 We have five commissioners present. We're expecting one more. And I know you all will not be with us tonight. Um, With that, we shall move to, uh, additions and modifications to the agenda. And I was going to make a motion to amend the agenda to. Table agenda item 5.01 and 5.02. Um, The city attorney's reached out to me and they have not, uh, been able to review it yet. Still waiting on a couple more things, I believe. Um, And that they say that they hope that, uh, it will be ready for our next meeting. Um, if it's done, if it's completed, um, If it's completely well before our next meeting, I'll be happy to schedule a special meeting so we can, um, Take care of that. Okay. So, um, Yeah, I, I motion that we, uh, table. And I'm 5.01 and 5.02 till next meeting. Do I have a second? Second. All in favor, please raise your hand to say aye. That passes unanimously. Any other, uh, additions or modifications to the agenda. Um, Chair Gommash, were you going to also amend the agenda to discuss. The, um, sharing of videos around the, the January 7th incident. Um, I'm, I'm. Was not, I think my explicit intention, but I'm, I'm happy too. Um, Yeah. I'm happy to, uh, yeah. I'm happy to talk about that. Absolutely. I'm happy to talk about that. I'm happy to talk about that. I am happy to talk about it. And I can make a motion then to include that as an item on the agenda. I will second that item. All in favor, uh, raise your hand. I apologize. Can you clarify what we are voting on, please? The availability of videos to police commissioners on police incidents, audio for us. So again, when you say the availability, can I just ask for further clarification? What you mean? I mean, that would get us into the discussion if you want to. We are, I mean, no, that's it now. It's the issue that there were several videos and only a few were shown to us. And I think it's important for us to clarify what material should be made available to police commissioners when we are reviewing an incident. So again, just just I apologize for maybe being too small. So are you asking that specific videos be made available or are you just making a motion that video in general be made available? I'm just not sure what motion to discuss the issue, not making a motion about anything but to add it to the agenda. So I seconded that all in favor. Raise your hand and say aye. Aye. All against? I'll abstain. I'm just not entirely sure it's the one discussing but I'll abstain. All right. I think I need to do a roll call then. Stephanie Ceguina, outside Councilor Ceguina in favor. I am in favor. Commissioner Hart. In favor. In favor. Sorry. Commissioner Hart. Oh, sorry. No, no, no. I said Hart the first time. Hart, Commissioner Hart. Abstain. And Commissioner Grant. In favor. In favor. 440 nays one abstention. And we'll move that to the agenda item right after 5.06. We'll tackle that. Any further modifications to the agenda? I am not hearing any moving on then to approval of the minutes from 1215 2020. Move to approve the minutes. And seconded by Commissioner Grant. All in favor. Raise your hand or say aye. Aye. That passes unanimously. And it was my error. For our next meeting we'll add the agenda minutes from our special meeting that was two weeks ago. My apologies about that. Moving on, we have agenda item 3.01, which is the public forum. So I'll hand it over to Shynne Chamelle. So I did have two people request to speak. First I have Linda Patterson and then Wendy Brett. Linda. Are you there, Linda? Yes, I'm here. Perfect. So should I go? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Hi. My name is Linda Patterson. I'm a resident of the Burlington South End and I'd like to thank you all for your service to the city. I'm here tonight to comment and to ask a question related to the proposed 1500 person concert venue at the Burton Corporation on Queen City Park Road. I understand there's been a significant decrease in the Burlington Police Force and that the Burlington Police Department is proposing to cease most in-person coverage of the night shift. And I have a concern related to the impact of this proposed change. My concern is related to the police department's ability to adequately cover the needs of the Queen City Park Road area on concert nights. The new venue will hold twice the number of people as the current higher ground does. Patrons would drive in and out of one of two neighborhood streets, one with one lane bridge, to get to these concerts. And neither of these streets have adequate infrastructure for both pedestrian and car traffic for this size of a venue. An estimated 500 cars, which I believe is a low estimate, will need to park. Burton's lot only holds 417 parking spaces, so patrons will most likely seek on-street parking options. Across the street from the venue is the large South Burlington City Park Red Rocks and eight neighborhoods all surrounding the venue by 360 degrees. And this configuration invites loitering, in my opinion, both pre- and post-concert. In April 2020, then-Police Chief Jennifer Morrison and current Chief Murad wrote letters stating that the Burlington Police Department could safely and adequately cover the expected 120 nights of concerts at the new venue. May I point out, at this point, that the proposed higher ground venue is nearly 15 minutes away from the police department? Given the proposed changes in night shift coverage, my question is this, what are the specific plans to address a lack of nighttime police response capabilities to traffic and safety issues at this larger venue, issues we already know exist at the much smaller South Burlington venue? I request, if possible, a response to my question and thank you very much for listening to me. Thank you for that. I, firstly, cannot answer that question, but if you'd be happy to shoot me an email address, I'm sorry, if you'd be happy to shoot me an email, I can forward that to the Chief and I believe he would be best equipped to answer that question. Linda, I can, Chair Gommash, I can give you, I believe I have both of their email addresses, so I will send that on to you now so you'll have it and then just- Awesome, thank you, I appreciate that. Next up is Wendy Bratt, and Wendy, if you're there, maybe you could raise your hand, I don't, I'm unable to find your name. Wendy and I were working on this together, did she confirm with you that she was coming? Just the email that I received, the one email. About me? About the, I thought it said the both of y'all. Okay, that may be a misunderstanding, I think it's just me. Okay, perfect. So then, Chair, that's all that I had. Thank you. Thank you. If anyone in attendance would like to say something during public forum, now is your time to do so. I request that you raise your hand and Shannon will promote you to a panel. So I repeat, if anyone would like to say anything that's in the attendance, please raise your hand. I am not seeing any, so we shall close public forum and move on to agenda item 4.01, which is the Chief's Report. And on that, I give the floor to one of the Chiefs. Hello. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you for having me here tonight. My report, I have some data to present, which I'll then have, I will email to all of you, and I have Shannon post as well. And I also have some recaps of what we've been up to. I think most importantly, of course, is the work that we have been doing on the public safety continuity plan. Your efforts on that front and your review of it in the previous emergency special session were invaluable. And we thank you for that very much. I was pleased to be able to create a very long form memo about the public safety continuity plan that was posted to board docs on Friday and is a complete detailing of what that plan could potentially entail. I say complete with the caveat that it is a pilot, it is a proposal, and it is something that is not at all known, it's full implications. We have to get into it in order to understand its full implications. But the staffing situation that we discussed with you has only grown more significant in the past week, owing to the fact that we actually have a new information about the next police academy class. Sorry, that was my radio. The next police academy class will not begin until May 3rd. And that is a tremendous delay from a normal start in very, very early February. That means that in all likelihood, there will not be a second police academy class in the year. And if there is, it too will be pushed back. All of that makes the need to get new officers to have an understanding of whether or not we're authorized to hire that much more important. But the need to have additional flexibility in addressing and minimizing service disruption that we anticipate happening owing to continuing diminished staffing has not changed since we spoke with you last. And while the presentation we gave the public safety continuity plan that we created is not intended to be a comprehensive solution, it's a movement towards stability and would represent a movement towards stability. But without clarity from the, without clarity on its efficacy and without clarity on whether or not we can approve it, we're spinning our wheels and we are simply waiting as the department continues to winnow. So last night was frankly disappointing for me as far as not having a definitive answer about that and being able to move forward. I trust however that the folks in the city council are contemplating this thinking about this and that we may be able to have some kind of resolution by the next meeting. But I am frustrated that we are yet again waiting for a next meeting, which is where it seems that we have been since June. With regard to some data discussions, if I may have permission to share the screen, Mr. Chair. Thank you. You may. Sorry. Just one moment. I'm sorry. So we now have all the data from 2020. I'm not giving the data that covers from the previous meeting to this meeting because all of that is of course available on the dashboards that was shared with you by Nancy Stetson and Director Lowe when they talked about the fact that really all this data is now available for anyone who wants to be able to look at it. And it's right on the city's website. It's linkable from the BPD's page of the city website. But I think that it's important to look at in the context not only of where we are, where we've been, but also where we are going with regard to staffing and some of those issues. And so this picture is a picture of a decrease in a parent call volume. And that is a good thing if we have a city that is safer in the sense that incidents are a proxy for safety. It certainly would appear from this that we are in a city that is safer over the past six years since 2015. And they've gone down quite a bit. There is a very artificial drop, a much steeper drop than normal between 2019 and 2020. That is to be expected. I think people need to remember what it was like to brave the, you know, brave breaking the stay at home order to get into a car and drive around this city in late March or an all through April. When the city was quite dead, there was simply nothing happening in the city, the fear and the feeling of going into a supermarket that was entirely empty, the sense of utterly quiet streets. Of course, we were going to see a decrease in call volume from 19 to 20. And we do see that here. However, I also want to point out that what we really see is we see these components of total incidents, arrests, traffic stops and VCVCs or VMCs or other kinds of tickets. And those are tickets that are issued for things like open container or for certain kinds of conduct, fireworks, noise, etc. Those kinds of tickets have drastically dropped over the past several years and they are dropping at a much greater rate than overall incidents. And the reason for this has to do with the fact that these are largely driven by officer discretion, particularly traffic stops. Traffic stops is driven by officer discretion. And this spoke in our previous meeting when I discussed the idea of a 60% result. I was looking at the number of tickets, not the number of stops. Stops represent 47% of the total change in call volume, an incident volume rather, from 2015 through 2019. So the total drop from 2015 to 2019 before COVID's anomaly, 47% of that was entirely from traffic stops. And traffic stops are almost entirely discretionary. And frankly, the ones that remain are the only ones that are discretionary at this point, because officers are not making discretionary traffic stops anymore. Here is a more important way of looking at call volume. And it has to do with the idea of what is internally generated versus what is externally generated. And talking about tickets and traffic stops gets at that a little bit. But we actually also can track where they're coming from. So here's a picture that actually goes all the way back to as long as we've been tracking since 2012. And again, and that total incident number that you see at the top, that is pretty, there's a very large drop there in 2020. Sorry, whoops, wrong direction. I'm trying to make sure that, there we go, move this around a little bit so we can see those total incidents. And then with regard to the next, what we see down below are type one and two incidents and they're internal versus external. Internally generated is the orange, externally generated is the blue. And what we see is until that dip for 2020, excuse me, 2019 to 2020, we had a pretty flat change. And they've gone down a little bit in 2018, trended up in 2019, largely owing to a lot of disorder in downtown, especially around the church street area. But we're talking about a very flat picture. It is not a decrease. The decrease comes from those internally generated, those things that are driven by officer discretion that are driven by a sense of officers going out and doing something because they don't have something else on their plate at that moment. But the calls that come from people, the calls for service that are folks saying, I need something, I haven't changed all that much, again, until that precipitous decline that you see from 19 to 20. And the same is true of type three incidents, the most serious kinds of incidents with which we deal. And those, in fact, went up. Everything else is plummeting from 2019 to 2020. And with good reason, except those, those go up, not by a lot, but they do. And it is only the internally generated ones that are trending down and they're trending down quite a bit. Some of that, by the way, is the kind of work that gets done by detectives doing certain kinds of work. It's what officers observe and being proactive on patrol and doing certain kinds of activity. Again, car stops may come in certainly in the type one and type two. Here's our serious incidents for the past six years from 2015 through 2020. And again, total is in the upper left-hand corner and total is dropping. We see that, we see that decrease. And again, a stronger decrease from 19 to 20. It flattened out quite a bit actually from 18 and 19. 