 Del Poso is not with us this evening, but we've got Deputy Chief Mirad. And I think Deputy Chief Wright has the notifications to the agenda. Get the materials, everyone should have them. OK. Public forum. I think we've got one person for public forum if you want to come up to the mic. Thank you for speaking. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening, John. I'm Martha Mulpis. I live in Ward 7. And I came tonight. This is my first attendance at a police commissioner meeting. I'm very pleased at the new representation of the community on the police commission as a retired social worker. I'm very interested in community welfare. And I guess I would just want to say, if there's anything that the police commissioners would like the public to be able to help with, to do, to help, that would be information that would be very welcome to me and I know to others who want to have justice, but also want to have fairness in Burlington. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have a chief's report? We do, a very brief one. I wanted to mention, I'm sorry, I'm trying to sort of find it. Just one moment, please forgive me. So first of all, we did have a press conference earlier this evening. Our detectives working with the US Marshals were able to apprehend Alfred Wischer. Alfred Wischer is alleged to have shot a man on Clark Street in March, on March 24. That was a very significant shooting scene. The victim was shot in the head. I don't believe that anybody on that scene believed that the victim would survive. He is currently still alive. We called upon South Burlington PD. We called upon Winooski and others to help us with that initial scene. It was led by a senior lieutenant, Matt Sullivan, who happened to be on the road that morning, did really good work, making certain that the witnesses were separated, that we secured evidence properly. We had some good video from the location, and detectives came in on, as I said, a Sunday, and ran for the rest of the night with that. Mr. Wischer was able to abscond from Vermont, but we had good intelligence about possible locations for him, and were pretty relentless in tracking it. It was a case that was kept at the top of the US Marshals pile simply because of diligence by both the US Marshals here and by our own detectives in our Detective Services Bureau. And they did a really great job fulfilling an implicit promise that we make to the people of Burlington that when a crime like that happens, and it's thankfully a very rare kind of crime, but when it does, we will pursue it with the utmost diligence, and we will do all that we can to apprehend and bring back our suspect, and we did so in this case. The other chief's note, such as it is, and I am here on behalf of Chief Del Pozzo, is an article, it's a tweet that I actually sent out earlier in the week from my account, in response to somebody who had posted a story about a Washington Metro officer who had encountered a child, an autistic child, having a very severe tantrum, whose mother was at her wit's end, and the child was on the platform, and this officer sat with the child, calmed the child, and then escorted both of them to their final destination on the Metro in a way that was just really compassionate and caring. Certainly, the Washington Post ran a major story on it. It was something that they saw as different, and I regret that that's something that they see as different, and I'll explain why. Care and compassion is part of the job, and it is exhibited by the vast majority of the men and women who do it. It's not always in amazing cases like this one in the Washington Metro, but there are many other cases, and in the past week, our cops here at One North Avenue have spent time searching in hot weather for missing children, one of whom was nonverbal. They have responded to people going through emotional crisis, some of whom were threats to themselves or others. They have responded to car crashes to make sure that people were uninjured and safe and that our traffic and commerce can flow. They have spent many hours working with a homeless woman to remove her from a tent in an ecologically sensitive area and get her to a safe place. They've listened to neighbor complaints about behaviors that diminish Burlington's quality of life, and they've worked with those neighbors towards solutions. They've shared creamies with local kids. They've had a low-speed bicycle chase of someone who threatened others with a baseball bat. They have intervened in domestic violence and helped the victims. They have rescued pets from hot cars. They've stopped fights and assaults. They've addressed retail thefts from local merchants. They've brokered all kinds of social cooperation amongst our neighbors in Burlington's great public spaces. And they've also worked to prevent crime and disorder and make arrests and issue tickets and all of the things that we ask our officers who serve us to do. And that was just off the top of my head at the time of writing that. And just yesterday, this was earlier this last week, at the end of last week, we responded in one shift to two untimely deaths. And the officers who responded to those, they absorbed those deaths. They absorbed the bereavement and the anguish of the departed's friends and families. And they still ensured that each was appropriately investigated, but also treated with as much dignity and respect as possible. And that is a form of compassion, too, just like the officer in the metros. And it's a form of compassion that the men and women of this department do day in and day out. And that is one week that is 738 plus or minus incidents. And that is compassion and care from this department. Thank you. I wasn't even thinking this was unusual to have you here. Is that for chief's report? We have a task force update. So we have commissioners Harp and Gamash. Have there been any follow-up of the task force? Not yet. Not yet. So that's the report. Yeah. The content of the task force has