most impacted people to come to the table, to have focus groups and to make sure that they had the resources available to them so that they were able to participate. That's how they chose to use the rest of the money. And so it was a phenomenal process. And actually right now, the select board is happening. And if all of you are interested in what's happening, our select board meeting start at 6.15, but this will probably be later on in the agenda and it will be on the select board agenda for the rest of the month with discussing this and having the select board really adopt this and really implement the things that were said. But the main point is this is a great example of what we hope other communities will do is really look at collecting data, both anecdotal and quantitative and qualitative data that will be from a cross-section of the community who are most impacted by these structures and systems and not just be beholden to thinking that we need to have the understanding from the whole population because different people are experiencing these systems and structures differently. And that's really who we wanna focus on and prioritize in these conversations. So I really do encourage people to look at that report and I would be happy to figure out how we can use this as to support the initiatives that we wanna do here on the RDAP. Okay, great, a place to go. All right, thank you, anyone else? David, are you getting, I know, oh, that was another announcement by the way. We are, there is going to be an intern who's going to take notes for us. They're just not here because college vacation is still happening. So they're not here tonight. So poor David is working like a Phoenician with the scribing is down. But thank you, David, did you get all this down? Cause I just wanna, I mean, this stuff about some suggestions for directions here. Yeah, I'm getting this down. Great, thank you. Thank you. Anybody else? This is very productive. I had a comment. And I'm just looking through the report right now and there's a number of recommendations. I mean, some that was made by my department regarding community policing and supervisory training for law enforcement officers that are seeking management positions. And it's hard to really keep track of everything that happened last session with respect to the kind of the public safety executive order from the governor's office and the S119 and S124. But it seems like an opportune time. I think I remember S124, I forget the ACT number right now, asking the criminal justice training council to be restructured and also to kind of do a self audit of all the courses that they're offering and really think about ways to kind of modernize the training council and the curriculum. So it seems like this would be a good time, especially with some of our recommendations to, I don't know, have a conversation with the training council and maybe give them a copy of our report and think about, and maybe this is already happening and maybe there are too far down the road already, who knows, but I just think those two, the recommendations that deal with training of officers, it seems like there could be some good, this could be an opportune moment in time to refresh those or maybe add some detail to some of those and get them over to the training council. Pepper, can I, let me ask you something, I get for a variety of bizarre reasons, I get called by the council, the new one fairly frequently right now. Can you get something to me that I can give to them along with the report? Yeah. That can get them to have thinking in this direction? Yeah, and I'll take a second look at the bill that passed that I think really asked them to audit their curriculum and see where they could add to it or subtract from it and add other things. So yeah, I'd be happy to do that. Great, that would be great. I mean, I was about to say, they're meeting tomorrow, that wasn't like stay up all night and do it, but just, they're meeting a lot. But, I'm in touch for a lot of weird reasons and I can facilitate that, I guess. That's great. Aton, is Jen Furpo still on our committee or is she? As far as I know. Okay, yeah, I was just wondering, I mean, some people might have had a conflict but I was just curious as the representative of the council that might be a good. It would be good to talk to her, yes it would. Sheila, you had your hand up and then you disappeared or maybe you had it up before. I was gonna say something, but then I forgot what I was gonna say. Story in my life. Let me know when it comes back. Rebecca. So I'm gonna jump in, but if someone who hasn't had a chance to talk, please put up your hand, because Sheila's people's comments have got me thinking and so I responded, but what I wanted to share was what I was hoping this panel would consider as one of our next projects and that was on page nine of our report in 2019 and this was the section dealing with consensus. We got consensus on this issue and it was under the subheading of discretion. Police discretion, law enforcement discretion. I don't know if we defined it so broadly, law enforcement to include prosecution, but I just wanna put in that I would hope we focus and drill down on what we mean and on package about what we think about checking. I think one of the ways that we could go off from there and again, putting on this panel's radar and I'm putting it in the chat, between a recent series from the VT Digger relating to Tarnished, I think title Tarnished Badges, which was highlighting what is so-called Brady Giglio letters in the legal world, which relates to constitutional obligations due process to disclose officers who prosecutors no longer de-incredible or sufficient to rely on. They're reporting for prosecutions and so they disclose these letters and so VT Digger did a series on this, but it made me think about our report and how we wanted to focus on how to check and build an accountability for law enforcement discretion. That article was just one piece of the puzzle, but I also wanted to put on this panel's radar that I am familiar very vaguely of the work being done in Chittenden, Burlington specifically, trying