18 and 19, we're reaching a sense of stability, I think, with regard to overall what we could get with decrease before we had that artificial decrease. But we see other kinds of trends that are going in the other direction. Unfortunately, felony assault up, even this year, even in the COVID year, felony assault up, aggregated domestic incidents, which includes domestic violence misdemeanor, domestic violence felony and domestic disturbances, also up. Unsurprising for COVID, people were in their homes more. We were concerned that we would see upticks in domestic violence. And we were unfortunately not disappointed in that. We were also concerned that we would be missing cases because children not being in school for large swathes of time, those are mandatory reporters, teachers. Teachers are mandatory reporters. Clergy members can oftentimes be reporters for abuse that is observed of children. Co-workers, abuse observed for a spouse or for a significant other. And all of those interactions were drastically minimized by COVID. Children at school, people in their congregations or their churches, people being in physical proximity to coworkers. And yet, despite the fact that we are probably seeing under-reporting, we saw an increase in those kinds of crimes over the past year. We've seen a dip in disturbances, but a large increase in disturbances over the past couple of years. Those two are largely going to be driven by external creation, not by officers. Sex assault, good year in 19, and unfortunately a significant increase from 19 to 20. And robbery up as well, down from 19 to 20, but up compared to where it was. And some of that has to do with resourcing for detectives. A lot of it has to do with the street crime team and the fact that we haven't been able to field one and that we've lost it now for good with regard to the amount of staffing that we have. Mental health related incidents are interesting. And here you do see a real increase. Now, there are two categories here. One is the mental health issue, which is a call that is about mental health. That's how it comes over. That is how, if it's internally generated and some are a smaller percentage, that's because the officer recognizes it immediately as a mental health related incident. That is the core of the incident. Or it is a call from another entity or from a person, and they term it a mental health related issue. And so we have mental health issue. It's a smaller number. You've got there, the highest number was this past year and it was 946. Mental health checkbox is different. The checkbox can accompany any kind of incident. You could have a mental health checkbox on a car stop. You could have a mental health checkbox on a noise complaint. And what we are doing and trying hard to do is actually get better at marking that. And yet we still see an incredibly drastic increase from 19 to 20. Some of that is the same thing that's driving the increase of the actual issue incidents that you see in the left hand graph. But some of it is also better reporting. We are asking officers to be more diligent about checking that box when they believe that mental health has a component of the call that they are addressing. But I do want to point out that what we're talking about, especially with mental health issue, are not calls that are automatically divertible to mental health experts. In fact, many of them, if not the majority of them, involve us going to calls where mental health professionals have called us to assist them because they can't deal with that incident in a safe way without having police there. That's not true of the mental health checkbox. That is true of the mental health issue graph. Mental health checkbox graph indicates situations that are exacerbated or affected by what is believed to be a mental health condition. It's not the core of the call, but having better resources to address those, being able to send teams of the kind that we are proposing with our CSL co-response teams, a community support liaison who would roll with a police officer, those are the kinds of incidents that are really good, that would really see a benefit and presumably a decrease because that is of course the goal of any of these. So thank you for allowing me to share that. I am going to send it to Shannon for distribution to all of you right now, and I was happy to have the opportunity to show some of that, those kinds of data. That is essentially what I've got for my chief's report. Thank you very much for letting me weigh in, and I'll turn it back over to you, Mr. Chair, unless there are any questions. Commissioner Harp. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. A couple of quick questions. First, with respect to the May 3rd Academy date, what would be the deadline for BPD if it were permitted to get officers into that academy, and then what do you think would be, again, if the head count cap were no limit, what would be the expected number of officers you could place if that won't be the maximum number of officers you could place at that academy? So there are a couple of questions there. One is if the cap has no limit. So I'll start with that, and I'll say if there were no limit, then on May, the way it works, and I would ask either Deputy Chief LeBreck or Deputy Chief Sullivan to weigh in and correct me if I'm wrong on any of these. But the way it works is we are supposed to request a certain number of slots on the day of the academy, when the academy starts, we say we want some spots for the next one. And generally in the past, we have had at most six. That's about what is allotted to us based on our head count, and based on our head count relative to other agencies. The Vermont State Police get the bulk of the slots. They are the largest agency. We get the next largest number, although that may be changing. Now that our head count is lower, conceivably, we could be in a different ratio. We could actually only be allowed five or not. Or vice versa, we may be able to make a claim that we really do need to staff up, although there are other agencies that are going to have the same kind of claim, and they might give us a bit more. But six is generally the most that we've gotten in the past. And at this point, we cannot get people through a background process to actually name individuals for those slots, which is what we're supposed to do. The way it's supposed to work is that we are supposed to present them with actual names of people we intend to put into the next police academy class. Now it's acknowledged that the timeframe between one class and the beginning of the next may involve some of those officers being winnowed from the procedure. Maybe they drop out, maybe they fall out, maybe they get other jobs. So there is always an ability to say, I'm not actually sending Joe Smith, for whom I reserve the spot, I am sending John Jones. And that is allowed. You can't do it too many times. You can't just make up a bunch of names and say, I'm sending Jimmy Doe, Johnny Doe, and Billy Doe, and Fred Doe, and Frank Doe, and Tim Doe, and expect them to take that and give me six slots in August. However, there will not, in all likelihood, there won't be an August academy class. So I would have to have some people in the hopper already. I would need to have people in the pool. And hopefully those people would be the folks who are actually going to push through the whole process. If they're not, there's a certain amount of leeway with that. But the second issue is that that's, you're asking if I had no headcount limit, depending on what the headcount limit is determined to be, I can only advertise for anticipated vacancies. I can't advertise for actual spots. And I'll tell you that people don't want to go through an arduous hiring process for an anticipated vacancy. They want to go through an arduous hiring process with a long background check and a lot of trips to Burlington and interviews on the phone and giving all their friends phone numbers to our investigators and going through a physical test and going through an academic test and going through a psychological test when they know there is a spot for them. And so I can't say anticipate, I can't say anything other than anticipated vacancy until we actually have vacancies. Right now, as I've said before, we are at 85 because I have two people who have turned in their resignations but are still on my books, burning time. And I have one person who is on disability and should be off that disability and approved by the retirement board sometime in the next couple of weeks, I'm hoping. So that would bring us down to 82. And again, if we got 84, then that is two actual spots that I can honestly say are open and we are hiring those spots, not merely anticipated, but those spots. If it's 82, as was the recommendation of this body, then I can't do that. I still have to say it is only anticipated and that will minimize my ability to build a pool. But I will be building a pool in order to try to get names ready for probably February of 2022. We'll see how many we can get, both from our own process and from an allotment by the academy. So the academy has to allot us a certain number first in May and then we'll see if we can fill that number by February. I am very confident we will be well below 74. So even if the headcount doesn't change at that point, we will be able to hire, but as I said, not having the expanded number prevents us from being able to hire vigorously because it is not a conducive environment to recruit people. So that, I hope that was the answer to your question, commissioner. It was not a follow-up, but I see DC Libreck has a hand up. Yeah, I just would like to say that there will not be an August academy. The academy itself takes 16 weeks plus four weeks of post-basic, which is a total of 20 weeks, which would be at least five months. So that will put them into the October timeframe. And most likely they will, at this point, when I spoke to Cindy, who's had a training down there, they most likely will reset and there won't be another academy class till February of 2022. There's just no way to squeeze in another academy and it will just keep offsetting all their academies. So they're going to have to some point because of COVID reset and go back to two academies. And this looks like it'll probably be the year when they just have one academy. The other thing right now, and I don't know when she doesn't know when this will change, is they're limited to 30 recruits because of COVID. They can't double up the rooms. So they have a total of 30 rooms and that's going to play a large factor right now. Thank you. Thank you. So if I can follow up, Chair Gamash really quickly. So you don't anticipate the number of recruits at the next academy being larger to make up for the fact there's only anticipated to be one in 2021? I do not. I don't anticipate that because we're not going to be the only agency that is seeking to have additional recruits. There are going to be a number of it. If there is not another, as both I have said and as DC LeBreck has just confirmed is likely, there are going to be a number of agencies clamoring for larger than usual cohorts and allotments. And under the current structure, none of them, not all of them can be accommodated. So we do have some degree of hope and expectation that changes in Montpelier may result in some new ways of putting people through a police academy. It has long been something that I have thought necessary for us to have an option that