been, is that set yet or? There have been no meetings, no communication, that we're going to task force at this point. Okay. So review of, and I'm sorry, I have something for this on the printer at work. I have 10 copies, which is great for our purposes, but on the next item, review the role of the police commission and citizen complaints. So a document was distributed to you all. Thank you. And unfortunately, it's not the right version because at one point I mucked things up by thinking that we should be anticipating scenarios where a chief, the chief was the subject of a complaint, but that actually isn't apt because the policy specifically says it's against police officers. If there's a complaint against a police officer. So we exercised what I had added. This might help. Oh, this is great. It just shows this is the lighter version. So the lighter additional material that you saw and what was sent out actually, I added that and then corrected myself. But for some reason, this mistakenly got distributed for tonight. This policy has been in the works for at least a year. So it was going to be sent to the Public Safety Committee of the city council, but I know Chair Ash wanted you all to see it. So my long maya culpa is simply to ignore that language about if this is about the chief because it's just not applicable to this policy. But what this policy deals with is if a member of the public makes a complaint against a police officer, how is it handled? We're in the middle of one year or maybe have, I guess a year into working with a policy that was agreed to and giving feedback on it. So I didn't know if any of the new commissioners had any questions at this point or comments. It's a lot to take in, I realized. But I do apologize that you got a graph that just confuses things with that language that doesn't belong. Madam Chair, are we looking to vote on this tonight? It's already been approved in, but in my opinion, it's always subject to feedback and comment, right? Because that's the whole goal of this to make sure that the process we're using is the best process for this city. So for our purposes before it goes back to public safety, the goal was just to make sure that all the commissioners had the benefit of seeing it. Okay, thank you. So just a little confusion in us. So has it been approved or not? Because if it's going back to public safety, if it's already been approved, why is it going back to public safety? Public safety, they had the language, if you go to the very top of this document, this paragraph, the purpose of this policy is to support principles of fair. And then at the very end, the last sentence, the report shall include the number of complaints. I guess those were directives from public safety. And if any of the commissioners from during this policy have a different take on things, please let me know. But they had wanted that language in there. So it came back for the addition of that language and it's going back to the public safety committee. Is that comfortable for understanding? All right, I mean, my understanding is that this is still essentially kind of trial period for this policy. So there is some final adoption that needs to happen. But it still requires final adoption. By the public safety thing, yeah. But Commissioner Hughes, if you have comments, it's certainly something that's ongoing, right? Absolutely. So I was wondering, because I was just trying to figure out the genesis of this and through my own research, I was able to determine that it was by delegation of the city council through a resolution that this was created. And I just thought it would be in the best interest of those of us who've just arrived to be updated on that process and to understand where this is coming from and to be better versed in that particular resolution itself, I'm not sure whether my colleague, or you all are familiar with the genesis of this, but I'm holding the resolution in my hand. So what I can tell you is that commissioners Ash and Berenberg were the two commissioners, police commissioners, meeting with public safety on this policy. Chair Ash in particular has a good background about how it got to where it is and what the directives were and on what the policy is based on. So she's either gonna get here tonight and we can talk about it before the meeting concludes or we can have her provide some background at the next meeting. I move that we take a discussion until she returns and able to, until she's able to come back and give us the update on what she discovered with them directly. Do I have a second? I'll second that. Anyone post first stop data on the agenda? Not sure if we have a presentation on that tonight. We do. Yes, please do. Yes, this is something that Chief Del Pozzo has been working on for quite some time with both Nancy and with Corporal Cradoville and others and he's shown different iterations of it to a lot of different people, really seeking solid transparency about our numbers and what they are. And I think that we can start with the first slide. The topics of analysis that overall traffic stops are decreasing. They are down quite a bit. Crashes with injury are down, although crashes are slightly up. There is tremendous parity in warning rates for licensed, properly licensed drivers, that is drivers with a valid driver's license. There is a decreasing disparity in stop rates for black drivers, but a disparity still exists. Searches are down sharply after the legalization of marijuana last summer and search outcomes are equitable across races. Search outcomes which are seen by many experts in the field, including local professor, Stephanie Saguino, as the gold standard. Another term for them is called hit rate, that is the success of a search. If we can move to the, thank you. So there are several trends towards parity that we see which are all positive measures of change over the past several years in the police department and the way in which traffic stops are conducted. Warning rates