 Okay. Sorry committee. I did take a little thought I had a longer break than apparently I had. And I did something. I drove up to compass school here in Westminster. And, um, Um, Delivered the letters for the seniors, the Wyndham County delegation has sent a letter to every graduating senior. Um, in Wyndham County. Telling them how sorry we were that they couldn't have their real graduations and how Becca wrote a beautiful letter. So that was a great, that was a great thing for you guys to do. Um, I think that was a great thing to do. Um, I think that was a great thing to do than we thought. And my parent earned his angel wings. Doing this. I'll tell you. He, um, He helped us every step of the way. So anyway. So what we thought we would do today is, um, Kind of start with, we're focusing today on. Well, for those of you who weren't with us. Um, I think that's a great thing to do. Um, I think that's a lot of, um, A lot of concern about where we need to go with law enforcement and the concerns are legitimate. And we need to be very careful that we do things. That are, um, The right thing to do. Without, um, Overreacting or underreacting. We need to. We need to be very careful about where we need to go with law enforcement. Um, We need to be very careful about where we need to go with law enforcement. Um, Because they might sound good. And in the end, they're more harmful. Then helpful. So, um, We've kind of divided this up between judiciary and. Um, Government operations and a ton was and the commissioner were both. And who they also in judiciary this morning. And then, and what we've done is on our website, Um, We've done some of the things that we've done in the past. That came from the commissioner's list. And we're trying to kind of break it down and look at those categories. So, um, Yesterday we went over. Where we. What we've done in the past, some of the things that we've done in the past. And today we decided that we would kind of focus on. And so in today, I think that there might be was gill. Is there a handout here from me that has. Uh, that. Uh, There is a handout from you and there is also a document from Betsy Ann. Okay. Great. So the, But what the handout from me is it's under is on our web. On our committee web page or anybody who's looking and it is under my name and. What we did is kind of tried to say that we're not talking about all issues at all times with everybody. We tried to break it down into categories and this one. And so what I tried to do is put all the. Uh, things that came from the commissioner. That I felt dealt with improper conduct and allegations. That concerns the conduct allegations, reporting, discipline, release of information, kind of put that all together in here. And then a lot of these other. A lot of the other list is, um, Things that have come from outside of the. The legislature, they came for some of them came, like I said, from individuals, some came from the social equity caucus that's set up by the legislature. Some came from the NAACP. And some came from the community equity, uh, committee in Brattleboro. So they've come from different places. And so that's what this, that's what this list is here, kind of about the topics to be discussed today. And then Tuesday, I thought we would start with, um, looking at training, hiring, promotion. Um, the, that whole kind of those, those issues. And, um, I think we're going to be able to tackle them. Um, Does that make sense committee instead of trying to just do them all together? Yes. Yes, very much so. All right. All together. I think if we take them subject by subject, it's the only way we're going to be able to tackle them. Right. So, um, I guess what makes sense for us right now. Um, is that we are with, um, how we deal what, what is improper conduct, how we deal with it. And most of this is, um, stuff that would have come from, um, the redo of. It's not one 24 anymore, but whatever it was a long time ago, when we changed the certification processes and then changed the, um, how did, how to do discipline and who did. You know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, if there is that where you think we should start committee. So we can see where we are right now. Absolutely. Okay. Is Anthony with, oh no, Anthony cannot. It's not able to. Yeah. Right. Right. And Chris is here. Yeah. I see him. So Betsy Ann, would you like to, um, Just kind of give us a. Um, I think that we're going to have some comments. I'm sure from. From people in the media. I know a ton has some comments. I'm sure the law enforcement people have comments. So we'll go to that afterwards, but let's see where we are now. Okay. Sounds good. Hello. For the record, Betsy Ann Rass legislative council. Um, for today's discussion, I did just put together a short outline that Gail posted for you on the Seneca of ops webpage. Um, this handout overviews the current provisions in regard to disciplining and law enforcement officer for unprofessional conduct by the Vermont criminal justice training council. So what this document reviews is what the state, uh, professional regulatory. Authority is, um, it does not address what an individual agency might do to discipline an officer. Um, but it starts out by just reviewing where the state came from prior to 2017 act number 56, um, because that was the act that, um, revised the state's professional regulation of law enforcement officers. Um, I just noted at the top of this document that prior to act 56, um, and those provisions came into effect on July 1, 2018, but prior to that, um, the criminal justice training council only had the authority to decertify a law enforcement officer. And it was decertification or nothing. And the certification was only possible if an officer was convicted of a felony or did not comply with annual in-service training requirements. And there was a waiver authority in there to, uh, um, be able to give an officer more time to complete those annual in-service training requirements. So it was decertification or nothing. And decertification was only possible if the officer was convicted of a felony or didn't comply with in-service training. Those were the only bases for the state to take action against the law enforcement officer's certification. So the general assembly enacted, um, act number 56 in 2017, and it added what is now sub chapter two of the council's chapter in regard to law enforcement officers. This is an unprofessional conduct chapter. And I've just tried to summarize its main provisions. Uh, overall this new sub chapter defines what constitutes law enforcement officer, unprofessional conduct from the state level. It requires the officer's agency to investigate allegations of an officer's unprofessional conduct and report findings to the council. And that permits the council to impose a range of sanctions on the officer's certification. Uh, just a note that right now the council is constituted as a 12 member board of appointees, but, uh, this committee proposes changes to the makeup of the council in S 124, which is yet to hit the floor. So just get a little deeper into the details of what this unprofessional conduct sub chapter does. Um, in regard to unprofessional conduct, it separates it into three different categories, category A, B and C. Category A is in regard to crimes. And it's defined as any felony. A misdemeanor that is committed on duty and does not involve the legitimate performance of duty. And then there's also a specified list of misdemeanors. If they're committed off duty and it includes things such as domestic assault, DUI, second offense, distributing a regulated substance and possessing one, uh, second offense. Category B is generally gross professional misconduct. Specifically it's defined as gross professional misconduct. Amounting to actions on duty or under color of authority or both. That involve the willful failure to comply with a state required policy. Or a substantial deviation from professional conduct as defined by the agency's policy. Or if it's not defined by an agency policy, then defined by council policy. And there's a list of examples that are included under category B. Um, and this list includes, uh, misuse of official position for personal or economic gain, excessive use of force, second offense, and biased enforcement. And I just had some footnotes that again, your S124 would change this a little bit. Um, to provide that the list that follows category B. Shall include that list right now. It's kind of worded as such as, which may be read to mean just examples. And then you also propose to change this to excessive use of force. First offense rather than second offense. And that has a ripple effect throughout the chapter as to when the council has to report. Category B conduct, um, when the council can take action on category B conduct. Um, and generally the council just being made aware of it. Then finally category C relates to council processes. And it includes things. There's a list of what this includes in the statute, but it includes things such as falsifying council documents and an intentional failure to conduct a valid investigation. Um, by an agency when there's an allegation that the officer committed unprofessional conduct. And at the top of page two now in regard to. Investigations of alleged unprofessional conduct by a law enforcement officer. Again, the chapter puts it on the agency itself to conduct a valid investigation in most cases. Um, if there's an allegation of unprofessional conduct in category A or B. However, um, this requirement for the agency itself to conduct the investigation, um, does not apply if it's actually the executive officer who is alleged to have committed unprofessional conduct. The executive officer is the highest ranking law enforcement officer at the agency. Um, in that case, it would be referred to another entity and the council could ask another, uh, agency, for example, to investigate the executive officer of an agency. Um, so these complaints could come directly to the law enforcement agency itself in which case it would have to conduct a valid investigation. Um, or if the council receives a complaint, if a complaint goes directly to the council, the council just refers it to the law enforcement officer's agency. Unless again, it's the executive officer. Um, and then the, uh, council investigates category C conduct. And then there is a definition of what constitutes a valid investigation. It's further defined in the chapter. As part of this duty for agencies to investigate. Law enforcement officer allegations of unprofessional conduct. Um, each agency is required to adopt an effective internal affairs program. Um, this is defined to include the requirement to accept complaints from any source. Assigning an investigator to investigate whether an officer violated agency rule or policy or state or federal law. Um, the agency has to have policies, uh, regarding a code of conduct and the discipline that it would impose the agency itself. Uh, provisions for fairness and discipline and then a civilian review board also is a requirement of a, an effective internal affairs program. And an agency has to have an effective internal affairs program. Um, as one of the elements that constitutes what constitutes a valid investigation. That's it. Can I ask a question there? Yes. The, the civilian review for a requirement for that is that the civilian review of the, of the, the, um, internal affairs program or is it civilian review of, um, Um, investigations. So I can't remember. Yes. The civilian review. It's defined in the definitions section. Um, where. There would be a review of officer discipline by civilians. And this is the site. This is provided as a select board or other appointed body. Um, at least for the conduct required to be reported to the council. Um, So. I, maybe the council could weigh in more about how this would work in practice, but there has to be some outside entity. That is, um, looking at the discipline that could be, I think imposed by the agency and for the conduct that the agency needs to report to the council. Okay. Thank you. Then there are reporting requirements. The chapter describes when an agency has to report to the council to let the council know about allegations of unprofessional conduct. Um, as far as category A, the crimes. Um, it's generally as if there's a finding a probable cause. Um, that an officer committed category A, or that there were some decisions or findings of fact or a verdict on a category A conduct that the officer committed a crime. For category B, right now the language says that the agency has to report to the council when the agency receives a complaint, if deemed credible by the executive officer of the agency as a result of a valid investigation that alleged the officer committed category B. So right now, how it works is that the agency has to report to the council. Um, the council would not be made aware of category B allegations until after. The agency went through the process of conducting a valid investigation. And then the agency to determine that it was a credible complaint. Um, this committee in S 124. Proposes to change that. Just to say that if the agency has to report to the council, the agency has to report to the council. Um, then the agency would have to report that to the council. Um, a credible complaint as I understand how the council would interpret this and agencies would interpret this as just like an initial screening out process. Is this completely off base allegation or is there something to it? The council would be made aware of it up front. And then the agency would report that to the council. Um, the agency would be made aware of it up front and then the agency would conduct its valid investigation. As I understand this suggestion came from the council and it was a way for the council to be more aware of these allegations and also to keep track of, um, the agency's investigation of it. So the council could check in. And on the status of these investigations. If the agency itself receives or issues a report, um, finding that the, uh, officer did commit category B conduct that has to be reported. Or if the agency, it's really receives a decision or findings regarding allegations. The officer committed category B. I think this