is not an overnight and is not necessarily quite as paramilitarily structured as the current police academy. There was a good effort made to identify and create such a program at Champlain that has not really gotten fully off the ground, but there was initial support and some initial thoughts about it. And the moment may be such now that there is more willingness at the state level to condone and approve such a change. It would certainly open up new avenues of recruitment to us. There are plenty of people who simply cannot spend weeks away from family and obligations in order to go to Pittsburgh. I think we are losing out on single parents, particularly single mothers. I think we are losing out on certain demographics that we want in our policing, particularly in this city. And I think that any opportunity to change that in order to access those different populations and bring them into the profession would be a positive change. But it's going to have to occur at a state level. And this may be a moment for such a change to start being formed. Thank you. Last quick question. Do we have anybody at the May academy or place in mind the May academy class? No, we do not. We are not allowed to hire until we get to 74. Thank you. Any further questions or comments for the chiefs? In regards to the report. I am not seeing or hearing. I'm sorry. Sorry. I just have one more question then. So with the serious incident data that you were giving us, those I do not include incidents that are responded to primarily by UVM campus police. Is that correct? No, none. That is entirely BPD data. That is all Burlington and Burlington police department data. I'm not counting response by the fire department. I'm not counting response by UVM police. I'm not counting response if it does happen in the city by other entities, whether they're federal or not. If there is a Burlington police officer at such an incident, it may get logged into our system that an officer assisted South Burlington in making an apprehension at the, you know, they followed somebody off 189 into the parking lot at market 32 and an officer went and assisted with that. That may be in there as a certain kind of call, but there is, but otherwise no, that is Burlington only. Thank you. All right. Thank you for that. Moving on to agenda item 5.03, which is approve the updated role of the police commission. And so, so she next I believe added to this and I think it's just removing one word. So I'll just let you explain it better than I can. So if you all may recall a couple of months ago when deputy chief LeBrecht was going through the monthly use of force incidents, we paused and reflected that it would be more appropriate if we did that in open meeting and the chiefs agreed, but chief me read pointed out that the policy we have and I'm going to share my screen if I may. Okay, hopefully you're seeing a policy with highlighting on it. Okay, thank you. So this is the policy that we approved in August and deputy chief mirad rightfully pointed out that in it, it states the chief of police or his or designee will report to the police commission in executive session. So very quickly, we just we got it, we wanted to get approval from the city attorney as to whether there was any reason we couldn't remove that I spoke with her she said that that was fine to remove that language. And then I did hear from joy today as well and she recommended that we consider this language. But I'm not sure it's necessary and I think joy is on this is in this meeting. I'm thinking it's not necessary if we're just getting demographics in our monthly report, I don't think it would matter that there is that we're getting that basic information about every case but I so I think we're fine with removing in executive session and not doing this carve out but certainly if joy wants to add to the discussion or any commissioners feel differently or the chief I would welcome a discussion about that. Otherwise I'd be looking for a motion just to approve the policy with this in executive session removed and it wouldn't have this language here and I think I'm fine with you joy I'm so sorry it's hard to hear sorry yeah I'm sorry joy sounds like you're really far away my apologies I'm having some technical problems better you're okay so if I'm hearing you're fine with us not doing the red language right yes okay thank you that we heard okay so that's it that's once we have this then deputy chief LeBrecht can present to us in our meetings so that's all we need to do Stephanie a motion to approve the change in language I second that motion I'm sorry um any any discussion not hearing any I second that motion all in favor of amending the roll please commission raise your hand or say aye aye and that passes unanimously moving on to agenda item 5.04 you support incident report and for this I'll give the floor to deputy chief LeBrecht thank you uh commissioner chair there for the month of December which is where we left off there were only three use of force reports done the first was an agency assist to the us marshals where we arrested a wanted subject on a federal probation violation there was one officer from bpd that assisted the officer did point his weapon at a 42 year old white male the officer in the arrestee were not injured uh and once again just the synopsis the bpd officer was assisting us marshals and taking wanted subject from inside a residence the officer had to make entry into the residence as the male had refused to come out the second incident was a unlawful mischief and a protective custody incident officers were dispatched to that there was a complainant who called about an intoxicated male who had smashed a hole in a wall of his ex-girlfriend the male was issued a citation for unlawful mischief and was deemed incapacitated by the officers the male actively resisted when officers attempted to take him into protective custody there were two officers involved officer one gave verbal direction uh ordered verbal directions to the uh suspect and then used uh empty hand controls the other officer also used verbal direction advised them uh that they were in protective custody uh then used a handcuffed control technique and um also the another type of use of force called other when he pulled the arm out from under the subject was a 20 year old white male neither the officer or the arrestees were injured and the last one was an arrest for an aggravated assault disorderly conduct and unlawful mischief the officers were dispatched that means there was a complainant who called in only one officer used force officer one used verbal direction to advise the subject they were under arrest the and and then used um empty hand controls he grabbed the person uh it's a 33 year old white male the officer and arrestee were not injured the arrestee was found to be under the influence of drugs and alcohol he had assaulted two subjects with a baseball bat and fists inside and vandalized a motor vehicle vandalized furniture inside a residence he tried to flee on a bicycle the officers chased the officer chased him on foot at one point the male made a gesture with his hand saying I have a effing gun officer was able to take the arrestee into custody so he basically was able to grab him and he fell off the bike uh there was no gun that was located on the arrestee and that was it for December thank you for the December update um do we have um uh do we have an update for use for this is for the month of january so far uh I I do not I had um I have that on another document but I don't have that document with me I just had done the obviously the previous month um I can have that ready for the next uh commission meeting if you'd like I'll be much appreciated are there any commissioners that have any questions comments or concerns regarding this uh use of force incident report not hearing any um so with that um moving on to agenda item 5.05 which is uh bpd social media and this is in response um I know this has been uh what we've talked about this previously before but this is actually in response to uh the insurrection in the capital and I'll with that I'll let um commissioner seguino um take the floor thank you I'm sorry you are you're muted yeah um as many of you know uh a state trooper uh recently resigned as a result of having been found with social media comment that was um supportive of the insurrection in washington more generally um you know given the rise of what I would call white supremacist groups uh a question that I have for the chief is whether in fact the social media accounts of police officers are reviewed especially in light of what has happened recently uh just want to say that um uh I was I'm on the fair and impartial police and committee of the state police and this was an issue of discussion last night as well and many of you may have seen a recent article in the new york times in which there is a broad trend across the country for police chiefs to um ensure that to to review social media accounts to identify bigoted speech and possibly um consequences as a result of that so um oppose it as a question for discussion but also would appreciate um asking the chief whether in fact he has conducted such a root review and how they do address the possibly address the issue of ensuring um that we are um that our police force is not comprised of folks with these kinds of white supremacist associations or engaged in bigoted speech I believe that was a question directed at one of the chiefs if any if either one of y'all would like to answer that we do uh request social media accountings during our background checks we look at uh candidates social media accounts I don't believe that we can actually compel that anymore I'd refer that question to joy but I believe that the city attorney's office instructed us that we cannot compel people to produce their social media accounts for us but we do do it as a routine aspect of background checks um we do not then monitor employees we don't monitor employees private social speech uh to the extent that we would become aware of these kinds of things there are a number of directives that give us the ability to uh after the fact take action against an employee for speech but prior restraint is unconstitutional and it is not something that we have the bandwidth to practice nor have I seen thus far the need that would be changed obviously if we were to see somebody's if we were to get indications of other people's activities the city does have a pretty strong social media policy now I think we all know where it came from and the situation that gave rise to it that is our social media policy as well and in so far as additional rules we have the rules of conduct conduct on becoming of expectations of on-duty and off-duty propriety that are spelled out in ddo1 our first directive our most important directive and the rules that are there which are a much stronger level of articulated expectation than even other directives with their policy ordinances thank thank you um commissioner derpy is joy still joy has her technical difficulties but joy is can you uh just confirm I mean I I trust what I'm hearing but can you confirm that that that that's the way the city operates that we is chief mirad um uh discover or um can you guys hear me yes yeah so anyway I just I'm just wanting I didn't hear joy say yes that is the case um you know for I'm not I'm new but I remember a school employee doing it um around when trump was elected an official that was on the school board and I remember talking about it and so I'm just curious about um I know we all read the city's policy but just want to know confirm that that's something that the police department cannot do yeah and I would I would agree that what your answer is correct okay thank you if I may offer clarity the directive one states uh as a law enforcement officer my fundal my excuse me I will keep my private life unsullied as an example to all and will behave in a manner that does not bring this credit to me or my agency that is a component of the code of ethics that is a part of deputy excuse me of department directive one and so that is is one example of how we do have an ability to expect certain kinds of behavior from officers commissioner heart thank you as part of the article that I believe Stephanie is referring to commissioners we is referring to there were some efforts made also by various chiefs around the country and various departments around the country to uh proactively remind their officers about not only expectations regarding social media use but also expectations surrounding uh kind of I'll say general issues of professionalism especially with respect to um kind of supporting the proper functioning of government etc uh has any have any such efforts been made in bpd to correctly remind officers both of the social media policy and also expectations surrounding you know supporting certain kinds of speech without engaging in the kinds of speech etc I made very clear at the beginning of the autumn as we ramped up into this presidential election cycle that officers are expected to remain impartial I believe I shared some communications with uh with commissioner derpy after also another incident involving an officer in the Berlin police department in I guess and