among white and black drivers with a valid license are equal. Searches, again that term hit rate, are equally successful across race. There were six searches in 2019 thus far. Some of our data, by the way, is primarily full year data through 2018, but we have run searches for 2019 in other instances. And all of this presentation is in support of a larger document that was put out both internally and publicly to local media and to many other Burlington stakeholders last night by deputy chief Wright. There is disparity in stop rate relative to the driving population is decreasing and it is decreasing significantly. And as I stated earlier, post-Marijuana legalization traffic searches are rare. They are quite down, in fact, down to less than a third from the year prior to the July 1st, 2018 law versus the year post the July 1st, 2018 law. There are, however, disparities that remain and they are disparities that we seek to reduce. Despite improvements, the stop rate of black drivers is still higher than their share of the driving population. Black drivers stopped are more likely to have a suspended license and that is a disparity that we would like to investigate and have partners and other stakeholders investigate. Prior to marijuana legalization, black drivers were significantly more likely to be searched. Again, the legislature in its wisdom by changing the law has significantly ameliorated this, but it was a fact prior and it is worthy of additional analysis and of still seeking to reduce that disparity. And finally, the qualitative experience of some drivers. And we have stories of drivers, complaints from drivers. We have a case that we are looking at right now and we'll make determinations about whether or not those qualitative experiences are subjective, are objective, the degree to which we can or can't demonstrate that and the degree to which we can address concerns that may be raised by qualitative experiences. The overall end, the world of our system as it were is traffic stops in total and they are significantly decreasing. In 2018, there were 2727, 2727 stops total. We are on track to be a good deal lower than that for 2019. You can see that there were years where it was a good deal, good deal higher. I think that we have messaged internally directly or implicitly that traffic stops are not necessarily a key to certain kinds of police activity, whether that's interdiction, that there are other ways to ensure road safety, et cetera. But one way or another, the traffic stops are decreasing and officers are still nevertheless finding ways to keep the road safe as our next slide indicates. The crashes with injury are down. Motor vehicle crashes are steady. That is all crash types and that is the first graph on the left hand of the slide up at about 2000 and that's slightly up. It is steady over time but if you drew a trend line in there, there would be an upwards trend. Motor vehicle crashes with serious injury, with injury resulting, excuse me, are down and they're down pretty significantly. It's obviously a much smaller share of the end but we do see a significant decrease and for the projected numbers for 2019, even more of a decrease. Sure. These are crashes just within Burlington itself? Affirmative, that is correct. This data is for Burlington. I would like to think, excuse me, pardon me. More research needs to be done, more drilling into these numbers. I believe that a potential reason for this is that officers are prioritizing better which kinds of conduct to stop. And there is driving conduct that is reckless, that is significant and needs to be addressed and there's driving conduct that is less so. And the fact that we see crashes dropping is possibly as a result of officers making stops that are of drivers who would have otherwise been causing crashes, whose conduct would be doing that. But that is a hypothesis on my part and one that needs to be drilled into. So given that, for example, one of our fatalities in 2018 was on North Avenue, I'm not entirely certain, but we could definitely look at that. And I don't know that we have yet. Yes, Sarah? We did look at, yeah. Compare those to crashes throughout the city and we did find an outsized decrease in crashes along North Ave after the pilot was begun going from four lanes to two lanes. And that was a pretty large reduction in crashes and especially crashes and injuries compared to the rest of the city. So while that is a small portion of the city, it did have an effect on the overall city's injury numbers. But as you can see, there's an overall trend that I think is extending beyond just North Ave. It might be some of those other changes we're seeing around the city. When did you see the bulk of that? Time wise, of that decrease, that North Avenue centric decrease? You know, I can't remember exactly when we did the pilot, but if I recall correctly, what we saw was that if the pilot had not occurred, I think injuries would have remained about steady. So I'm gonna guess it was somewhere right there where it just started to trend out for the city. That's right, it's a decrease in overall crash and along with that, what was the decrease in crashes and injuries? There was a decrease in both. Yeah, there's a large decrease in injury, but there weren't a lot of injury crashes. So while the number did definitely decrease, there was a relatively small number of injuries. So I guess the more crashes happening elsewhere, the better you know what's gonna happen. Yeah, yeah, like, you know, the intersection of the city that has the most crashes is Main Street and East Ave. The most cars are just moving to this area. If we move to the next, parody and warning rates for licensed drivers. For stops resulting in a warning and this excludes stops that involve someone having a suspended license, we see that we have moved to nearly total parody in those numbers. The issue here is that it is very different for drivers who do not have valid licenses and in those instances, we see