would be, for example, in a labor, um, uh, dispute or some sort of outside, um, process where there was an order that was, um, or findings made by an adjudicating body, for example, that would have to be reported to the council. Agencies also have to report to the council if the agency terminates an officer for category A or B, or if an officer resigns while they're under investigation for unprofessional conduct. So all of those need to be reported to the council. So then you should really hear in practice, uh, hear from the council about how this is working in practice. Um, but as I understand the process, um, there would be an investigative report that the, um, agency would put together, submit it to the council, and then it would be up to the, either, um, a prosecuting attorney to file charges. Or maybe the officer would enter into a stipulation and consent agreement. Um, where their facts were, um, agreed to, um, that after that, after the council, uh, reviews, uh, the evidence that's presented, this would be a contested case. If it actually was not a stipulated to, there would be a contested case. And then the council would be acting as a quasi judicial body. Um, and it would make a finding as to whether there was unprofessional conduct. And if the, uh, the council would need to do so in accordance with the Vermont administrative procedure act, and that governs our contested cases, um, including unprofessional conduct cases. And there's also within the APA, there's summary suspension authority. If an officer certification needs to be summarily suspended prior to a full evidentiary hearing, if there is, um, a danger, there's an imminent threat. Um, um, but ultimately after any evidentiary hearing, or if an officer, uh, stipulates the facts, then the council has, uh, greater range of sanctions. And that's the ability to warn, suspend, or revoke an officer's certification. So suspension or revocation means that the officer can't practice while, um, the certification is revoked or suspended during that time. The officer cannot practice anywhere, um, while the certification is suspended or revoked. However, there is a limitation on the council's sanction authority. Um, 20 VSA 2407 provides that the council is prohibited from sanctioning an officer's certification for a first offensive category B. Um, the last bit I just provided just a one sentence about, um, the accessibility and confidentiality of all of these, um, these allegations. And this is set forth in 20 VSA 2409 within this sub chapter. Um, we could look at this in more in depth, but this is based on the current OPR, uh, statute in regard to what becomes public and when. So first, the council needs to maintain a public register of all of the complaints that it receives and how the final disposition of them. Um, but an officer's identifying information is only made public once charges are filed or there's a stipulation filed. And so this is the same for, for example, OPR boards that there's got to be a maintenance of what is happening with the complaints and how many were there, what was the final disposition of them, but it's only after an officer would be charged that the officer's identifying information would be made public. Um, and then the council likewise has to, um, provide in this registry, um, any of the documents that are filed after charges are filed, for example, any steps that are stipulations that are, uh, entered, um, all of that should be made public. And that's another area. I have not gone yet to the council website to, uh, look at what this registry might look at and what the council's actions have been to date, um, on any allegations of unprofessional conduct, um, made against officers. So that would be something that this committee could hear direct testimony from from the council on about how this process has been going since it is new. It's only, um, just under two years old now. Um, so that would be interesting testimony from the council, how this is working in practice. And that's it. I can go into further detail if you'd like, to get into the next slide. Um, and I'll do that. I'll have a little overview. You're muted. Not in chair. You're muted. Jeanette. Well, you're fine. I was muted, not from me. Um, so I'm going to ask committee members. And first of all, I see Brian's hand and then Allison. Um, if committee members have any, um, questions of, um, And then I'm going to ask for, if there are any questions from others who are here with us today, technical questions about where we are today. Not getting into a debate about whether it's good or bad, but I'm going to ask for, if there are any questions from others who are here with us today, technical questions about where we are today. Okay, not getting into a debate about whether it's good or bad or anything, but where we are. Is that okay, committee? Okay, so Brian. Thank you, Madam Chair. So Betsy, the last piece on that document you put forth, the accessibility and confidentiality. So it requires the council to maintain a public register of all complaints, including the public, the public, or the officers identifying info is only made public once charges and a stip is filed. Is the agency where it came from identified? Well, prior to, let me see, let me just confirm before I, which in some cases, if there's a very small department or agency, it would be pretty easy to, well, maybe, sorry, I'm double. I didn't want to get you off guard either, but I'm sorry. I'm multitasking right now. So I'm looking at 24, so before charges are filed, it's only on the only thing that would be in the register is the date and nature of the complaint, but not including the identity of the officer and a summary of the completed investigation. So no, the agency would not be named. Thank you. But then after charges are filed, then the officer's name would be public and then everything that happened publicly with the hearings would become public. Thank you. Allison and then Chris. Well, that was exactly my question. Brian and I are on the same wavelength here. So what is the value of this? If neither of the agents. That that isn't a question for Betsy. These are technical questions about where we are now. Right. So technically, this is supposed to be a public register of all complaints and yet they aren't identified by. Are they identified by category? How are they identified? Because if they're not identified by agency. Are they identified by types of complaints? Are you saying before the charges are filed? Well, it says the council is required to maintain a public register of all complaints. But the officers identifying information is only made public ones charges or stipulations are filed. In the complaint form, how is it presented? Is it presented by type of complaint? By area by whether what type of agency it is. We know now that the agencies specifically are identified, but what I guess. I don't understand what is public. I don't understand what is public. I don't understand what is public. I mean, are they just listed. By date, you know, how. So it's the date and nature of the complaint. I think the nature would go to a general summary of what the complaint was. So the idea is. If there weren't charges filed, then there was not, there's not a reasonable basis to publicize the officer's name because it didn't rise to the level of charges or charges. That would not be fair to an officer for example, who's wrongly. Obviously wrongly accused of unprofessional conductive charges were not filed. Or that's the way it should work. Right. And we can hear more from the count, the council itself about. Exactly how this is maintained. And I believe that this is very similar again to the way. OPR. OPR does their, um, their complaints against, um, professionals. So we're trying to maintain as much, um, uniformity as possible here. Chris, you had a question. Uh, yeah, same. The same area actually. Um, so when we use the term agency that refers to, it could be a police department, sheriff's department, Vermont, the SP, any, any. Any level of organization throughout the state. Correct. Correct. The employer of a law enforcement officer. Yep. Okay. And then, um, So on the same section where the initial, what information is shown if, uh, there are no charges filed, for instance, the summary of the completed investigation is also listed. Is there, is there a, uh, are there any, uh, timing constraints on how quickly a complaint that is filed must get to, you know, uh, the completed investigation. Stage. No, there are not. Okay. Thank you. Are there any other technical questions here for Betsy? On this portion. If not, I'm going to ask if there, um, if there are any other questions. If there are any other, um, if there are people who are with us. And I know we have Mike, a ton, Vince, Susanna, Mark. Uh, Julio drew charity. I don't know if other people have joined us since then. Questions of a. Technical nature about this. We're not going to debate. Should there be a deadline? Um, I don't know if there's any other questions on the website or anything else, but if there are questions out there, uh, but technical nature, a clarifying nature is what, um, I would ask if, and I, if I can't, I can't see everybody. So if I don't see your hand, just holler. I see Mike's hand. Um, so Mike. Thank you. Uh, just two quick questions. Um, I don't know if there's any other questions. Um, I don't know if there's any more than just unprofessional conduct or does it say. Police brutality or. Potential. Uh, Fevery embezzlement. Something like that. I mean, I guess that's what I'm trying to understand. Do they leave it vague? The nature of the complaint. I'm not sure what that means. Chair, may I answer that? Yes, please. I don't know. I'm not the only one working. So I'm. Out of the office. So just identify yourself through so that, um, we know who you are. Right. Uh, Chris. Oh, it's Chris. And from the criminal justice training council. So I heard a portion of the question and. The portion that I heard was about, um, how those reports are calculated and how they're displayed. And typically. When those reports of unprofessional conduct are accepted from the council. Um, There are two categories of reports that are made public and affected. One is a category of reports received, but to not rise to the level of professional conduct. And then the second category is reports that, um, the council takes action on. So the, the last question that I just heard about what type of information gets put on the council's website. About the, those that do not rise to that level. Are essentially the complaint that the date was received. Um, The summary of that. And then the substantiated officer. Um, if there's a, there's an additional summary. So for instance, When in November of 18. The nature is a possible category B violation in agency policy violation. Summary listed as investigation conducted first offensive category B. And an agency violation and with substantiated in the officer resigned case closed. Um, so that's an example of information posted on something that did not get to the level of the council. And then ones that, uh, where the council does take action. There are other, um, Essential bullet points that are put out there that it will give the name of the, um, officer or excuse me, the nature of the complaint, but not the officer's identity. Um, and then the summary of the completed investigation. Uh, the name in the business dress, the law enforcement officer, the formal charges, providing that they have been served for a reasonable effort to have been served and then made the findings and conclusions and the order of the council. Um, any exhibits admitted at a hearing, the transcript, if made. Any stipulations probably with the council. And if applicable, any final disposition by the BSC. So those are the types of information on which the council does take action on and how it's listed. I don't have the direct knowledge of, um, when exactly that is posted to their website. That's typically has been an issue done by the executive director and I don't have that firsthand knowledge. Thank you. Mike, does that answer your question? Uh, not, not totally. I guess I'm still not sure what nature of the complaint, uh, really means and, uh, the other thing is, uh, I guess I'm wondering, I know, like when lawyers are under investigation and they decide to turn in their license, they still disbar them. In these cases, it looks like the officer is allowed to resign, but do they still be certifying before? Follow through on that. Rather than have them go to another police department after. Um, I think that gets into more of a substantive question. Okay. Okay. So I'd like to leave that. Yeah. Thanks. Okay. And, and the other question is, uh, can the council, do you know, can they confirm or deny that there's an investigation going on such as if there was police misconduct in this video, uh, of police brutality or something like that. I guess I'm wondering. You know, uh, we always laugh when people say I can either confirm or deny we're investigating it, but obviously they are. And the council cannot acknowledge whether or not a complaint has been made or isn't being investigated. Okay. Thank you. Anybody else out, Chris. Right. Yeah, I just, I'm, I'm still on 2409. I'm looking at when charges are actually brought and there's a fuller description that gets shared. Um, it says for instance, transcript finding conclusions that sort of, I'm just wondering if that thing, if, uh, chief, that might include, um, uh, video. Is that become part of the record? That, that could include video. If that, if that video was included in the investigation, absolutely. Okay. Thank you. So does anybody else out there have any clarification questions on where we are now? And since I can't see everybody, I'll listen for a minute to see if anybody. Um, Pipes up. Hi, Jeanette. This is Vince. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Thank you. Yes. Thank you for letting us ask a few questions. I guess my question is, as I listened to all this, I don't know. I don't know. It's the bet. I'd like to know what it's the backdrop to, are you planning to make any changes in any of, in any of these professional regulation sections? Or are you. Simply bringing everybody up to speed on it for, for some other reason. Um, I don't know. Maybe I was unclear when we started. Um, what we're going to do is we are looking at where we are right now. And where we are right now is actually even a little bit, um, farther along than what this says, because we've made a couple of changes in S one 24. All we're doing right now is looking at where we are right now. Then we're going to start hearing testimony and looking at, um, what we're going to do is we're going to look at some of the, um, issues about, um, improper conduct. Um, the discipline process, the sanctions process. Um, I don't, I think at this point, we are not looking at making changes to the, to the, um, to what is, well, we could, we could take some testimony on what is improper conduct. We are going to look starting on Tuesday at training. We're going to look at some of the things that we, we're going to do at the Council and what's involved there. I know this is very confusing, but. If we start. Taking testimony just on the whole ball of wax, we won't get anywhere. So what we're doing right now is just looking at where we are. If there are technical clarification questions for Betsy. And then, and then what we'll do is I'm going to open it up to some of the questions that we might think about going around these issues. Okay. Very good. Thanks for clarifying that. Sure. Thank you. Anybody else. Okay. So then what I think we'll do is start. Just, and I realize it's kind of hard to, uh, confine your comments to. This, but I think that any comments that. Are around what should be improper conduct, what, um, how should we deal with it? Is this the way we should deal with it? How is the, um, Citizen review the correct one? How do we deal with local law enforcement agencies around how they, um, Release information and how they, um, do citizens review. So I think kind of that whole, this whole ball of wax, there, there are too many. Balls out there. And I must admit that it's getting very confusing. But does that make sense? Committee to just start hearing some testimony now. And I think because of where we are right now. The way we'll do this is, um, More like we do when we're in regular committee is just kind of hear from different people. And then when we have heard from anybody who wants to speak on all of this is then kind of open it up for the general. Kinds of discussion that we've been having in our committee. Um, when we meet this way. Does that work, Brian? Alison. Chris. Okay. Great. So I'm going to, um, I'm going to, um, I'm going to go just in the order that I had it took it off the participant list here. And start with Mike Donahue. I'm trying to. I'm trying to. I know people have been trying to mute you for years. You've mastered it here. Looks like he's got a halo behind his head, doesn't he? I don't even go there. Yeah. Okay. Madam chair. I just assumed defer to hear others. There's going to be some. Comments with rather, I'd rather let the police and other state to lead. I mean, obviously we want to talk about transparency and things like that. And it will all dovetail together. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. So next on my list. If I can find where I wrote it. Okay. I believe I had a ton. Dr. NL. I'm here. I'm here. So do you, I don't, I think you have been before our committee before. I have. Okay, great. Okay. So no need to reintroduce yourself. Just take it away. I. I guess you're being very structured and principled and how we're approaching this. I'm not a commentary. Are you taking. Right now you can comment on anything that is in this document or that deals with improper conduct, unprofessional conduct. Should we expand it? Are there other things that should be included? How do we deal with it? Is, is the way we deal with discipline. The appropriate way we should be dealing with discipline. Community review panels, whatever. I, I'll keep it fairly short because not all of this has been firmly discussed yet in the ARDAP, but one thing that came up overwhelmingly when we put our report together in December was the need for community involvement. That they're really, really intensely needed to be. A rather dramatic expansion of community involvement in this project. It needed. Concomitantly to be far more transparent than it is and comprehensible. I listened very avidly to. That's the end description of the, of the, and I've read it several times certainly. And. You know, I'm someone who reads Kant and Hegel in the book. And I think it's, it's a bit labyrinthine. I understand the reasons why it is, but I would say that I think what becomes important here is some balancing that is better than what we presently have. That certainly takes care of the law enforcement officer, but I think it's important to the people who are served by law enforcement. Right now, I don't feel like that works particularly well. So my question to you is how do we do that? What are some suggestions that you would have for how, how, how we do that? Because. We want to be responsive. Right. Yeah, I always keep going back to this, this report. We all spent several, like eight of our nine lives on, but one of the big things again, that we handled when we broke this had to do with those panels that there need to be more citizen advisory panels. So I would say a member of our panel actually is not, doesn't feel that goes far enough. She believes that advisory panels have no teeth. So I would say there's a bit of attention on the panel, as you can imagine, between advising and actually having some more power to make sure that that matters in real time, in real space, in real life, not simply being conceptual. That, again, that's attention on the panel. But I certainly think we need to start looking at more of that involvement from the community, from the people, as I said, law enforcement. And I think we need to start looking at more of that. And I think we need to start looking at more of that. And if it works for, there needs, there needs to be more of an interaction there than presently. Chris. Mr. Nussra and Longo just referred to a report. I just want to make sure I understand what report. This is the report of the racial disparities in the criminal and juvenile justice system advisory panel. Thank you. It's on our website. Right. I just want to make sure I'm on the right report. Thank you. I sent it in just before the meeting as well. Thank you. There are a lot of reports. I'm sure there are billions. Alison, did you have a question? I did not. So I, I, I hear what you're saying. I'm not sure the. The action steps or the, or the practical. Implication of what that means in terms of. We should have more panels. What does that mean? More panels around what and what do those. We've already been told that we have too many boards and panels and commissions. And so what does it mean? I was hoping. You know, I was hoping that we would be able to get into this a little deeper. This morning in judiciary Julio. And I think he's with us. Yes. Okay. He had some very interesting comments about the way. I think it was. Seattle and some other. What he called a communications loop. Yes, as opposed to necessarily having a group of. A panel, but a communications loop that was very, very effective. And I wondered if maybe we could have him talk to us a little bit at some point about. About that and how that might. You know, be able to. Somehow satisfy your, your need to have more community involvement, which we definitely need to, but it's how to do it. Absolutely. And I, I'm fine with that. I would just say. In, in contending with what you had just said about, we have, you know, we're all told we have too many panels and too many committees and such. But I think it's, it's quite true. I seem to be on a lot of them, but. Not of the sort I'm talking about. That we don't have a lot of. We don't have a lot of. Brown person. Lesbian person. In Bennington. Sitting on a fair and impartial committee. I know that. I know that. I know that. I know that. I know that. I know that. I know that for Bennington police department. That we don't. I know that because as the co-chair. Affair and impartial policing for the Vermont state police. I am continually. I mean, I can't even tell you how many times I am approached by people. Who have had something happen. And they say to me, I need you as the co-chair. I need you as the co-chair. I need to take this on. And I listen and then I have to stop them. And say, no, no, no, no. This is only for the state police. And they said, well, what do I do about X? And then I happened to know X. Doesn't have anything like this. And the conversation degrades from that point. Into a place of extraordinary frustration. And powerlessness. then specify panels for whom. And I don't think that there are a lot around what I'm talking about. Allison? No, Chris. Eitan, are you suggesting that each agency should have a community oversight panel that that is made up of members representative of that community? I think what I want to say is I want, I see a spectrum here. We can be where we are now and we can be to something like you're describing, Senator. I think what I'm saying is I don't have the answer, but I want to move on that spectrum closer to the end that you're talking about. So, so may I just add to that, Jeanette? Yeah. Eitan, each select board or each city council hires their agency, hires, either hires the sheriffs to do the patrols or they hire their police and their department. So, in each case, in each agency, there is an employer, is generally as, well, let's just take the police departments and not the state police. Those are all citizen panels. And I wonder how we could empower them further. Well, anyway, you know, so we already have a panel, as it were, of made up of citizens who maybe aren't fully representative of their communities. On the other hand, they're elected. So I just am wondering, you know, how do we empower them further or how do we delegate them to be more engaged in solving this problem? Again, I don't have all the answers to that, but that's the issue for me is right where you put it, that we have that. And yet, people who come to me and think I can do something, they know that they've tried it and they're still unsatisfied. So it would seem to me that whatever answer we come to, to the questions you raise, taken to account, we have select boards. They are employers. But for some reasons, this process is not satisfactory. The case that I know of a game woman in Wilmington, I could talk about three people in Rutland, that that somehow still does not work. I think some dedicated and focused scrutiny on that link in the chain is precisely where we'll find the answer to the questions you're raising. So I would suggest that one, oh, Chris, I'm sorry, you had a question. Yeah, I was following up on Senator Clarkson's question. So it sounds like in part there's a question about who's on the panel membership. Correct. And then is it also the nature of the process the panel uses, what kind of work they do, who they can ask, what questions, what kind of outcomes they can help deliver? Yes, I hadn't gone there, but it is, yes, absolutely. And it doesn't seem to be consistent, I have to say. That may be my perception, given the people I'm speaking with, but it doesn't seem to be consistent that Panel A, whatever we call that, that could be a select board or whatever, does not offer the same remedial moment process that another panel might offer. That lack of consistency drives people nuts. And certain people of color look at this and go, this is why I don't want to go somewhere. So I, Chris, follow up. Yeah, just so it is part of the, I don't know, sensation of such an unsatisfying experience that someone does not feel heard. Correct. Absolutely. They not only don't feel heard, it doesn't, the condition of possibility of being heard does not exist. Thank you. You're welcome. So I would was thinking of a couple of things here when we were doing this is that we could ask VLCT to give us some information about what kinds of different community panels there are out there and how they're constituted and kind of what, I don't think there will ever be absolute consistency from town to town as long as we have elected select boards. But we could get a kind of a rundown of what kinds of community panels there are out there if it is the select board or if they have a community review panel or what they have and what their authorities are. Yes. And so we could, I think, look at that and then and then begin maybe to bring some consistency. We have a very, as you know, a very weird issue of judicial consistency and law enforcement consistency in the state because we have 14 different elected state's attorneys and they all operate differently. And so some in one county where something would be a crime in another county, it's just dismissed. So we will never achieve absolute consistency, but I think we can work toward it and at least set some standards. Yeah. And let me, you know, I'm certainly not a lawyer. I don't play one on TV, nothing. However, I certainly note what people in the community and in communities of color, communities of people who are perhaps neurodivergent say to me about that lack of consistency. It often feels that the law is set up in such a way as to minimize complaints from disadvantaged communities. And the answer is often given to us. Well, we can't do anything that's the law and that's an end term. It's as real as looking at Campbell's hump and going, well, it's just there. There's not much to do about it. It's there. It's extraordinarily frustrating and it makes a second class tier of citizenry. It historically has done that in the nation and it certainly has done that here as well. And that's why I think this is, it's really critical to talk some more about, I love what you're saying, Senator, about how to approach this to look at the different panels, the different boards, and speak with the council about how all of this intersects. I think that's an excellent place to go. Thank you. I think that since we're, we kind of got off on this. Sorry. No. Hey, Don. Senator Clarkson has her hand raised. Thank you. I just wanted to underscore something that Mike Shirley said yesterday and that his draft recommendations