and shared some with her I've had other communications internally to remind officers that yes we are expected to remain impartial there are strict rules for what we can and cannot say with regard to political content particularly in uniform um and when we get to other areas what we're talking about is you know active support of of criminality if if you're supporting if you are expressing support for the riot at the capital and the incursion into the capital that is a support of criminality that's that's not allowed that actually that actively goes outside if you are expressing support for a political candidate that is different commissioner saguina chief mirad so you did this in the fall uh does it make sense to do it now in light of uh the january sixth incident and I think it you know actually given the constraints of course on reviewing social media accounts that a message from leadership at times like this uh especially as regards the kinds of things that happened in dc which is different from the political support issue um is that something that you could do I released a public statement about what happened in washington dc that went to all of the members of the police department and I believe that other executives excuse me department leaders have had comments at roll calls dc uh dc lebrecht do you want to um yes I I just wanted to yes thank you mr chair I just want to comment that I was able to speak in roll calls and into the detective service bureau addressing the issues around what happened with the trooper and remind everybody of the policy and uh and what we expect our expectations as well as the email that was sent out by the chief thank you thank thank you any further questions or comments regarding regarding this uh agenda item I'll just make a quick comment I did see the email that went out um I think the chief's email was one of the first uh city emails that I got um when the insurrection was actually when when things were um you know it was pretty close to it was one of the quickest emails and it was very strong um but I I think um hearing uh dc lebrecht say you know I I've talked and hearing the chief say yes and and we've had these conversations and this is what we've done is is at least what you know I wondered of course I I didn't really wonder because I saw the email but I did what you just kind of want to close the loop on it and say you know did we do everything that we possibly could um so I just I felt like I just wanted to add that to what Stephanie was saying and um it certainly was one of the most jarring things any of us I don't think any of us on this call um would make light of it it's just you know I think it's our due diligence to just circle back and ask the question and say you know do have or have we you know because I know that's that was the first thing I thought was like I wonder if anybody here you know or anybody in Vermont is gone and then you know two minutes later I'm seeing people on a bus headed down there so thank you for your response to that question awesome any further questions or comments not seeing or hearing any moving on to agenda item 5.06 city innovation office data reports schedule um so I am going to let's um precious to Guino um kind of explain this one uh as she did all the heavy lifting um of putting this document together um so yeah floor is yours thanks uh just to explain the process I met with um Brian Lowe and Nancy Stetson with the chief as well as um director Dodson to talk through the issues had a second meeting with the chief and director Dodson consulted got input from all of the commissioners and I'm hopeful that this motion represents the uh unanimous view of the commission about the reports and I believe um Brian Lowe is here that we have worked out with you uh some changes that that you requested to make your jobs easier um so that's where we are that's what that represents is that consultation awesome uh so aside uh Brian do you have any uh further questions or comments for us right now no further questions or comments uh thank you to commissioners Guino for um a lot of work kind of helping organize this and thank you to the commission um for taking really seriously the requests from our office last time of you know we really want to have a standard reporting procedure here um we think this brings us much closer to that and our and our grateful for that um I do think I should acknowledge to the commission that there are certain areas as we talked about with Professor Seglino where if the data doesn't currently exist or if there are um kind of definitional discussions that need to happen about you know what is the pedestrian stop and how do you define that those are things that the police department and the police commission I think need to kind of continue to work on directly it's not really something that we can weigh in in a helpful way um on um but with those kind of caveats of needing the data and needing to be able to measure it um I think we're eager to do this work so um yeah just thank you awesome thank you uh so with that I'll entertain a motion I'll uh make the motion to adopt the uh reporting schedule and detail and um types of data that we're requesting do it seconded by Commissioner Hart any any discussion not seeing any all in favor raise your hand or say aye aye that passes unanimously sorry Chair Gommas who was the second was it Commissioner Hart or Hart was it Hart with a T sorry thank you sorry all right moving on then to agenda item oh wait sorry uh the amended agenda um and I my most sincere apologies the exact uh wording of that uh agenda item I am forgetting so uh sorry uh commission's great could you help me help me out again uh to discuss the uh issue of uh video availability around the January 7th incident yes awesome uh so it seems it seems like it seemed like to me that we might not have all watched the same video or maybe not I know myself I know the commissioners are present with me um I believe saw the three videos uh in relation to the incident and uh I guess wondering is is there a way possible that I know it's COVID time so it's hard for us to cope the guy to go in easily to to kind of just go in there and check out video like we normally did before but there must be a way we can kind of make this a little bit easier and better for all of us to obtain um um footage to watch this and I guess I'd be happy to entertain ways we can uh how that would look and um how to make this happen can make sure so we know yeah uh seeing that my audio one okay uh I for me the issue is broader than that and that is that uh not all of the videos were shared with us and it would seem to me that there was the officer video who initially engaged uh the person in the incident the second officer who arrived but there is another video by uh officer netto I learned today that there is a fourth video that I haven't seen uh and I spoke to director Dodson about this in order to obtain these videos it was my understanding that given that these videos would be shared with the commission all of them would be shared and I would like to add to that the dispatchers audio call as well and any any videos or audio associated with these incidents and director Dodson suggested to me that perhaps that what is actually needed as a directive from the commission to clarify what is uh what should be shared automatically with the commission rather than uh than than having partial viewing of available available videos and I just want to say that I think it's important that we see all of the videos that we see we hear the dispatchers call to the officer and that we hear the audio of uh officers call for backup uh so uh I'll just put that out there as a point of discussion or uh wondering and hopefully to move to a point where we can clarify to the chief that that is what we are expecting for these incidents I have commissioner grant followed by commissioner harp thank you so um just following up on what was just said I wanted to rewatch uh the video um that uh three of us saw together and I also wanted to watch other video that was available so I received the or the one that we watched together uh one of my concerns was that at the end of it there is a block of time where there is no audio so my first question is about that video and the fact that there is no audio and is is that a defect on the disc that I got or or what or was that edited out for some reason if you're done with the question I'll allow the the chiefs to respond to that yes if the chief could respond to that first question I'd appreciate it thank you I I did send an email to somebody I can't recall I thought it was that was that was just me I believe it was just me um I I thought the commissioner grant was on that as well we do not edit videos what you're seeing is uh an audio um change that the the officers can turn their video to what is called conference mode and that turns the audio off it's not dissimilar we also you'll note that that audio does not be there's not audio in the beginning the way the axon camera works is this uh when it is constantly on and constantly buffering and overwriting its own video and when an officer double taps the device in order to start it it goes back in time usually about 30 seconds depends sometimes it's shorter sometimes it's never longer but sometimes it's shorter but it goes back in time to its buffer zone and well you will not hear audio with that buffer zone and the rationale for it is this I am talking with my partner in my uh in my cruiser and it is we are discussing private matters about our his his ongoing uh you know marital troubles and we witness a an incident that is something that that uh causes us to say oh we want to look into that or we need to take police action or we get a call that says you need to go here and you need to go there fast and so we tap it it begins we now know we're not talking about his marital troubles anymore uh the we are now in business for whatever it is that's in front of us um the the the camera goes back for without audio so it can't capture that but it can capture if it were a call uh into our car saying go to this location and go there fast it doesn't capture anything but if if we saw something that caused us to turn that on because we saw a behavior or the beginning of a fight or somebody came running out of a building bloody and I tap it I am now going to get that precipitating event not with audio but the visual of that precipitating event and so we can go back in time so when we see for example the video that you requested and I gave you both videos that you requested commissioner grant you requested to see I'm I'm sorry I just want to clarify something I'm not talking about the beginning I'm talking about and I was going to explain that okay um so in in in officer burned video you'll note that there is no sound until he gets out of the car and that's because when he gets out of the car is when he actually taps it you can see his hand come up in front of the video as well and then he engages with the gentleman and the gentleman refuses to stop and is immediately escalated and belligerent towards him um the and he explains twice why well we can we can get into that in a moment but I want to I want to take it when he does later you can turn off the sound of the video in order to go into what is called conference and that is so that you can discuss matters that are going to be uh that are about witness identifications that are about statements that are being made it's not to be used during the actual incident and in fact it's not you'd have to you have to do another thing so not only would I tap it as I jump out of the car to deal with this situation that's unfolding right in front of me I would then have to manipulate a different uh button that is more difficult to start and stop so that's not when it is it's for after when you are having discussions about uh either operational matters or tactical matters or witness matters or investigatory matters and our directive provides for it and does allow for it um and uh other than that uh you can then turn the video off at certain points as well but normally you wouldn't consider it to be best practice especially after an incident like that to keep it on no not if he's not if he has a reason to be to turn it off and he has it on for some period of time and then he turns it off for uh to go to conference now with regard to the other video that you asked for two you asked for that one and you asked for the one that had not yet been downloaded at the time we watched that one was uh was not activated by the officer and it became activated when it was picked up so what happened is it fell out because of the fight when the subject assaulted the officer it punched her in the head twice it fell off sometime during that altercation fell into a snow bank it was not activated when an officer went to pick it up that officer he or she must have double tapped it and it turned on and then that officer looked at it realized it was on and turned it off because it wasn't his uh device they're not going to keep it rolling in their hand and whatever's on it is on it we cannot well essentially there's nothing on that one but to the regard I just want to make it very clear that I feel that once an