to come up with some ideas on how a community oversight board could work and I know that's been covered in the press and others on this panel from Chittenden County may wanna weigh in. Again, do we wanna delve into, because I know they've done considerable, that body, I forget the name of that committee, done considerable research, looking at what national models are out there for community oversight review boards. I think there it's police officers, right? But really getting to the heart of how do we check, how do we check law enforcement abuses and make sure they don't happen? Make sure, and beyond training and I know Pepper that was a separate issue, but I wanna make sure what mine is, does it get folded into training because it's different. So I'll stop there. Yeah, Julio, this is kind of in your day of the week, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, our office is tasked under S-124 in the last session to try to connect the different dots of really energetic and I think thoughtful work that's already been going on in the communities regarding police oversight. Bennington also has a quite useful webpage of when I get a free moment, I can send the link to look at their community policing initiative, which includes a collection of testimony or summaries of statements from community members and different police leaders and the legislature asked us to, you know, to try to get additional input and we're in the process now of setting dates for a series of not just community-specific, but also subject matter-specific forums for groups on different aspects of civilian oversight. Related to that is in S-124 they asked us to similarly collect feedback about different approaches to reporting or collecting complaints of police misconduct. And so that's a process that we're underway. Some of these communities have, Brattleboro did not, although Bennington did and Virgin's has, they've come to us for some of the resources on the national models. So the Brattleboro one site, some of the NACO materials I've cited before, as well as a study from the, or an overview of civilian oversight from the police assessment resource center, which is one of these kind of reform clearinghouses. It was actually the place out where I was employed before I came to Vermont. So they're familiar resources and, and it's so, we're not just going to take input, but we also, and Dave and I were talking about this only, was it today or yesterday, Dave? I forget so many things going on, but we also intend to have a portal that will accumulate some of these materials, put out meeting dates, and also a means for people to submit comments, either identifying themselves or anonymously as well as with attachments. So if some organizations want to attach a position paper or an article or something they think is instructive, then we'll do that and make that available. Etan and some of you have heard me in these emergency sessions, talking about how much effort you need to put into it and how averse we are, and I am personally to a very top down approach. You really need to make the time for people here. And I think, you know, what Brattleboro put out, I've only gone through pieces of it that concern things that I've been working on and the amount of work isn't just useful in terms of putting together content and research, but I think it really demonstrates leadership in the community and so, and I think there are a lot more Vermonters out there who are willing or have been putting in that work and we wanna provide a variety of different platforms for them to get their ideas together because I think there'll be some overlapping ideas and then there'll also be some hard choices to make in terms of how are you gonna spend resources. Some models have a lot of positive features but are also, you know, expensive in the short run and have kind of require institutional and economic commitments. And so we're really looking forward to that but it's very exciting to see work that's come out of a few of these committees already. So you were speaking about, I think a few documents that actually contain some models here. Yeah. Is there a possibility you could get those to me? And I- Sure, I think I may have actually linked it to in comments to prior meetings, but sure I can do that. Yeah, you may have done that and- For someone like me, that means nothing. I'm sorry, that sounded horrible. I didn't mean that the way that came out, it just means I'm really technologically, yeah, it's just unpleasant. So if you could do that, that would be great. And I think that's the panel. Yeah, I'm happy to do that. There are two from Nacol and one from Park. I mean, there are many, but I will give you kind of- Start there. Yeah, the best and I think very accessible, give you the 100-foot view. Great, and that will get us on the road that Rebecca's suggesting, that Sheila's suggesting. I think that would be really helpful as a starting point. And then we can get people in and talk to us in March. That would be helpful as well. David's writing all this down. Good, we are making good efforts here. One of the other things I want to point out, and this is not sequential, is the whole section that we did put in at the bottom of page nine, I actually love this section, the non-consensus reports, where we didn't actually all agree. I love that. And what I think part of what I'm thinking here is, let's work at not agreeing. Maybe that's why I liked what Jessica said so much, was okay, we've agreed. We agreed on like really broad stuff. Let's like now not agree, because I get a sense that if we're not agreeing, we're probably putting in a lot of thinking and a lot of ideas that are pretty radical and I mean by that at the root. Really, really deep down, really, really important, really fundamental. Maybe what we do with that, when we get to that moment in these discussions, is we do break off into subcommittees and different subcommittees write their reports. I'm inspired by that because that was one of the things I liked very much about Act 148 and specifically the section that we worked on, section 19, that they were very clear