encourage us to move towards is just precisely what you're saying, Eitan, uniformity of policy on all these issues. So that it, you know, it is clear just from our most, you know, we're not, we're partially involved, we're not deeply in the, in this as people who live and breathe it, but we live and breathe in our own way, this issue. And over the years, I have to say uniformity in this is clearly calling out to us to establish uniform policy. And, you know, because it becomes frustrating. I mean, there are what there are roughly 678,000 people in the city of Boston, 627,000 people in the state of Vermont. We can't pull this together. I mean, it would be like somebody saying, I walked into Jamaica plain and this happened to me, but it was a completely different experience at downtown crossing. That's absurd. Well, I do think that comparing the state of Vermont to Boston is not just because population. Let me, we have 246 towns in Vermont. It is not, we are not one uniform town like Boston. Boston controls Boston. If you went from Boston to Worcester, you might have a different experience. And that's, that's what we're talking about here. Not, not, not the fact that we have a population that's similar to Boston. I would counter, however, that people don't look at things like that when they're actually sitting in a patrol car. And I would say that when they're being, I don't know, pulled over, and there's a question about why they're being pulled over, that sort of consistency ought to exist in a state this size. I agree we need to have some consistency, but I, I am not, I am a little bit reluctant to tell every town that they're going to have to have a review panel. And it's going to have to be, it's going to have to function in this exact way. I think we need to have consistency, but we'll take more, more about that. And Eitan, you and I can continue this conversation. Absolutely. At Curtis's or someplace. They're open, by the way. Oh, oh, good. Can't you, can't you smell it up there? Yeah. Thank you. He just lives a little ways from Curtis's. So I think though that since we've kind of gone into this issue of community involvement and how to get communities and stuff involved, I would like to have Julio, if you're willing to talk a little bit about how, and I realize this is a little bit off the topic, but I think it's important and we've gone there. And I was very intrigued this morning when you were talking about that. Sure thing. Just introduce myself to some of the committee members before whom I haven't spoken before. I'm Julio Thompson and assistant attorney general and director the attorney general's civil rights unit. So what I was, I was talking about this morning really had to do with, with the process that it's a pretty long, I mean, it's the process of reviewing use of force incidents, not complaints really, but, but use of force incidents that I was giving the example of a type of review that was really inspired by questions from communities in the early 2000s and to some extent, and even in the mid 1990s here or there, but what which I saw institutionalized in Seattle, where if there is the department will reviews uses of force before a use of force review board, which is, you know, has a variety of different members, but includes training members so that the training staff is there to provide input on whether the officer's behavior is consistent with what the department trains to identify or speak out if there are equipment or communications or needs that may have assisted the officer or, you know, generated a better result, but also to take lessons learned from a real life use of force situation and reincorporate that into the curriculum for not only the basic patrol training for new officers, but for continuing training and issues like de-escalation could be vehicles, it could be self-defense skills and so forth. So that's a model that it's not unique to Seattle, but it was one that that's been fairly robustly institutionalized. There are lots of departments now that do something very similar. It's a critical function. You know, I remember talking with a training official in Seattle, this must have been in 2013, who also was a high school coach and she pointed out that even when their team wins, they still go over the game film to see whether they could do things better. And it seemed a little surprising to her that police departments didn't institutionalize that practice. The military certainly does in after action reviews. Increasingly, as departments try to raise their level of professionalism and consistency. When you institutionalize that feedback loop, the idea is to try to learn lessons. And so when an officer does something that's particularly exemplary, that might be highlighted in role call briefings as well as continuing training. They will also routinely, if an officer is in a significant use of force incident, send that officer for a separate briefing with training. It's not punitive. And it's a go back and talk to the officer about maybe technical skills, or, you know, either for refresher training, or for them to debrief and get information from him that they can use in the training. That could be things like how the officer handled their flashlight, how they use the radio, you know, what their what their hand skills are their vehicle skills. And so that's really what I was talking about earlier today. It's a little separate than civilian review. And I do have a couple of thoughts to add on that, if the committee's ready. Yeah, thank you. I was thinking that when you said that you did say that a lot of comments came from community members that fed into this into this loop that was and then the loop becomes the training loop and the action loop. But yeah, thank you. I'm sorry, would you would you are you moving to someone else or would you like no no I use you have said you had something else you were gonna. Yeah, so I'm different models of civilian oversight. So, and I know Commissioner Sherling's familiar with the organization because I think he spoke I think I saw him although that we did not meet at last September's conference of the National Association of civilian oversight and law enforcement. It's a longstanding organization that basically is a professional organization for people across the country who engage in various forms of civilian oversight. It provides training, it provides technical assistance, and it provides a network for professionals who work under different models to communicate with each other about best practices about how to improve or modify their practices. I might add there's a there's a Canadian counterpart called the Canadian Association of civilian oversight and law enforcement. There are different models and I think we heard some about whether there's a one size fits all a kind of a key principle that they call teaches is that it has to be very community driven that different communities have police forces, different sizes, they have different priorities and they have different needs. One model is what's sometimes called an ombudsman or a monitor or even an auditor model where they periodically review policies or also review complaints and investigations and then publicly report on whether the department is actually following the policies that they've adopted. Is their training consistent? That's the auditor model. Another model that's an investigative model where the the city or the town or county may have paid investigators who investigate cases either in view of the traditional internal affairs unit or in parallel. To use Seattle for an example they have a civilian agency called the office of professional accountability. DC has the office of police complaints and they have paid investigators who when they receive complaints of excessive force bias policing or harassment of the like they have investigators who can go out interview witnesses and so forth. Now some cities have overlapping models like there's also police commissions where they address policy if there are policy changes that need to be for example a department is thinking about getting a canine in a municipality. The civilian that the police commission or the equivalent would have a key role in laying out for the city what the answer the policy would be or if there's a statewide authority you know interfacing with the statewide authority about what those policies would be. Another model. Can I interrupt just a moment. I think somebody is typing away and I can hear their keyboard but I'm not entirely sure if that's what it is or if it's just some little tiki-tiki-tiki sound someplace but okay. So another model is that you know again it's in some parts of the country it's gaining currency or inspector general unit so you might like Seattle has a new inspector general office so they they not only look at what that a police department is doing they're also looking at how well the civilian authority is investigating cases fairly and holding officers accountable you know when appropriate. There is I should add as a caveat that history has shown that the mere establishment of any one of these agencies doesn't guarantee success. Famously in 2017 the Department of Justice issued a very scathing report of the Chicago Police Department that severely criticized the an independent investigative agency known as the Independent Police Review Authority or IPRA. They're trying to rebuild IPRA from the ground up so it's not just creating these structures there has to be mechanisms to ensure that that they investigate those who investigate the officers are themselves held accountable. The larger and there are other variations of these models such as if there are discipline review boards some jurisdictions have civilian representatives who are part of those review boards and have a voice and a vote in you know in various jurisdictions. There are many different sorts and a lot of them are basically the ones that work more or less successfully and I don't know that any are perfect but are ones that are built from the community up rather than something that's just taken off the shelf from you know from some other state and part of NACOL is to try to help communities tailor what they need for their police department. So here and all of them have certification and that definitely is a source of uniformity in states it's not that different yet I think the the reference to OPR was quite similar and although to get back to the point about community diversity in terms of you know the folks who talk I think in the area of police professionalism and I'm not a law enforcement official but I certainly follow discussion and writing in this area. You know they will point out only yesterday Ron Davis the foreign former director of the COPS office under President Obama noted that you know in medicine if you if you have appendicitis how you get treated in one state versus another or a county versus another is really that different or if you need a root canal the treatment and standards are really not that different whereas policing and nationally we have no one really knows I mean 16, 18,000 police departments we have the most decentralized system out there and I think what you've seen from public safety this week is an effort to get some level of uniformity for standards and training but the issue about citizen involvement is is you know you need really need to hear a lot from different communities because not one model fits all. Any questions for Julio about about this I'm sure we're going to hear from him more about other things also but about community involvement we got kind of over there but I think it was a good discussion does anybody else have anything they'd like to throw in about community involvement and oversight Allison. Thanks Julio there you know it's just all very interesting and and sort of exciting actually to hear the office you know there's been lots of talk about an inspector general I mean I've heard lots of talk about an inspector general or I like the office idea of the office of professional accountability where do you see that if we decided to go in that direction where do you see an inspector general or the office of professional accountability where do you see that residing in state government or do you see that actually in a more local way by county or something would that be an additional county thing where do you see that manifesting itself in Vermont. So you know my experience is that office offices of inspector generals typically crop up where there's a larger population that is able to fund that position and that has a sufficient number of cases or complaints to keep them busy. I haven't seen I mean Vermont has so many very small agencies the notion of having an inspector general over an agency of four officers. Oh oh no but if it would have to be statewide is to go back to Eton's point you know it's not dissimilar to the size of Boston that it would anyway I just am curious where if where you see that residing at the state level and is it not in part what the AG's office does. Really it's not I mean with the AG's office to adjust that last point I mean in terms of reviewing complaints of let's say biased policing under state law right now we have a statewide authority that has authority over every law enforcement every state or local law enforcement agency to deal with claims of biased policing for example and that's the human rights commission that's in the public accommodation statute we do not have the authority so and when people complain to our civil rights unit that they were racially profiled we refer them to the HRC because we we don't have that authority granted to us under the statute but the question becomes whether there are other models in terms of there may be claims of conduct or poor policing that may not have a discriminatory basis but may not be very upsetting to the committee or there could be practices and policies or de facto enforcement policies that might not fit so neatly under the discrimination rubric that the human rights commission can't investigate a police department unless they have a complainant who's willing to sign a charge and we encounter is I think everyone in any sort of government enforcement encounter people all the time who complain about something but