officer has been called they can get that body cam on I mean when she got to that incident she was out the door and she was on um that young man and my I really feel that that she could have had that on earlier if she had turned it on when she was in the car um so I do want that taken under consideration how many officers ended up being on the scene was it four I'm not certain how many total I believe there were uh we five were on scene and then two additional there others associated with the incident but what the but what the allegation is is the allegation was that it was an improper stop and it was an improper use of force and our agreement is that video having to do with the allegation is to be shared and materials having to do with the allegation are to be shared in that sense only officer burns was fully relevant to that allegation and officer allerys would have been had it been activated other video contains witness interviews for an ongoing criminal matter against a juvenile I am not going to share those um so I would so what you're saying is you would not allow us to see everything that is available relevant to that incident I did everything that is relevant to the everything that is relevant to the allegation which is what which is what the agreement states was provided to you and coming into the building in order to see for example that to see that is is that's the the allegation was that it was an improper stop and that it was a improper use of force now I know we had a disagreement the day that I came in to watch that footage um I found the footage to be pretty upsetting I was upset at at everyone who got her I I appreciate that people were hurt so I want to make that very very clear um my first instinct was you know you firmly disagreed with my first instinct I I kind of was made to feel some kind of way and it really the reason I wanted to come back and watch it is because it just weighed on me heavily and watching that video again I still believe my first instinct was that the officer moved a little bit too quickly to put his hands on this young man now I understand that it's a valid call I understand that the person who made the call had that young man in his sight at all times because that is something that people get concerned about um is about random stops and profiling so I understand that that was not a you know it wasn't a random stop my issue is that within seconds of getting out of the car he already has his hands on and then immediately that young man is defensive and he has his hands on him before he even says that he is detaining him so if you go back and look at he doesn't mention being detained on it because young man's backing off he's he's moving his body in a way because he doesn't want the officer's hands on him and then the officer starts to say well I'm detaining you or something to that effect and then the young man's like why and but the officer's still like reaching for him and then it just it just yeah it just is a bra it becomes uh I mean I feel like I just watched a bra um and I just need I feel that when we because the general assumption is that this young man was ever going to comply he wasn't going to comply and when I'm looking at that I'm like he wasn't given the chance now maybe in the end he wouldn't have complied but I think when we talk about de-escalation when we talk about uh sometimes de-escalation is is not rushing to escalate he could have the officer could have tried to talk to him further I feel I mean considering how quick the hands went on him right out of getting that car it was like what 30 seconds so I I just feel that we have to think about that we have to think about how quick some of the officers are to just put their hands on people and I just I just it just to me just not something altogether right there and I think it can be a form of profiling if you're going to say well I just know this individual isn't going to comply you know just the way they're acting and then he just got more and more angry the young man got more angry and then the swearing started then the fighting started and and then the whole being the tasering and the officers getting hurt the young man getting hurt and I'm sure that everyone's got trauma related to that how are you going to act after something like that happens you know you're not going to be the same um I I just want to express those concerns because I think that I feel like it's being pushed under the rug a little bit too much I feel he's got out of there in within seconds before telling him was to chain put his hands on him and not just that that just that's gladed it I just think there was some things on there that were not necessary and I would like I I don't think it's right that we can't see everything from all the officers that were there I understand what your point of view is but I just want to state publicly that I've got a problem with that thank you so those descriptions are not entirely accurate I understand that you feel that way I'm operating on what I actually see in the video and what I understand to be happening owing to the training that the officer does and the law that he has when he's telling a person can you stop and then saying he does in fact tell the individual that he's being stopped for burglary he says burglary twice he does not put hands on the individual until the individual refuses to stop when an officer in uniform from a getting out of a of a of a marked police car tells a person who is walking away from the scene of a crime that that person knows he has just committed to stop and that person doesn't stop the officer does have a right to physically stop the individual that is the nature of a detention a lawful detention is one in which the person cannot walk away they do not have that right it is no different than when we are in a police car and conducting a traffic stop lights are illuminated the car in front doesn't get the luxury of an explanation what did I do I demand that this person tell me that I did x or y before I pull over you pull over that is how that is the law and in so far as the escalation it is the young man's escalation the officer gets out and says I would like to talk to you I am detaining you the man says no the man pretends not to know what he is there for he knows what he's there for he knows where he has just come from and what he has just done and the officer is immediately thrust in a position of addressing a belligerent and uncooperative subject then he put his hands on him by strangling him he was detaining him by strangling him he put his hands the officer put his hands on him before telling him he was detaining him the whole thing is messed up the whole thing is messed up of course when it starts to to you know escalate and then the swearing and then the you know the first of its movement not to be touched you know and yelling don't with the expletives touch me in the touching and then it's just it just escalates to full-blown and yes at that point of course officers have a right to protect themselves at that point but I'm like more than just protecting themselves I know but what I'm saying is in the beginning and we can say yeah you know what he did we can say all of that what I'm saying we need to talk about the the standard like I feel like I don't want like a you know a lowest common denominator I just or not even at the lowest common denominator I'm just saying that he had his hand on him before he said he was uh detaining him and I feel that that should have been stated first I just think to say to to stop I just don't that's not I think you need to say he was detaining him why he was detaining him and I just think if that is I think that just sets up situations that can get out of hand and that and that's my concern and I just that's my that was my gut I was like whoa that was fast these hands are right on him you know and and I feel that way and I feel that way very very strongly and I'm just saying it's something that you need to think about that your officers need to think about because we know and we don't know why we don't know why he had well actually I'm not going to say that I can say I can speculate why but he very very very clearly was not in a state where and maybe it's not obviously maybe it could have been somebody else but to be physically touched from the get-go was a huge issue and then when he says why are you stopping now I'll go listen to it again to hear exactly you know because it moves so quickly but out the gate within seconds his hands were on him before he said he was detaining him thank you I believe I had Randall that was after Milo and then Karen after that followed by Stephanie thank you and I actually would like some I mean my question will not speak to this I'd like some guidance about what which discussions are probably for executive session in which discussions are for open sessions my understanding that for discussions which might potentially involve officer discipline those discussions should be held should be reserved for executive session but I said if I'm wrong about that I welcome that guidance but I said so I'll ask my other question and someone can respond to that if they so choose my other question is just with respect to the the capabilities of the the axon body cameras so it was my understanding so I'm actually just learning about conference mode just now for the first time I was my understanding that that the axon body one cameras had essentially three operation operating modes one was just standby one snack and recording and one which is powered off and and so the the the department directive that we have which governs the use of recording devices uh stipulates those three modes it doesn't stipulate conference mode and so it you know so that that department directive indicates very clearly when officers are to be recording it does not indicate very clear I mean it does indicate that certain materials do not need to be recorded it indicates that you know discussions among officers do not need to be recorded but it doesn't it doesn't specify when conference mode can be activated and when it doesn't when it can't and since it doesn't specify that as one of the the operating modes of the body one camera I think that that is uh something which is the problem with the department directive and I'm not sure that I want to make sure that officers have very clear guidance about when they can put a camera into conference mode um and I think that that would be a matter for the for the the police commission to discuss with the chiefs is when exactly officers are to be instructed that if you miss the put cameras in conference mode when not because there is going to be a concern that um they might be put into conference mode too easily too quickly uh yeah I see I'm happy to have your response DD 14.1 body worn camera systems says in uh section 5D once activated body worn camera should remain on through the duration of an incident or citizen contact unless and number two is a BWC body worn camera is muted on scene conferences between officers supervisors advocates mental health clinicians fire an emergency medical personnel doctors nurses or others discussing confidential medical information or investigative strategy methodology because the officer determines that the disclosure of that conference would violate confidentiality privacy or other individual rights comprise this or future investigations or otherwise impede law enforcement efforts yes and so like I said so earlier in that same director fortune put one it you know it indicates that there are three modes for the camera not for um and it says they have to remain on except for these certain circumstances and it does say that because it's like I acknowledge there are exceptions for when audio can be turned off but that's all that that's all that happened is in this is that the audio was turned off and so to the extent that if if I'm confusing matters by calling conference mode it's not a mode there are three modes there is active there is off and there is inactive buffering but conferences is not a mode then it is a sort of subcategory of activated okay so I mean so I think there is I think it is reasonable for the commission to worry that if officers engage in a two liberal use of muting the audio that there will be no kind of capacity for the commission or for anyone auditing that video that footage later on to know whether or not that was done appropriately or not and given that as my you know as I understand this is a kind of a very significant portion of the end of the recording which was which had the audio turned off I think there you know there will be a concern that you know essentially how are we as the commission to know whether that was done appropriately or inappropriately given that the evidence that we would have for it being done appropriately is in fact you know removed by the fact that the auditors turned off in the first place so go ahead that is that is a very good question I'll say that it that the putting it on conference boat has nothing to do with the ability to determine whether or not this incident was proper the allegation is about the stop and about the use of force and the conference mode is activated long after both of those are done and the use of