that they wanted dissent in there. We didn't do our job that well, we didn't dissent very well, but we could have and I just think that that would be kind of a neat way of going about this and really getting at some real central contradictions and a lot of the stuff that we're talking about and I think that those need to get out there. I'm not trying to put words in Jessica's mouth, I'm more putting saying that she kind of inspired me when she made that point back last year and I think that that might be something we wanna think about just procedurally as we go forward. Sheila. I really liked that, Aetan, I really liked that a lot. Okay, I just think that'll be fun and not just unproductive. I think it's interesting too because not only, I'd like to transparency around it to allow people to know who was in favor of what. I think that's really important and I think it's really important for discussion just because we might have diverging views or not all agree, I think the conversations is the why and sort of understanding the why and unpacking and dismantling that and understanding the different perspectives. Like I've really, whether I've agreed or disagreed on this panel, I've appreciated how from our different experiences both professionally and as human beings in a way that we navigate through the world that we've brought that knowledge to the table and it doesn't mean we have to all agree with it but to have that understanding and for us to sort of understand each other this past year, I think there's been a lot more of that even just with the prelude of the document that we created and us getting to the point to where we could say white supremacy and white privilege. Three years ago, we weren't having that at all. I wanna remind this group which most of us are the same people that we were not having that at all and maybe some of us are still feeling some kind of way that that's in the report. But the point is we had enough consensus in order to put that in the report where it was not a thing before and I think that came about from us developing those relationships really talking through things and kind of understanding different people's perspectives and that just because we don't have to agree with everything to make that the right thing to move forward. And I wanna remind us of that. Thank you. Thank you. Anything else anyone wants to put in here? We've got some really good ideas about where to go and I'm going to rely on David's even very rudimentary notes and I'm gonna start pulling stuff together. I will send out my usual five billion emails which you'll get our DAP and capital letters and that Jessica's already smiling. Cause sometimes it's a little much but I will do that to get all of this out to everybody to get us to start thinking and I think we're gonna have a fair amount of time to do that because next month next month's gonna be something different. So Julio. I just wanted to point out for you and others that in the chat I've already provided the three links that you requested. Oh dear God, I don't even know what the chat. Oh, everyone just went away. Oh, look at that. Okay, is there some way to save this so it's- I think if you just took it from your cursor and saved it to a Word document it would include the hyperlinks and then you could just bookmark the hyperlinks or save it there but cause that's what I did. I just pasted it from an email I had to this. Fun fact about Teams though, the chat will stay in the meeting on Teams and you can refer back to them for a little while. So if you go to the calendar of a previous meeting and you click on chat you will see all the chats that people put in there in case you like, I think Hulu you mentioned you put things in a previous chat. They do go away after a while but- Okay. There are ways to do it and- But I'm happy to paste that in- Or you could just copy and paste it. If you prefer. But I figured it was more efficient at least in the short term to give 20 people access to the links now. If they click on them, they'll be sent to those pages. Let's do Bo. Okay. Is that all right? Yeah. Okay, thank you. Cause I'll, if I do anything I'll break it. I know it. Great, other comments, other thoughts, other thoughts about 2019 report where it should go next. We are looking at the section on discretion. We are going to be talking about systems of oversight. We are going to be reading documents that Julio has already put in the chat. And he will send those of us who are somewhat of cave people. And we can look for them in different ways that will be on the subject. We are going to be talking about an on Bud's what, committee in a way of that Sheila has mentioned that we'll be working on issues that also come up with DCF. We are talking about one of my forgetting. David, one of my forgetting. Brattleboro and looking at their, the model that they provide in terms of their work. Right. And relatedly, ATO's upcoming work on civilian work. And we're going to be talking about the ongoing oversight issues of who it was which Julio has been talking about. And also on that note, I'll just let folks know we are, as Julio mentioned, we are going to have a series of forums and we will make sure to publicize those dates to this crew and to whatever degree you can spread the word about those. We would certainly be grateful, but well, once we get those, once we work on scheduling those, we'll get that out to you. Great. Okay. I just sent you the email. Thank you. Thank you very much. That's a fair amount of work. There's some chunks here of things to be reading. So I'm not feeling like we need to fill out 45 more minutes. I'm feeling like, though, I want everyone to get everything in right now that they want to get in. I don't want to end prematurely, I guess, is what I'm saying. So if someone has some other issues here, some other thoughts, I mean, this obviously isn't the last time. It's the first time. So I'm just, you know, I would recommend that everyone, I don't think everyone's had a chance, look back over the 2019 report, see what you think, mark it up, get a red pen out, cross things out. Does anyone do that anymore? I mean, thank