aren't going to take the risks either the public exposure fear retaliation and so forth to put their name on a complaint and go through it so I think there are some limitations but I mean we do at at some basic level we've had the HRC has that ability and they have conducted I don't know the number poor yank could give you the numbers but they have investigated claims of bias but policing whether that be racial profiling or excessive force and and they all and that extent authority extends to the department of corrections so perhaps we have perhaps we have the structure and we just need to review its authority and fund it in any significant way so it's commission sorry no no I I I think that what what you just said Julio the human rights commission is deals with issues of discrimination and bias right the human be so if if an if excessive force is used against me by my local sheriff that certainly is not an issue of discrimination or bias that's just could be that's right unprofessional conduct unconstitutional yeah but but I'm just saying that every what we're looking at here is how to deal with law enforcement not just because I don't want us to get so tied into just dealing with racial incidents that we we forget that there's a whole lot of other stuff out there that goes on that maybe shouldn't go on and so I'm going to bring up an issue here that has been brought up before and I can as I'm doing it I can see Mark Anderson and the commissioner if he's here and Bill Boneyack and everybody just starting to pull their hair out and scream but when you talked about the office of professional accountability we have an office of professional accountability it's OPR that is exactly what they do and what they are they certify people they register them or license them and they keep them in mind they investigate unprofessional conduct they have nothing to do with setting the standards for the for who is licensed or certified and and we've talked before about does it make sense for OPR to actually issue the certifications or licenses or whatever you want to call them for police officers but they don't do anything they don't do the training they don't set the qualifications none of that but they but they have the responsibility for as an independent agency to look at unprofessional conduct they do it for now about 60 professions am I right Betsy and 50 50 professions and so I don't know but maybe that's an area that we should start to look at because that is not that would not be law enforcement investigating law enforcement that would be an independent agency an independent oversight agency that investigates 50 other professions and we've taught we've had this conversation before and we chose not to go there but instead to make the kind of step to the training council and and set up different categories and different methods but maybe and certainly it isn't we can't do that now but maybe at some point that is an issue that we need to to relook at because that would be your independent yeah Julio well I would just say I mean it's it's possible I would say that my knowledge of different civilian oversight models I'm not aware of any that leave that issues of misconduct or reviews of use of force or other types of unprofessional or misconduct by officers is left to the state licensing authority it's common that there may be issues of certain severity that may go to the certifying agency whether you know that's roughly the equivalent of OPR or the criminal justice training council and part of that I think I mean I you know part of the logic for that is that those agencies tend to be located not in the community where the issues occurred and they also there are also complainants we experience we experience this a little in the AG's office where a person's unwilling to make the complaint because it may be an issue that's serious to them but they don't feel like it's so that they wish to jeopardize someone's license we hear it all the time you know I have a problem with my employer these these are problems but I feel I don't want this I'm afraid if you investigate that person's going to lose their job and I don't want to wreck their career I just want it to be fixed so like if you think about like any municipality we have the state bar where they're state licensing and it could be a professional conduct you know discipline and even license suspension suspension or revocation but in any given city let's say Burlington for example or Brattleboro if you had a city attorney who was engaging in misconduct there's usually a means of investigating that within the city there's a yeah I I didn't mean to imply that we should just do all investigations by OPR I'm just trying to figure out how we do investigations and how we involve non-law enforcement in those investigations and I do I don't want us to get off on this topic right now because it clearly we're not going to have it now but at some we had extensive discussions about it before and about how it might work and but I so let's go back here and I'm sorry I'm sorry I got us off there but um I when you said there was an OPA in some places and Allison asked where that should live I just wanted to for us to back up here a little bit so all right so thank you senator I'm gonna ask if there's anybody else who wants to give some general comments on what we've been hearing so far and not just about community engagement remember but also about the um are there things that are not um category be offenses that should be category be offenses judiciary is um right now about to add I believe um knee holds and choke holds and um there's one other one other thing I don't remember mark do you remember the two things that they're putting in there adding to unprofessional conduct um unnecessary force and but anyway so are there other things that from coming from this group here that maybe should be considered unprofessional conduct or and how do we deal with that and is this the appropriate um way we do sanctions how do we we just talked about that a little bit but um anybody else out there I'm I can't see people's hands so charity did you have anything we wanted to jump in on or Susanna or Mike oh Mike Schirling is with us again hi charity hi senator uh who we were speaking for our office so I'm here listening and if anyone has a question that I can answer I'm here but um no need for me to speak as well defer to the others on the on the line okay thanks um anybody else out there um commissioner sheriff Susanna drew hi Susanna hi when I started this this is Susanna Davis uh racial equity director for the state of Vermont I don't need to hash through everything that other folks have said they've said it very very eloquently so I won't dwell on that but I did just want to go through a couple of very quick observations that I had that are either directly related or that touch on what we've been talking about one of the things that I see in the list of category be offenses is biased enforcement and if this has been touched upon already I apologize I wasn't here for yesterday's conversation but one thing that I want us to keep in mind is that we don't just have bias in our state based on protected categories we also have bias in our state against people from other states and when it comes to policing one thing that I find is that traffic enforcement is often heavily weighted when it comes to people driving in cars without a state license plate so I would add for consideration that we either clarify what bias enforcement means and that we include that in that clarification or that we internally issue some kind of guidance through our training or through whatever other protocols we develop to make sure that it's clear to everybody that state plate bias is included in bias enforcement oftentimes on our roadways in this state uh race and license plate skin color and license plate color appear to go hand in hand so you know if you want to cut down on disparate outcomes for one group it makes sense to intentionally cut down on disparate enforcement against another I'll just keep rolling along I one of the things that we're talking about is how to involve local municipal and county level law enforcement in these reforms I think that's really really really important this is a huge area of opportunity and the more incongruity there is in policy the more difficult it is for people to feel like they can trust police at all levels so I would just urge us to consider the response that we frequently get which is well we're so small we're a department of you know four or five you can count us on one hand we don't have a data person or we don't have the resources for x kind of activity and so I would just encourage us to consider as as as early as we can how can we support local and county level law enforcement so that that's one excuse that we don't have to hear which is over too small we can't we can't do these positive reforms the next thing is that it is my belief that all allegations of improper conduct should be sent to the council regardless of what category they fall into whether an investigation happens before hand or after I think that every allegation should should get sent over it's often the case that people in positions of authority who abuse that authority know just how far they can go before triggering major discipline and so what you may find is that you have a string of not quite but almost conduct and when you see that emerge as a pattern it's it's very helpful and it's the orange flags that we never see before the red flags start happening so I recommend all allegations of improper conduct be sent over to the council I do support centralizing reporting mechanisms so that there is no wrong door for Vermonters to be able to report any kind of misconduct again talking about the I guess what's akin to the federalism issue right is who do I go to do I call my select board do I call the local police department what if they're the ones who I'm complaining about can I trust them to take the complaint do I contact the state police they don't have authority over this other person this guy's elected I mean it's a mess and so having a unified mechanism so that there is no wrong door is going to be really really key to maintain establishing and maintaining trust for the public and last I was going to make a point about inconsistency between different jurisdictions around the state but I think Dr. Nasred and Lungo and Julio have both spoken to that I do take Julio's point about their needing to be customization based on the unique characteristics of communities that is to say not every community needs a cookie cutter approach because communities are different and still within that framework or perhaps above that framework I think that end results should be consistent perhaps the way in which we arrive at a conclusion can be tailored to the needs of the community but I think the conclusion should be the same such that if I'm in town of town if I'm in the city of townsville over month and I get pulled over it should not matter what color the uniform is but at the end of the day the result should be the same so those are the few points I wanted to touch on thank you again for inviting me does the committee have any questions or comments for Susanna Allison on plays right pressing on the wrong thing uh uh Susanna it's good to see you again and it again I would just underscore in in Mike Shirley's recommendations uniform policy you're right it shouldn't matter what color your uniform where you're doing it there should be consistency in how we address improper you know a whole range of conduct but the uniformity of policy is clearly underscored at every level here in this conversation so thanks um Susanna um okay wait never mind Susanna I um can you elaborate just a little bit on um first of all I loved your last comment about how the the how to get to the conclusion maybe a little bit different but that the conclusion should probably be the same and we see the same in our state's attorneys world is that we don't often get to the same conclusion in different in different counties but um so would you elaborate just a little bit on um how you would um establish some kind of a central mechanism for complaints would that be through the ethics commission would there be a uh are you talking about here primarily for law enforcement now I was I was speaking primarily about law enforcement but your question is a great one because it raises the necessity for us to have a similar mechanism for all other branches and levels of government as well and you know the thing about our state government just like many other places it can feel cavernous at times we have an ethics commission we have an HRC we have committees in the legislature we have human resources with a big h big r and then we have human resources for every agency it can be challenging for people to know where and how to direct complaints I was speaking primarily about law enforcement and perhaps that is a central number I mean I'm thinking about the jurisdiction that I'm coming from we had the ccrb the citizen the civilian complaint review board which I mean garnered its share of criticism but um you know it was considered an alternative when folks didn't feel necessarily trusting of the internal affairs protocols um I don't know where it should cleanly reside and I I could hazard a guess here but I haven't given it enough I haven't done enough research about it for it to be appropriate for me to guess here I would say that because of the nature of law enforcement and policing work it is necessarily more sensitive and more urgent and more delicate and requiring a higher level of trust from the public and that therefore it might cost us but I think it could be worth having an independent entity designed to collect those kinds of complaints again I haven't given a whole lot of thought as to how what what that would look like um within our current structure perhaps it requires that we deviate from our current structure but again we're talking about trust building and that is something that is going to take a lot more time and a lot more uh investment so maybe we could we I mean we we certainly could we couldn't set that up now but we certainly could do something to get us moving in in that