force is not fully able to be seen because of the aggression with which the subject resists and assaults the officers so body camera again I'm going to defer a further discussion of what can be discussed and open versus executive session I'm not looking to talk about the incident right now at all I'm just looking to talk about the general guidance for officers running when they're when they can they can mute audio and how you know whether there's any capacity for the for a police mission or any other any other body later on to know whether that was done appropriately so we could certainly I mean I can dial you into more precise aspects of what our axon training is with regard to conference but it's it's what the directive spells out and those are supposed to be the parameters for it and and they are potentially broad parameters the the notion of of ensuring that it is minimized is something that I think we can certainly remind officers of it is something that's that's discussed it's supposed to be used sparingly it generally is I think that when I have occasion and I'm not allowed to just watch body camera without a reason so our contract prevents randomized auditing of body camera but when I do have occasion to watch video I don't see overuse of it in this instance it does happen for a while unclear and can certainly check into that it also we have an unusual instance in which the second body camera wasn't activated in that but that too is there is an allowance for that in the directive it is acknowledged that that may occur at times if we see a pattern of such behavior we would have a real issue ditto if we saw a pattern of going to long and drawn out conference um I I yeah same thing so so this so this essentially is my I mean that actually speaks to my concern and I have but I'll go I know the other hand so I'll say this now I'll let someone else jump in and I might come back if there's time for you but given that access to the body or camera footage is as restricted as it is it's not clear to me that there need to be an exception made for conferences given that as you say that you're not allowed to audit that footage without having a reason that you know that that footage is not available widely to the public without a reason and so the need to keep officer conferences from being recorded it's not clear to me why that reason exists and so I like it exists for discovery purposes in law and I think deputy chief Sullivan can clarify that further but it's about discovery and it's about all of this gets handed over to a defense attorney and if there is a material there that is either strategic or has to do with witnesses or confidential informants that information may very well be ultimately disclosed to a defense attorney but it's not the job of the body camera to do that when the body camera can't be edited so I see I like a little bit more guidance on that so if if there is material on on a body cam footage which is which is not what you are not legally required to turn over that cannot be removed prior to handing it over no is that correct that's correct okay thank you I will yeah I'll I'll look for more. Deputy Chief Sullivan did you have something I apologize Mr. Chair um but I'm I was gonna keep I was gonna keep this going just because uh Commissioner Durfee's been waiting for a while to get into the queue so Commissioner Durfee and then I'll let uh I want to clarify that we Deputy Chief you got to weigh in on these Chief Sullivan uh we do redact them we can redact we certainly redact for media requests redacting for for law for for discovery purposes is much rarer can I just briefly speak to the conference mode yes you can so so at this point in the video with this specific incident it's actually activated when the officer is speaking with other officers and and the allowance is really for after an incident such as this or many other incidents involving a criminal investigation the officers will be talking about the investigation itself and bouncing ideas off each other and so that is privileged information they may be talking to their supervisor saying hey this is what I have and the supervisor is is giving them advice and that's why that exists in this instance quite frankly I think the officer forgets due to the stress of the incident that the axon body camera is on as he drives back to the police department it's just on left on in conference mode and hence why you see such a long period of time without audio uh on the video associated with this officer well I saw pardon for jumping in a moment just to clarify there is a long period of time where multiple officers are talking right after the incident so that is where I was expressing my concern so I just wanted to clarify that thank you thank you uh commissioner derpy yeah so I just want to jump in here I'm not comfortable with the back and forth I'm not comfortable with the escalated nature of things that my understanding with is that if anything in this meeting can result in officer discipline um that we should be discussing it in executive session and I want clarification on that I think randall is going to ask that as well um well I don't mind talking reviewing certain incidents but I think the back and forth between the chief and commissioner grant discussing what officers did and didn't do is something we would generally keep in executive session thank you uh commissioner saguino um commissioner but Gamasha as I understand that you received permission from state's attorney sir george for us to discuss this in open meeting we did I did sorry okay uh so a few things um let me start with the um the issue of the neto uh video my understanding is that includes his discussion with a witness who actually uh was talking about his observations it's we are an oversight body that this is what is is really challenging for me in all of this uh we are an are an oversight body we are civilian oversight body representing community values around policing if we are given access to the one video we should be able to have access to others that put the incident in context especially given the fact that there were uh claims of two assaults on police officers but no body cam video because the body cam videos fell off uh if neto's if neto's uh video in fact addressed that and provided additional information that seems important for us to have I certainly would not mind uh if you know for some reason some of this had to be an executive session but we cannot perform our oversight role if information is withheld from us and so especially given the fact that the body cam video is not available of the assaults that were uh that were uh supposedly happened then then I think then it makes it very clear that we should have the neto video but quite frankly I believe that we should have them all so that we can put this into context it is it seems to me very problematic to have a narrow slice without understanding what happened before what happened after and so on and so forth so I'd like to put that out there um I also want to just mention um there I was deeply troubled by this video uh and the descriptions of the incident um this it certainly appears to me I've taken courses in trauma uh and mental health it certainly appeared to me that the initial interaction with this young 19 year old man who has no criminal record was was in fact uh it indicated he was having a mental health episode and he has given his his background as a new american it's very likely that he has had trauma and his behavior was consistent with the trauma response it is also the case that schizophrenia and bipolar um uh issues their onset is between 18 and 22 years old and so to charge into this incident without recognizing that without entertaining that as a possibility and the behavior of the officers seemed to really escalate him which is very typical if a person has had trauma and and so I I think this incident in many ways speaks to many of the concerns that the community has around mental health in the city and the way that we respond to it that is I I think problematic in a lot of different ways so I won't go on too much longer um but I want to say that I believe that it may behoove us as a commission to have additional conversation about what is available to us in terms of videos I personally was um found it problematic to find out there was a third a fourth video that I haven't even seen or been uh uh it been offered to see I don't you know I don't think that we need to we shouldn't have to explicitly ask you for video four five six and seven but all of them should be presented to us because we are the oversight body and uh we can't do that job if we don't have all of the information thank you thank you commissioner uh any further questions or comments from the commission um I have uh commissioner derphe followed by uh commissioner nipper so just just to clarify um the everything that we're talking about right now is okay because sarah george said before this meeting that um this can be an open session I just want to be sure that I'm right on there uh she told me that we can we can discuss this um in this meeting I specifically asked uh if we could discuss it you know uh on her agenda in our meeting and she said yes you say what this is sorry I'm sorry repeat that uh so when you say we could discuss this what specifically this uh being the the incident from one 107 so I want the the complaint that was filed on 17 so because she's the attorney we're we're good and it's not going to have any repercussions if an officer is disciplined I mean I'm just I I do not I can't answer that question how I can answer that she said we could discuss it what happens afterwards I honestly don't know okay and that's just to be clear that is my concern I I've never seen it so I just wanted to be clear with that I think that um sarah george is probably referencing the impact it might have on any prosecution I do think it is best to keep issues of discipline in executive session so I think she's saying it's fine it won't impact her investigation but I don't think that that extends to any any potential internal discipline I would I would agree with that assumption that uh uh when she emailed me that I believe she's operating under that assumption so then we really should not be in open session discussing this because we this is a brand new incident and we need if it leads to if anything is found um if an officer that was involved is found to be out of bounds and we discussed this in open meeting we we um we could potentially jeopardize the investigation so I think we should oh shireen help me out with the legal terms I don't know you're fine I just had something to follow up with but I will eat my turn I believe it was a commissioner nipper followed by uh commissioner heart yeah I won't comment on anything related to that incident I just wanted to know that if cameras are falling off I mean this probably isn't the first time so something shall obviously be done about that and I don't want to add any paperwork to the process but could it be possible that we write the read like when the officer uploads their footage right they put these in they put them in docs when they get off shift right could they perhaps fill out paperwork and put a reason for why they conferenced you know if it was personal if it was something with the investigation you know just to give a little bit more context from when we view it that's all I got thank you very much for that commissioner heart followed by commissioner heart so on the point of access to videos what we used to do is in administrative in executive session we would all be presented with videos and uh if we wanted to see more than the chief would present it my issue here is that how do we streamline this process so that you don't have seven different commissioners presenting to the police station to see a variety of different videos or so I haven't seen these videos because I maybe mistakenly had assumed that we would be dealing with this in executive session so chief I'm wondering if we can develop something where we all are presented with the same I do think we should have access to whatever access the police commission is seeking on something but I also don't think it's realistic given your demands that seven of us come at seven different times right now to go through this individually so but if one commissioner is asking for four different angles I do think it would have benefit all of us to be seeing the same you know if someone's getting it then I would say if it can be made available to everyone but perhaps um I know the chief at one point had used a private youtube channel to disclose some videos related to an incident but that that would be just something if we can streamline it so that we don't have to go to the station yet the seven of us can get the access at the same time that would be great all right commissioner harp thank you um this is first a statement than a question for chief murad so the statement is um yeah so you know so my understanding of the sort of material that the commission has access to does include any body worn camera footage which is available uh those are part of the written record of a complaint and um the commission has access to the written records um and it would it