you. All right. Yeah, me too. I like believe in handwriting. So cross things out, circle things, you know, write comments in there, because that's the only way we're going to be able to do this, if we're in fact going to go after that and do this deeper dive. I will get these materials out. Sheila, you and I can be in touch talking about who we're going to, who we need to invite in March. Sounds great. Okay. I think we're on it. Anybody else have anything? Just so you just get to be reading folks, it's I know. Warm cozy nights in front of the fire. It'll be fun. Anything else anyone wants to add? Can I just offer one? It's not really a comment as much as it is to offer for additional assistance. Sure. If there's anybody looking at these comments related to oversight and what I have questions or what follow up on particular types of models or additional information, they should contact me. I'd be happy to do that. If committee members down the road or anybody really from Vermont who's really engaged and at once an opportunity to talk to people in other cities who are doing the jobs in these entities, that may be something we may be able to arrange. I know quite a few people who are either current or former directors or investigators or hearing officers from places like New York, D.C., San Francisco, New Orleans, Baltimore, who may shed a little light and might tell us about what they like and what they don't like. We're going to seek that input anyway, but there's no reason we have to do it if other people here are interested in that. We can probably coordinate it so they're not getting 10 calls, but I think that can bring it more to life than reading something on a page if people have the time and interest and want to get into that level of understanding or detail about how these different entities work. Okay. Sounds like a plan. Thank you. Thanks for the offer. So are all these documents, just to be clear, are all these documents going to be shifted from the chat and put into the email titled like Homework for Reading with the various in your contact Julio and anybody to contact if we have any direct question follow. So we're not like going to UATON and ask you questions that you don't know how to answer. And we're not like shoot, we didn't copy and paste the chat. Where's all the homework? Is all of this David or somebody are going to put it in that kind of format? And basically that's an ask that I'm asking. Can somebody do that to make it more streamlined? Yes, ma'am. It's going to go into an email that I will send out. Not all right. And a ton. This is Rebecca. I just sent you and Julio just for brevity's sake. The document including research and models that the Burlington folks have researched in Julio. I don't know if that's duplicative, but for what it's worth, I wanted that. No, it's not. I mean, what I sent was more of an examination of different models with examples from different parts of the country. Because I mean, there are three arguably four different fundamental models of oversight. And these really are a way to introduce people to those models and to look at examples of how they're set up. And two of the three that I included, I think also have links to the entity's webpage. They can go read their annual reports about how they investigate cases, what their outcomes are, and so forth. So it's more of a introduction, really, that Burlington is more of a concrete proposal. And there are many of them that have, the Burlington example that have been out this last year, like Pittsburgh's been working on it. There are probably a dozen places in New York state that are working on similar issue, you know, from Schenectady to Prokepsi. So I mean, there's lots out there, but I just try to do something that was compact and I think a good introduction if you read these, then when you look at other policies, you'll see where it fits into the different types of models. I would just add that the document I sent is from the Burlington. They introduced a specific model, but embedded in this just they seem to summarize their research on the models too and group them as to certain types and also provided links to the particulars. So there might be some overlap there to the extent that there's something different. It's interesting that it's in this document, it's a committee sort of shake out of reviewing others, or at least one person's research task to present to the committee. I'm looking at it now and they are referring to some of the same materials that I cited. I will gather and digest and send out in kind of a digest form with David's help. Thank you, David. Anything else? A good start. It's a very good start. Great start. That was fun. This is the most fun I've all day. Well, as we said at the beginning of the meeting, our next meeting is the 9th of February. I will send out the soft invitation to house and senate judiciary. You can expect that that will be really the focus of the meeting next time. I will keep you up to date as that comes closer as to what their expectations and hopes may be. If you have some, I should be able to put them back in the opposite direction. So I will keep you in mind on that and I will in the next few days digest all of this and get it back out to everybody in a digested form. If there is nothing else then someone can, you know, make a motion to adjourn. Or we could have more discussion. Or... Any time I will make a motion to adjourn. Okay, we have a motion to adjourn and I have a second. I will second that. May I see all in favor? All opposed? Got it. All abstaining. We are adjourned. Thank you all very much for a great meeting. Chief, your hand is up. Is there something? No, okay. And thank you very much for a great meeting. Again, thank you all so much for the support. I mean that. That was... It's lovely. And thank you for all the work. Thank you for all of your work. And I will see you all in a month, if not sooner. No. Don't forget to send us your comments from yesterday for those of us who didn't get to hear them. I will work on that. Yes, I will work on that. We'll too. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you.