direction um so that we're we're looking at it and trying to figure out what it is and and um maybe it's one more of Aton's panels sorry Aton but um but but I think that we we could get ourselves moving in the direction of at least trying to figure out and get the appropriate people kind of convened to try and figure out what this would look like where it might live what responsibilities it might have is it just a collection point then what happens I think I think we could do something like that right Betsy and I might just add one more point to this which is that a lot of times we see people calling for parallel or alternative systems because they lack faith in the existing system and there is still the possibility that we could just improve the existing system to get that trust built in and when it comes to things like complaints against law enforcement I think one of the biggest issues that we have is transparency people want to know the status of a complaint people want to know if a complaint has even been been filed people I mean I'm again the jurisdiction I'm coming from we had a huge fight with the mayor of the city because he was hiding behind 50 a which was just repealed by our neighbors to the west so you know people feeling like information is overly guarded makes them think that the state and I don't mean the state level but just the government is either conspiring against them or somehow working to protect its own against the interests of the public and so fighting that perception for us will mean more transparency so we don't necessarily have to create new mechanisms for reporting if we're able to adequately improve our existing mechanisms and of course I I realized that you could just put all the information out there but if an employee is wrongly accused then you've essentially you know turned that person's life inside out for public scrutiny without it necessarily being warranted I get that if somebody were to file a complaint against me I might say whoa hold on with the transparent I don't know I'm just kidding but you know I say all that to say that you know again we don't always have to create parallel mechanisms we can just do a really good job at cleaning up our existing ones yes um Chris and then Allison you are muted senator bray thank you for that last comment it reminds me a little it's not very apt but uh complaining to the parent of a of the a child about their child's behavior the parent is they're already you know they may try to be helpful but they have a certain allegiance to their childhood you know and so it makes me think about uh resituating the conversation so that you're not in the home of the sort of the place of power but that it's a more neutral situation and I don't know where that is it could be all the same actors but who's convening it who's chairing it where is it held so that people felt like they were sort of in a neutral safe space not filing a complaint with the the parent of the neighbor's child and they're on their doorstep or something correct and I think that really gets at the point again about community involvement and community oversight and not just soliciting advice or information from the community but also giving them real agency in directing these delicate processes Allison you had a question yeah I I agree with you well that goes back to your point about local law enforcement agencies and how do we engage local agencies in in addressing these issues in their own communities I mean that we we have to give them that but I agree with you completely particularly in a small state we don't need to build parallel systems we have some very good systems that we need to improve and keep improving and that's what we think in state government we're we're working on all the time is how can we and that's what we're doing here is how can we improve what we you know a system we have and um and not build an entirely new one which we probably can't afford and plus we want to improve what we what we have because we have some very good elements to it that that just need uh review and improvement correct if I may I I hope you'll indulge me I'm I'm reminded of uh something uh that I think John McWhorter describes as the euphemism treadmill this is a completely different topic um but in language you know or you have a term and it takes on a negative connotation and so we make a new term but then that takes on the same connotation and I think that we're at we're kind of at risk of this now right it's kind of like um in in many years ago in in our country we had organizations with titles like association for the crippled right and then society realized oh ouch that's not how we should say that and they would say you know for the disabled and then we say differently abled or handicapped and and the way that new terms take on the same painful tinge that their previous versions had um you know when we talk about reforming existing systems or even creating new systems I think that we we are always at risk of creating systems that are made by the same people we are the same people and the same the same government and we're creating new things and how do we avoid them taking on the same tinge that the systems they're replacing once had that requires extremely consistent and deliberate and conscious effort to do things differently than how we used to do them yeah yeah that was a long way of saying it but thank you for your indulgence nonetheless you don't ever have to thank us for our indulgence it's always great to have you with us we um so committee where are did any does anybody else want to chime in on kind of the general thing we've been talking about and then I think there are some pretty specific things that have come out of this conversation that we can start um maybe not so much today but that we can start um looking at in terms of uh where do we go without as Susanna just pointed out improving our current system uh but would anybody else like to just kind of jump into the general mark mark mark that's you thank you madam chair my internet fluid's running low today so I'm going to go without video for now okay just wanted to say I really appreciate hearing all the different perspectives in the over the last two or three hours it's been extremely valuable for me just as a agency executive for my my department but also from the perspective of this conversation the there's a few things that've been mentioned which they're all starting to tie together to me really well with my own personal philosophy that I just wanted to take a moment to to mention um to senator Clarkson's point about a broad uniform policy across the state that really encourages me and it really scares me I do still have my hair but the reason that I uh become fearful when we talk about that is how uh specific a policy uh becomes and what control we have going back to my very early days in the academy the Chittenden county way was often taught even though I'm from Wyndham county and we don't do business the same way simply two and a half hours across the state and so talking about uniformity there's uh there's concerns when we talk about that my agency used to do a lot of de-escalation training and then it was mandated that we teach an annual class of use of force training and so as we have more classes get loaded on to our mandatory courses we had to start taking away from the classes we felt were important to our our community and not to say that the de-escalation through the use of force training was minimized it's just it was a prescribed course as opposed to things that we were able to look at and identify at a local level to talk about um I believe it was Julio mentioned uh that and I apologize if I'm misappropri- misaccrediting uh this but uh to talk about um the successful organizations especially when we look at oversight and to say that the grassroots organizations that built up the ones that were developed within the community and then to build on what Zuzana said uh regarding uh the local and community local and county level uh agencies and how do we make uniformity um I these are all just really powerful things uh that I'm hearing uh and how do we bring that together um the my agency just in response to uh forgive me I don't have the statue in front of me but the requirement for the internal affairs policy we've actually been working on deploying an online portal for people to make complaints not only for us to simplify our operations but also to to increase access to doing that and as I'm listening to conversations surrounding the council and I'm speaking as just just an individual from the law enforcement community right now but to think that we could offer on the council's website a a mechanism that can provide access for anybody to make a complaint the council becomes aware of the complaint by being essentially the the gate uh to that and if nothing else they can say okay we're aware of this complaint and it is an issue with the south barlington police department so we're contacting their internal affairs designee and while this complaint has to do with the windham county sheriff and we know that uh captain sametero is the person we need to call uh to be able to start and so the academy's from the very beginning uh in a position to serve as or the council's in a position to serve as that focal point for the state it's already somewhat there in terms of act 56 and reporting with the public register and uh I guess I'm just a fan of data and I know that you mentioned me as a nerd this morning madam chair and judiciary and I I fully embrace that term because I really do care about the data uh there's another thing I want to know just as a comment um that Susanna uh mentioned was about uh the tie to complaints and the disproportionate effects on people of color uh in a county uh I don't I offer this as a perspective not as a definitive answer but certainly it's worth looking into uh I live in a county where we have a major interstate that feeds the majority of Vermont as well as access to some of the largest cities uh in new england and so it's not uncommon I'll use uh root 30 in in west towns and uh you can go on speed traps dot org and it's listed as one of the speed traps and it's because it's a small half mile long section where it drops quickly from 50 to 30 and all the locals know that you go 30 and if you're not a local if you're not frequenting the area it's not necessarily an issue of the license plate but they're going 65 miles an hour and there's obvious and clear safety issues in a 30 mile an hour zone about that kind of speed so um I I certainly would like to look into the effects that out of state plates and what effects those will have on people um uh because certainly that is not right to have those types of things happening the the follow-up to that though is the quantitative and the qualitative I think needs to be examined to determine if there's a correlation versus a cause the other thing that I'm just bouncing around in my head right now but the conversation that I apologize I don't know how to pronounce your last name and I think it's etan um that he mentioned uh was uh about the state uh the uh I forget the name in the panel but rdap um who that's a state entity and going back to what susano was saying uh regarding um regarding supporting uh these organizations the it's really interesting because it all ties into a book that I think uh several members of the committee are familiar with known as the vermont papers and while I'm not asking for anybody to agree with it in terms of a political philosophy it really does talk about democracy grassroots and allowing people to come together with the group that they want to associate with so to speak so to to create a regionalized council similar to to the same way that the um the regional commissions operate for example windham regional commission covers all of windham county plus like two or three towns that aren't in windham county because it works for them to be able to provide that level of regionalization where we could start off with maybe all the towns in an a county serving as that regional uh regional council to handle things like these but let's say that uh the town of let's say wilmington says we are better with bennington commission and we want to associate with the bennington commission that would be within the right and allow the communities to develop themselves in a way that helps bring in this perspective let's take some of the burden off of the rdap committee trying to support locals and county governments and really bring in the community into the conversation for the people they serve so thank you for for hearing your animal through that um but just wanted to get that out there thank you any questions or comments for mark and yes i love that book um anybody else out here who would like to kind of make a general comment right now christ i'm sorry well no i'm just following up i always appreciate sheriff anderson's remarks and he said something so i'm not picking on it in any way but i just responding to the language you know if a complaint goes to quote unquote an internal affairs division that's goes back a little bit to what we were talking about 10 minutes ago and i was saying like well to whom are you to whom are you speaking and who's looking into it and are you in somebody else's house uh and as opposed to like in a neutral a neutral venue so i'm just sort of flagging the language as it goes by for something in terms of where are you when you get to ask these questions and have them investigated and i think it's that notion of um it makes sense to me that there is a quote unquote internal affairs division but if that's the venue for processing something then i think you're an outsider carrying a complaint into a place where you're definitely not in charge and it's not your house so madam chair may i follow up to that sure uh so uh senator bray i fully fully agree and i think that's actually one of the uh areas that uh at least for my agency we're hearing that in our our current uh current events uh and we're really taking that as an opportunity to reflect and listen to communities that uh have underlined and underscored how they have been affected so i think we're we're trying to to recognize that um the at the same