would surprise me if any body worn camera from any officer that responds on scene to an incident is not considered to be part of the written record because it's not considered to be directly material to the complaint itself or the complaint as it's described so I would think that any um any footage which is available from any of the officers that responded on scene would be part of the record would be available for commissioners upon request um so I can kind of editorial comment really quickly is asking and so I mean I've kind of talked with you about this I believe in the past chief but I mean it it is incumbent upon the commission to be able to essentially file a complaint at any time essentially really so if there are concerns about the way some incident or encounter is handled the commission ought to be able to get insight into that and so you know it's not form it's not filing a formal complaint but it is saying you know I have reason to be concerned about x I would like information about x to make sure that there's nothing inappropriate done so uh so I mean actually I would worry about any attempt to kind of restrict the material that the commission has access to to just mature which is kind of judged to be directly material to the complaint as it's spout outs I would I would like to think the commission has access to more material than that um so let's just say so the question that I have is there was some discussion at some point about getting the commission accounts on the axon system so that we can actually view the material directly I was just wondering if you could update us about whether or not any whether that that is feasible whether the progress has been made on that and you can respond to anything puts them in as well thanks believe uh yeah sorry uh chief me and I believe you was asking you to answer that question so I agree with you about the nature of the materials uh that's what's spelled out in the role of the police commission with regard to complaints against bpd employees I don't agree with regard to seeing material that has to do with witness statements for an ongoing criminal investigation especially one involving a juvenile and I I'm afraid I'm not going to take a hearsay third party uh rescinding of the state's attorneys prerogative not to have that discussed and I'm sure she meant to discuss the matter but not to make specific uh you know usage of it not to share witness statements etc I would want clarification from her about that uh and so that's what distinguishes the uh video from the others again and it does not have to do with the precipitate event it doesn't show what what caused the event nor does it show the event itself um we did watch another officer's video during the meeting that we had here um that was Officer Hartnitz that wasn't included in the video that was given because it wasn't the video that was requested the video that was requested on the two discs was very simply the video that had been watched from the officer and the one that hadn't been uploaded yet both of those were provided and I appreciate very much both Commissioner Durfee and Commissioner Hart saying that this these are these are resource drains to go back and forth again and again to give material because somebody says well that's not the one I meant I wanted this one instead I provided what was requested and um and when we go if we go into executive session tonight we can all watch uh the the videos that we have that have already been shared together um with regard to axon uh we are working on that I think Deputy Chief Sullivan may have some information about that uh let Chief Sullivan answer that followed by Commissioner Durfee followed by Commissioner Grant followed by Commissioner Hart so our our thought with the axon is it comes down to licenses and I believe we have enough to issue each commissioner a license now what would happen with that is you would not have access to all the videos we would have to share specific videos with you and then each commissioner would be able to log on and view those videos at home through their own device thank you Commissioner Durfee I'm just um looking at my notes I'm sorry I'm is there a way um you know I agree with Commissioner Seguino's comments and um you know I understand the frustration of finding out you know there's other video um of you know other there may be other relevant video and so I was thinking you know because I just think very simply that you know if there is something of this nature um what determines whether what what videos we see because I would know what to request I would myself I would say I'd like to see all video related to this incident and I'd be willing to to wait um for that to be compiled and that way there you know I'm seeing everything so you know for for something to show up after the fact um it isn't it's never good but if I was requesting to see and I'm I'm making the assumption as a commissioner every time I go and see it that that's that's the video of the incident you know I mean it just it seems very simple to me so if someone else you know is around and I'm trying to avoid saying specific things but um that there was another um video that was uh certainly and and there's a there's a problem too with with the the police deciding this wasn't important so you don't need to see it um that that's I think what I'm hearing here is you you really for us to provide oversight um we can't be saying oh okay we're good with that we don't need to see that good cool so is there a way that you know we can ask the folks that provide the oversight just see all relevant video and have a definition of relevancy that includes you know different angles of the incident you know different officers you know what I I guess I want to understand how do you determine which videos are relevant and which videos aren't and is there a way that we could just see anything relevant uh commissioner if you do you want um uh chief merit to answer your question I would like that but I I defer to you chair gomash well he said you want to hear the answers uh let chief merit answer the question followed by commissioner grant and harp so I believe that actually uh dc sullivan made some of these videos offered to show some of these videos with commissioner seguino and commissioner seguino didn't want to at the time um the videos that we shared in the when some of the commissioners came to the building were the ones that are that were the the fullest picture of it had there been other videos that showed the complaint they absolutely would have been shared because that is what it states in the role of the police commission and burlington police department employee complaint it states very clearly that it is about the uh that it is anything I'm sorry I'm looking forward here uh any other information related to the allegation and again the allegation was improper stop and improper use of force and so officers who arrive after all of that has happened that is not relevant information now if there was nothing in it that was substantive to a criminal investigation I wouldn't have no objection to sharing it with you even though it's not relevant but if there is material in it that is relevant to a criminal investigation then I am going to be careful about which parts of that it are distributed and so again because it wasn't the initial event about which the allegation was made it's all after the fact officers arriving after the fact don't have anything to do with the incident that is contained in the allegation so that answers my question I mean I'm not trying to cut you off but I I the the sentence that you gave other information related to the allegation um you know I again I think it's for for us and some of the things that I've heard it's more about wanting to get to a place where uh you know police are not seen overseeing um or you know perceptively hiding things and having a solid but you know I know I I see the body language there but just let's just for a second if we had um you know clear policy I'm always going to say that then um some of the some of these things wouldn't come up some of them will but you know again and it sounds like that you know if if it's not related to the complaint we're not going to see it um if we said to you uh it was anybody else around are we able to see you know were there any other officers on the scene that might provide another angle could we would be able to see that you know um you would just say you know I think this this is gonna this this footage is not for you to see because if they could leave it's about another in criminal investigation so it's not something that we would we would be able to see right because I don't want to walk around saying I I can see redacted unredacted footage you know at my at my request when in fact I'm not really able to do that because it's just not relevant uh DC Sullivan are you looking to answer pressure derpy's question uh comment yeah just just a just a really brief comment I mean the only other the only other concern that I have is that we really need to be cognizant of respecting people's right to privacy so although it wasn't the case in this incident if for example videos were recorded in somebody's home or are also victims rights um as far as capturing certain um images that that might traumatize a victim and then sharing that I think we need to be very respectful and cautious um as far as those specific topics go thank you I believe uh Christian Grant was uh our hand was raised before do you still have a question well I guess just more of a statement and my concern that and I hear what the chief is saying uh to only provide video for what was relevant and the reason I raised my concern was it seemed to me that due to the number of officers and I'm not talking about the officers got there at the end it seemed to me that somebody else was there as well before everything was over you know and it was hard it was hard because you had you had one officer didn't have her body cam footage on you had the other officer who during the course of the struggle the camera ended up in the snow so my request was I asked for at the time what I assumed based on the information I'd been given were the only two and then I'm feeling like well there's more and now yeah there is more but it's not considered to be relevant to what the complaint was and I guess uh at this point I have no choice but to agree to disagree because I have a deep concern that it might be thank you thank you uh Christian Saguino thank you oh sorry uh so we don't follow Christian heart my bald is were you going Randall I don't know he said Saguino followed by Hartford oh okay oh I can just uh I I want to go back to this issue uh I first of all I think there's probably additional discussion amongst the commission on some of these issues but simply in terms of an incident I think that you know I would assume Chief Murad that you want to be transparent and build trust with the community and it seems to me that the best way to do that if you're in an incident like this is to say you know there are six videos we're only going to show you four because the other two were such and such so this this scenario here has again contributed to um concerns at a minimum because there are varying stories about which videos are available who has seen them and so on and so forth and I'm the forward-looking person I don't like to look backwards I think we just want to get our ducks in order so that we can do this in a way in the future that is transparent and that requires you to tell us what is available and to make a case for why you might not show us what uh you may not want to show us but I'd like to I'd like to actually raise a broader issue here with regard to this young man who's black who is a new American who's 19 years old who clearly was mentally distressed and it's repetitive of conversation that I had with DC Sullivan and so this won't be new to him but I'm really struck by the the incidents that have come to my attention with regard to this this this group of young men and and I think it's fair to say that refugees have a difficult time acclimating many come with trauma and we as a city and as a country have done insufficient work to help them integrate into our community and we owe some we we have some responsibility for the behaviors we see in our community and so what for me I want to just raise this issue with you and for me what is striking is that when uh Brenndale Poser was chief uh and we began we were addressing the opioid epidemic for the first time we began treating this as a social problem not a criminal problem and uh Chief Del Poser did a great job of uh bringing community partners together and developing an a way to address opioid that in a sense decriminalized it if you will and I think the same thing is going on with a group of young people in our city who have had interactions with the law but for many with mental health it is trauma it is social maladjustment and it seems to me that it's incumbent upon our institutions in the city and especially the police because you have the contact with them to highlight this as an issue to convene community partners and to address this that that I think that there is too much of a rush to criminalize