time uh to the extent of an internal affairs investigation and i'm not going to go by the categories but let's i'm just going to say arbitrarily if i had somebody complained that one of my deputies is speeding that's an issue that i i would want to handle within my organization i don't think it requires a large scale of of intervention if i have a complaint and i've had a few of these complaints where somebody contacts me or contacts me on behalf of someone else a person of colors who does not feel comfortable coming into quote unquote our house um and they say we believe we were stopped because uh we were the skin color and it becomes a okay is is that the case because obviously we want to intervene if if we have that type of behavior occurring we want to ensure our policies are preventing that we want to make sure that our training is not encouraging that type of behavior so those are all things that we need to look at from an internal perspective and so when we talk about internal affairs oftentimes uh myself as an agency head what i'm evaluating is not necessarily criminal conduct it is um whether it's following our policies if our policies meet the standard and if the if the standard is appropriate the the follow on to that my agency in my career we had two at least two criminal cases against uh now a former deputies the uh we want nothing to do with holding that our responsibility uh and uh my predecessor in those cases uh he quickly contacted outside agencies and said we believe that we have had a crime occur we would like this investigated we were in fact witnesses to some of these crimes so the the transfer of responsibility for those cases was also even transferred outside of our state's attorney to another county our state's attorney recused herself so the there's a need for that internal process but i also fully respect what you're saying we have to have a mechanism which i think the council could be that mechanism to say we have a problem with mark mark isn't handling or going to be responsive to this whether that's true or not but we can go to this other person who has mark has no control over and we can tell them and that can follow a process so i think that might be a way to to make our process better without adding a duplicative or additional features to our government yeah sure i mean thanks for that you know i i felt comfortable saying this because i knew you wouldn't take it as an accusation or anything it's just i'm sort of observing the language we use and how we talk about stuff as we kind of put everything on the table thanks Alison so mark i like your idea of a portal a centralized portal with the council i mean for criminal complaints i mean you're right the speeding complaints you know you'd have to differentiate but i i think just like we're trying to create a one-stop business portal it would be great for the public to be able to have a one-stop place where where all complaints are filed and they're heard thoughtfully and they're delegated the follow-up to them is delegated in some capacity that's clear i i like that idea and it also goes to susana's suggestion about centralizing things so i i think that's a great idea eight eight ton did you i have a comment or were you just waving your hand no i i did i just want to point out sort of piggybacking on all of this but just to sort of it's the college professor and me the the issue i think is going to be balance the notion of home in a way where are you where is your community what is your community that becomes a very fraught question for people in so-called protected groups so whatever that is defined as on the state level you're really going to have to take a lot of testimony and make a lot of consideration of the point of view of people who are not in those groups or who are in those groups because that is immediately seen as an otherness if you're in government and you're doing this you are an other because people in those groups are going to see you rightly or wrongly as i'll just use a phrase from tv the man so it's a really a question it is a cultural question where exactly is home and understanding that that notion of home and belonging means radically different things for instance to Caucasians than it does to people of color that's all so i this certainly can't follow up with what etan just said but um i'm gonna one of the we can begin to make changes and we should be making changes but one of the things that struck me this morning um in judiciary um Curtis Reed was with us and he he made the the statement and i think that we will address some of this on tuesday when we get to talking about the training council and the academy and the training council and uh hiring and leadership and stuff but he said when he moved to um Brattleboro and i think he said it was 1978 or 79 that the policy of the Brattleboro was it nine the policy of the Brattleboro police department was to stop and interrogate every person with brown or black skin that was that was their policy so that is not the policy anymore and it has dramatically changed and and in i mean it's taken many years but it has dramatically changed and now there is um a commitment to really uh performing law enforcement duties in a fair and impartial way and when he was asked what the difference was why what happened and he said leadership our police chief in Brattleboro is an amazing person and there are many around the state that that have so it it comes from the leadership and if you don't have the commitment of the leadership all the policies that we do and all the um mandates that we write aren't going to make diddly squat unless unless you have the buy-in of the leadership and we have the right people in those leadership positions so i i just i think that we we need to focus while we need to focus on all these other things we also need to focus on the leadership and how we train people and how we get people into those positions of leadership whether it's in the state police or the smallest um uh the town with a police department of two people so we we i i just had to throw that out because i think that that that is such an important thing for us to remember so brian thank you madam chair i found it interesting when susanna brought up the license plates and then sheriff anderson sort of uh i think made an important distinction if a law enforcement officer is using the different colored license plate as a potential clue for who might be driving or in that vehicle and subsequently uses that as a pretext for uh uh traffic stop that's wrong that's just not what should be happening on the other hand as sheriff anderson said and forgive me senator clarkson but i'm going to bring up my favorite speed trap uh reland county has uh many skiers that come up to enjoy our uh skiing facilities at killington and pico and if they go through the towns of bridge the bridge water or woodstock by now most of the local people as mark mentioned have gotten pretty well clued in that the town has hired them to uh to write speeding tickets that's why they are out there and so literally if it says 25 you better be going 25 but the out-of-staters regardless of who's driving uh are not as aware of that so oftentimes if i'm on my way heading east into woodstock and i've gone through bridge water and i i know he's sitting there and i see a skiing person it's obvious with the skis on the roof and all come flying up the other way i just kind of go well good luck and then local people will flash their lights to warn the oncoming traffic and then i guess run the risk of uh i know this has happened i don't know how often it has sheriff but they get pulled over for kind of spoiling the uh the ticket process can they get written up for defective equipment because their lights were blinking so i just thought i'd mention i do think i i'm making light of it but i do think it's an important distinction that if it's just because it's an out-of-state plate and the officer is concerned about who might be in the vehicle in terms of people of color that's wrong that's unless they're doing something else that would occasion the traffic stop but a lot of times it has nothing to do with that it has more to do with them being unfamiliar with the local idiosyncrasies of of the traffic that's it so um mike i think that you wanted to weigh in here um do you want to weigh in and then i think what we'll try and do is pull all the kind of a lot of these disparate thoughts together and put them in a in some notes so that we can we will kind of know where we are so we don't lose these but mike would you like to okay thank you senator uh just some just some general comments and i thought the discussion was really good today uh number one the vermont press association and for the record i'm mike donnie from executive director of the vermont press association and also serve on the annuling the first amendment coalition uh obviously we think there's a need for total transparency throughout the whole process as many of you know there are two standards currently the state police got a special exemption about 40 years ago uh some of you may remember the the half dozen state troopers involved in the stolen router bid affair uh and one of the troopers subsequently committing suicide on the state house steps uh about like i said 40 years ago since that time all state police discipline is behind closed doors uh except in a few rare cases um i'm thinking in my time i can think of four or five cases in 40 years but we can talk more about those later meanwhile municipal police county sheriffs and even some state agencies liquor control dmv fish and wildlife follow the vermont public records law for the most part but that's not even perfect as an example two police officers seized uh two uh 30 packs of beer from some miners instead of logging the evidence and disposing of it the right way they took it home and drank it and uh they were eventually suspended for three weeks placed on probation for a year according to the city the police chief would not give out the names of the police officers for mishandling of evidence which is crucial in police work obviously uh i'm sure other defense attorneys would be interested in knowing if these police officers are mishandling evidence in their cases so the names supposedly were unavailable unless somebody went over to city hall and got the payroll records um and there was another case involving uh police that it you know normally they make a rest on saturday night for for misconduct and that the police officers did the same thing and yet again the names weren't given out one of them was eventually charged publicly but uh they were all being hidden we would argue that that information should be public uh and i know it is a fine line between somebody being accused of something uh and and something um and and an actual findings but i i think we'd like to see that conceivably maybe they don't want to say who who a complaint has been filed against but do a compromise and say if you asked for a specific name if a complaint's been filed against somebody that you could find out whether that complaint has been filed especially in a major public event um i noticed today in reading the bennington banner uh a victim as reported told everybody uh told the banner or i guess the public down in bennington that they had filed a complaint and turned over all the paperwork to the banner and other people and uh the police academy is basically saying uh we can't confirm whether we're investigating it or not but yet there's a whole file that's been turned over uh second point is whatever the issue is speedy resolutions of these cases so once the investigation is completed um is necessary one of the frustrations we hear is that um especially small police departments where two three four officers are involved in a standoff and there's a shooting that they have to put those officers on leave and it's months and months that those that the report sits at the ag's office or with the state's attorney those small towns have to spend considerable amount of money on overtime to fill shifts and that's one of the complaints we keep hearing about and i'm sure the police will address at some point uh number three on the paper the 10 pointer that uh commissioner shirling issued um there are a few weasel words as we call them the should and may um as you go through this when you talk about the police discipline i think it needs to be more affirmative that they must and everything like that uh the one of the other points that somebody may get to at some point is when there are bad police officers state county municipal one of the big complaints we hear is that police administrators are not allowed to fire oftentimes bad cops and they're told to leave it up to the lawyers and the lawyers end up uh negotiating a settlement with a resignation rather than firing somebody and as give you an example the state police wanted to fire a patrol commander who stole $215,000 from taxpayers uh several years ago by falsifying time sheets to fatten his pension they took his gun and badge away one day and they were going to fire him the next day and when i talked to the director of the state police that day he said uh it's in the hands of the lawyer and there was a negotiated resignation rather than firing a guy who you know ended up going to jail but uh and that may be something with labor laws that you're gonna have to take up further down the line but i would just mention that as we've heard that that has been a problem but those are just a couple of points we wanted to make and and we'll get back as you go along through this whole thing so i just um thank you mike i i do have um and i think that oftentimes we talk about um splitting hairs and i'm not sure sometimes where we split those hairs and what that actually means but i am concerned that uh the names of every single person who has an allegation filed against them would be made public i don't think we do that in other professions and um i am not sure that i the one that you're talking about they could they could have done it under mishandling of evidence and that certainly is a some kind of a unprofessional conduct i would think mishandling evidence but but just simply making public the names of every officer who