adolescent behavior this is a 19-year-old kid whose brain is not fully formed and as a part of a group of kids especially male kids in this community who struggle with some issues and that that what should be done if we are a humane and compassionate community is to also address this not as a criminal issue but rather a social problem and for the the the police department to convene partners to figure out ways to provide supports so that in fact we don't need to be addressing these kinds of incidents so I'm thinking of a broader approach and I'm not suggesting as I said to DC Sullivan that the police department can solve this but because you are the first responders if you will you are in a position to convene community partners just as Brandon Del Poso did with regard to the opioid epidemic I really am adamant in feeling that we are too quick to criminalize young people and ignore the problems that they have with adjustment and and mental health and I really deeply believe that we should address that differently and I would want a forward-looking police department to take a lead to reconceptualize this incident and many others in a much more different way than basically suggesting that this kid is pathological and a criminal thank you very much for that Mr. Hart thank you I'll make a quick suggestion slash request of you chair that people who are asking questions that they get at least a little chance to follow up with their questions afterwards I had some follow-ups from my questions from before which I have sadly forgotten it's been a while um my apologies thank you um so the so it seems to me so there would be a kind of simple solution if we if we had access to if we had accounts in the axon system one easy solution would be uh you know if there is an incident especially when involving use of force that commissioners are instructed are told which of the officers which officers respond to unseen and had access to their body camera footage and it can then be up to the commissioners to decide whether or not and you can even highlight some of those which you think are particularly relevant and if there's one which is which is not made available I think there should be a clear explanation of why that's not made available but again I would think that the assumption would be that any officer who was responding on the scene of an incident has relevant uh footage and I I assume that just because in part the there's a document that we have the the um the role of the commission in reviewing complaints it does say that the written record includes identification of all witnesses documents evidence or other information obtained or consulted in the course of the investigation so I'm taking information consulted to mean information that you yourselves consult even if you decide it is an ultimately kind of particularly relevant for this position of the complaint um there might be another way of understanding what what information consulted means but I take it at a kind of face value uh record take a face value so um so yeah so if that is not ordinarily part of the written record please let me know but it seems like it would be just based on that account and if it's part of written record then it seems that we as commissioners have access to it uh the second point I I completely understand and support the idea that body worn camera footage does not exist for the for mere fishing expeditions uh there are lots of reasons for that including kind of legal protections but body worn camera footage does not exist for fishing expeditions I'm not trying to suggest that police commissioners have kind of the the the right to simply request any footage that they like for no reason whatsoever but it does also seem to me as though there's at least the potential for um incorrect officer behavior or also here that that would require some sanction in almost every aspect of an officer's job and so if officers are for example um you know kind of taking statements or gathering evidence that is also those are also activities that could admit of of misbehavior and misdoing and then if I think a commissioner has reason to be concerned that some of those tasks were done incorrectly then the commissioner then would have I think some access to that information like I said I mean if if nothing else the commissioner can just immediately file a complaint saying I'm complaining about this particular activity and then that complaint would then necessitate some kind of access to information so so I so I do think that commissioners have just based on on the doctors I understand it commissioners have fairly broad latitude to get access to material which seems like it is relevant for uh a matter of concern that a commissioner has not gonna I'm not speaking about the incident which is kind of under discussion here in part because I'm also uncomfortable discussing the incident in open session that includes actually you know discussing the the the mental states of any of the people who are involved I think that's kind of inappropriate for us to do right now we can talk in generalities but I like I said I do not want to talk in terms of specifics but I do think that if the commissioner has a particular concern about some activity that ought to be in you know something that a commissioner can have a Christian ought to be to have those concerns assuaged by by the department and if not I think it would hinder the capacity of the commission to perform its its oversight responsibilities thank you thank you any further questions or comments regarding this from any of the commissioners I'm not seeing or hearing any uh and with that we shall move on to the gent I'm sorry Christian yeah I think that the reality is that we don't know where we are as a result of this conversation and uh I want to put it on the chair to summarize it but I don't think it's complete uh and there are some loose ends here uh I agree with that um and yeah yeah no I do agree with that and I guess moving forward um I'd be happy to entertain I guess maybe the best path forward um I I I guess I'll say it's quicker than I'll shoot a jump in um I guess how recently soon would we be able to have accounts to access some axon videos and I guess then I'll give it to DC Salvin I just wanted to comment that these are very complex issues we certainly want to maintain the integrity of criminal investigations while being as transparent as possible so I believe we're on the same page as far as that goes as far as the axon accounts I just would need to verify the fact that we have enough licenses and then just understand going back to Commissioner Harp's comment that you would not have blanket access to just pick and choose we wouldn't be able to send you an email and say oh this officer was involved in the incident we would have to select those videos and then share them with you so we only have so many higher level licenses that can see everything and officers can't see each other videos uh essentially you would be you would have a license similar to what an officer would have where they could only see their own recording device unless a video is shared with them and uh and so that that would be the process just to make sure that everybody understands the process and what type of access you would have that that is I believe that's clear with us uh precious to me sorry with the regard of the issue of moving forward I mean I think there are some unanswered questions there are some questions that emerge in this uh Commissioner Harp has raised some with regard to the conference mode and some of these issues just sort of policy related the issue of what exactly can be talked about publicly versus in executive session I disagree with Commissioner Harp that it's inappropriate to talk about the mental health of this person and what we observe I feel very strongly that you know we just as when I was on the school board we represent community values we have to have an opportunity to talk about that I if we that said I also appreciate the issues around investigations uh discipline and so forth and I would say that one of the ways forward for us is to really clarify especially using this exact this is an example about what are the boundaries of what we can talk about in public session versus executive session I think that's that's one step for us and I think it is also then to do the additional work of clarifying the video material that we can see based on Commissioner Harp's discussion of this so I think there are some additional action items that maybe we could take up the next time around in the interim explore further the boundaries of what we are able to talk about here and what we're not able to talk about all right uh so with that I will I will email the city attorney and cc joy with that asking what are the boundaries moving forward with this and I and I guess in regards to the other actual items I yeah I'm more than I'd be happy to discuss this further I guess the next meeting and I guess also um I'll I'll look at the role of the police commission and I guess uh see if part of that needs to be I guess opened up not so nearly defined about which videos that we have access to anything else that can regarding this that we need to address further moving forward right then um we will we'll take this up uh at our at our following meeting as well all right then uh there's nothing further on this I shall move on to agenda item 6.01 and with that I'll give it to us in perfect so I did get a chance to upload these commendations instead of just emailing so they're kind of neatly all in one place um first is an officer received a commendation for assisting uh while she was assisting with the trespass order that she was extremely calm professional and helpful uh in the face of a person screaming at her acting irrational and throwing out bizarre insults that were directed at the officer. Another officer received accommodation for helping return a wallet that was taken from a shopping cart at Hanna Ferds and it was returned with everything in the wallet and so she was very happy about that and then the final one was an officer that helped a while ago a scared young woman helped her come to a resolution and she did send him a thank you uh I wanted to let you know I've saved up enough money and I'm moving to and I'm moving I have a built up my support system I couldn't live this state without thanking you for being there for going out of your way to help me but most of all showing me that there are good men out there after all I'll always remember that um and so she continues on to thank him that she can finally breathe again and that she's going to make it so those are the three that I have to share with you this month that were received thank you for that moving on to agenda item seven point zero one commissioner updates or comments um any commissioners have any updates or comments for us general public or the chiefs seeing or hearing any um moving on to agenda item eight next meeting agenda items uh the next meeting is tentatively for I believe it is February 23rd and uh for next meeting agenda items um we have the two-table uh two-table things as we were reviewed by the city attorney we have the last agenda item that uh we were talking about uh on the menu and is there anything that I'm it's not coming to my mind right now that we discussed that we are having for next meeting uh commissioner grant I think I saw your hand raised in the corner followed by commissioner sidwina yes um I would like if not in February uh least in March if we can make it an agenda item to review bias training that's something that I've wanted to look at for a while to find out specifically what is included in bias training at the academy and then um what if any the department does um above and beyond that um and I believe there was something that occurred very recently I'd be interested in receiving information about that thank you thank you uh commissioner sidwina um we we should be reviewing the strategic plan for reducing racial disparities in use of force is that correct and um an item that uh with regard to discussing the possibility of the police commission securing its own council uh or some kind of expert support uh during our meetings or for various incidents sort of broadly uh an initial discussion about what kind of expertise that might help us do our work and maintain an arm's length relationship with the police department thank you uh anything further for people not seeing any hands or hearing anything um next agenda item is uh executive session um I I guess we I've done this many times before um I I we I foresee we we will need to guide your executive session for disciplinary matter for complaints and possible disciplinary matters and uh was that a motion no it was not quite yet a motion um I was gonna uh before I do that I was gonna say before I make this motion to go into executive session um at the end of executive session the meeting will be adjourned and there'll be nothing more to deliberate afterwards so with that um I motion that we enter executive session to deliberate over um complaints and possible officer discipline second any discussion not seeing or hearing anything all in favor reach your hand or say I five that passes unanimously um and I it is 822