has had an allegation brought against them i think sounds a little draconian and we we know also that people bring um spurious charges or allegations and and because for many many different reasons and um but once an allegation is out there of something it can have a huge impact on the person's career and life and um so i i am concerned about that i i agree with you 100 just because somebody files a complaint it's sort of like a civil lawsuit anybody can file any lawsuit that they want doesn't have to really be grounded too much uh and and i agree i'm just not sure where on this spectrum some of those have to be obviously if if there's a complaint file and it it's founded in criminal justice training council files to charge clearly that ought to be public at that point uh i think it is are there a couple of cases before that point where obviously there is a public spectacle of some sort um i it's always crazy to me that a prosecutor or the police can't say yes we're investigating an incident when it when it's been captured you know that like what happened in minneapolis i mean if if somebody ever said are you guys investigating that officer's conduct oh sorry we can't say anything because it's all confidential i mean why not acknowledge we're we're investigating that officer for putting a knee on the guy's throat i mean yeah i've never quite understood why why you can't say yes we're investigator or no it's been found that there were nothing has happened we've investigated up to this point and you know until a few years ago um betsy it has some things you want to add but until a few years ago um i can remember um being stunned by this that if if there was a and i think i have this right if there was a an investigation and the officer was found to was um acquitted was found not to have any um substantiated allegations the um the ag's office anyway and i believe it was the commissioner and other people could not say yes we have investigated and we found there were there was no substantiated charges they couldn't even say we found the guy innocent they couldn't and i i it wasn't that true until just a few years ago when we changed it i think well i i would be again looking at the state police advisory committee uh i can tell you that SPAC does have the authority to release information on internals and everything like that uh i can think again i'm thinking of about four or five cases and in in each of those it was a case that received a lot of public attention and uh i remember the first one when jim walton called me one night and said i'm authorized to release us and and i was like stunned because they had never released them before yeah but he said that this woman had made so many allegations in public and it turned out that it was 100 false and there was a full internal investigation and they the SPAC felt that they had to in fairness to the police officers say that they were innocent of what this woman was accusing them of so and those are that and those are like what the four cases i'm thinking of similarly they were high profile cases that turned out not to be quite true or were true and what the outcome was well that for some reason i have the a g in in my head here is not being able to say anything but i may be completely wrong um i doubt it i doubt it you're never wrong i'm not so sure that most people on this call would agree with you mic madam may i make a comment yes please this might be reflecting the change that you're referring to a few years ago i'm just looking at our internal affairs policy which under the heading of review and disposition by the sheriff it's where i make a finding based on the internal investigation that we've conducted and that includes that will notify i will notify the complainant of the final determination of the complaint it might not be the details of it it won't be the any sort of disciplinary action that results from it but we'll say that we sustained it or there wasn't enough information to prove it or through our investigation we're exonerating the person so we we will stand by what the the disposition is and our disposition ironically it could be different than the academy or the training council disposition because reporting to the council will happen regardless if it meets the criteria for the report so we might actually exonerate someone under our policy because we had a policy failure and then notify the council who says no you violated state law and that's more of a legal issue which it's goofy but it's what it is so then we would go for a fix or policy so i just wanted to add that thank you anybody else have that's an i just wanted to confirm that the council is statutorily prohibited from disclosing information about investigations that don't get charged and that's in that accessibility and confidentiality statute 20 bsa 2409 d which is that the council it's hearing officer and council staff shall keep confidential any other information regarding unprofessional conduct complaints investigations proceedings and related records except the info required or permitted to be released under this section and when the general assembly enacted this language it's nearly verbatim to the opr information of the confidentiality accessibility of opr unprofessional conduct allegations and charges which is set forth in three vsa 131 and the language is exactly the same except for the council's language refers to specifically law enforcement officers whereas opr refers more generally to all their professions so does that mean if a complaint is filed and the council investigates it and they don't make any charges that they don't even have the right to say um yes we investigated it and found no charges that's how i read that yes because it provides a if there's not charges it provides that the council can only disclose the date and nature of the complaint but not the identity of the officer and a summary of the completed investigation so something like this would be an example similar to like an opr closing report where under opr's practices opr will generally describe a complaint not provide personally identifying information and then provide a summary that says you know there wasn't enough evidence or to bring charges or that the evidence that was obtained did not rise the level of unprofessional conduct for example so if we have a so hypothetically the uh middlebury police department had a shooting case where i think three of their officers had to be put on a paid administrative leave and everything like that i don't know if it went to the police academy or would have at the time with the law the way it is so even though that they may have been exonerated at some point the police academy couldn't tell them even though the general public knows they've all been suspended or paid up put on paid administrative leave i should say not suspended but so and i guess that's why we say we think that there ought to be at least some provision much like SPAT that allows the training council in certain cases if they think it's warranted when there's been public great public attention to a public event that they be able to say those officers were exonerated yes you would need to amend the council statute because otherwise the council is prohibited and you did do something similar in campaign finance law this discussion is reminding me of something that the general assembly did recently to add specifically in language for example the ag or state's attorney to disclose the results of an of an investigation including the grounds for whether or not they wanted they felt it appropriate to bring an enforcement action so it would seem similar to the SPAC authority that the SPAC is in its discretion able to report to authorities or to the public or both on information that it possesses in regards to vsp allegations yeah it seems to me that you don't want to say they should all be reported because if there was a complaint and an investigation internal investigation and and there was found nothing to be there you don't want to whoever it is to come out and say well we investigated officer so and so for this and we found nothing because then that's out there but if there was some kind of a major event where every everybody knows this happened and everybody knows that there's an investigation even if the council can't say yes we're investigating everybody knows that it's happening it seems to me that it it is not only in the public's interest to be able to know what happened there but also in the interest of exonerating the officer because now it just hangs there it's like when you're charged with something and it's in the newspaper and then five days later there's a little tiny thing in the bottom that says oh excuse me we were wrong we charged this person with child sexual sexual abuse but oh it was a different name I mean so it seems to me that it would be important in certain circumstances to be able to to make this public Mike yeah and that's the point I was trying to get to is there are some cases we probably all had a complaint filed against us when we were working and you know not every complaint is worthy of of they get investigated but they're found to be unfounded we're looking at at the ones that are obvious and everything like that one of the ones that SPAC did make public was a state trooper pulling over a vehicle and turned out there were there were two people that were not documented to be in the country and there was video that was released and everything like that and there was questions about how the trooper handled that case and eventually SPAC not only said they exonerated the trooper I mean they had the dash cam videos and although I think the dash cam videos I have to go back take a look I think they were actually released even before it got to SPAC but but everything was put out on the table in that case because they wanted the and I presume the lawyer for the trooper wanted it out there that he had done nothing wrong that it was a standard routine traffic stop well one of the allegations that has been made against me by a few years ago by the Burlington Free Press was that I was a weasel and there was never that was not me just for the record that was not me saying that there was never any kind of a retraction on that so a lot of people in Burlington still think I'm a weasel but a wonderful weasel sorry if that was a little irreverent but well that's fair game that's fair game anything else committee here it's getting on toward four o'clock on Friday afternoon I don't know where you are it's bright and sunny and hot and horrible here too hot but um so I will send um Betsy if you and I can maybe get together and put together some notes for what we heard today and and um and then we can begin to take some specific comment it's on specific issues here but then on Tuesday I think what we'll do is start looking at those issues that fall under training and hiring and promotion that area and the and the justice count the training training council does is that committee are there other and and you should know that just because there are um questions associated with when I put out the that that list of questions and I have a list of questions that um also relate to training and the training council and stuff that's not an exhaustive list that doesn't mean that that's just what we're going to talk about that's just to give us some um some things to start mulling around yes gail we had also talked about taking up the pay act again on yes we should do that very first thing on Tuesday I don't think it'll take us very long um did we find out at all about I meant to um send a note to to Tim and ask you about this $1,400 the pay out yeah it's uh in house of probes right now and I I just I gotta note that house of probes is hoping to look at it uh early next week oh on tuesday on tuesday actually monday pardon monday allison jeannette i did get a response from tim but it was um it it was it was short i'll forward it to you it was just you know we're in a financial crisis and why would we do this at this point so I mean it was not um I I didn't uh when I got it I hadn't okay I'll respond to him I uh I'm happy to respond but I he he did just say we're you know the reason he didn't address the fact that we hadn't addressed it or that there was okay you know the other concerns around seasonal uh assistance and so okay if you send that to me that would be great yeah anything else there was one other thing on tuesday that I was thinking we needed to oh we need to um have we voted out boards and commissions no I I don't think we have um we have permission to vote it out so maybe we should just vote that out on tuesday first thing and brian are you going to be the champion here I know you said you were done but sure that's he helped me and they took out the most controversial we've already dealt with the most controversial right the state of education yeah no the board of education oh yeah yeah so you don't have to defend that okay anything else committee gail sorry I just need clarification on tuesday if um approach is taking it up are we going to meet at the same time or wait until after they finish their discussion well that's that's house appropriations on monday and then it'll come to us and I think we should be prepared to make our recommendations to our because because we're not going to pass out a bill we're just going to give our information to um send it appropriations and they'll put it in the budget I don't think we're going to try and pass it out as a separate bill okay thank you so um that was there was only that one lingering question right it as far as I know yeah yeah that's the end was that right I believe so I know that Luke would I think that Luke wants to at least uh just testify on it okay committee yeah and and um I can also forward that question I asked to Luke I had only sent it to mitzi and Tim okay all right so I think that we could probably do both of them within uh 20 minutes on tuesday am I right okay so let's do them first and then at like 120 we'll start our our our ongoing discussion on law enforcement justice equity um what else good good behavior good actors get rid of bad actors the whole thing okay thank you with that do we have more to say do we need to do more we do need to do more