still a significant disparity. There are, let me see where those numbers are. 13% essentially of all drivers, of all black drivers since 2012, 13% have not had valid licenses while it is only 5% of all other drivers. And so when those instances are factored in, warnings become essentially just, they are not something that officers are at discretion to issue when somebody has a suspended license. And so if we were to see that, we would see a continued disparity in who gets warnings. But when licenses are valid, we do not see a disparity. Here we get to a significant question with regard to how we are defining terms. Disparity and stop rates for drivers. Traffic stops is the blue line on top. We have a line underneath of all drivers and crashes. If that were to be our proxy for driving population in 2018, we are very close. Disparity still exists between 8% of stops and 7.5% of driving population. If we use not at fault drivers and crashes, which is the transparent box, that disparity increases. And if we use census data, it is the largest and we see that at the bottom for total pop that is greater than 58, total population greater than 15 or older, which we don't have for 2018. But we can reasonably surmise that it's following the same basic trend. Nevertheless, this is an ongoing discussion about which set of measures we use as our proxy for driving population. If we move to historical stop rate, we see that, again, this comes down to questions about those measures and what it is that we're using as our metric. Census data is the column on the far right. Percentage of all crashes is the center and percent of all stops is on the left. The disparity we see has narrowed irrespective of which metric we use as base, but remains problematic regardless. It's worth noting that the schools are approximately 35% non-white, that they're 10 to 12% black in our schools. The question of what we actually use for a metric is a complicated one. And it's open to, I think, a lot of discussion by well-meaning people who want to find the truest representation of our numbers. The reason the census is so important and in the Constitution is because if you don't know your numbers, you can't really understand yourself. And I think one of the problems, one of the challenges, rather, of using census data, for example, is that there are questions as to its accuracy with regard to Burlington, as to its accuracy with regard to different population groups who sometimes are reported to be underrepresented by the census, et cetera. And by using other measures, we do see that there might be an underrepresentation. But what we ultimately determine is the best proxy remains an open question. Searches are down sharply after legalized marijuana and you can see that. There have been no searches. These are all searches, by the way. These are not searches for marijuana in particular. But marijuana gave officers a very clear and very easily discernible probable cause for searches. It's in plain view often. People leave marijuana in detritus or cigarettes, et cetera, in open view. There is the odor of it. There are conditions and behaviors that are associated with it. And as a result, it was significantly used for, it became a significant source of probable cause searches. So while these are not searches that are only for legalized marijuana, we see, excuse me, for marijuana, we see that the legalization of marijuana corresponds significantly to a diminishment of searches. And in fact, in 2019, there has not been a search of a black driver. In the 12 months after legalization, we saw a significant decrease versus the 12 months before, as I said earlier, about 30%, 33%, rather. Search outcomes. Again, the so-called hit rate is another term that is used for it. It is, as I mentioned earlier, and as is referenced in the larger and more thorough traffic enforcement report that was released last night, considered a quote unquote gold standard by many academics and researchers. These search outcomes are becoming very equitable across race. What this indicates is the searches where something is found. In other words, a belief that the officer was operating on probable cause and a suspicion that was borne out and that actually resulted in recovery. And a assertion made about search rates when they are not equitable is that searches are being conducted by officers owing to bias rather than to objective conditions in front of them that represent probable cause or represent, excuse me, reasonable suspicion that ultimately leads to a search and to the recovery of something and then probable cause. In this instance, as we see these lines converge and to have done so over the past three full years, I think that we can say that officers are using uniform applications of reasonable suspicion in order to find what is causing a search to be conducted. Traffic stop, summary data. And this is sort of the culmination. This is the data it is mentioned on the final page of the report. This represents data for 2018. So these are the totals for 2018. Obviously a lot of information in that table. A lot of percentages that we can look through. I think that we've gone over the ones that I find are more both encouraging and indicative of places where we still need to work on the previous slides. And then like the slide says, are there questions? And I'll forewarn you that in many of these instances, I am gonna throw these erstwhile researchers right under the bus. And I'll preface these questions by saying I haven't had a chance to actually enter you the data yet. I got them recently. So I hope to do that still and I'll probably have more questions later on. So some of the questions aren't gonna be about the data specifically right now. They're about some goals for the Department of Tolerance. The first question is regarding the suspension of licenses. So given that black drivers have a higher percentage of suspended license, it's a little generate a certain outcome. I assume you're aware there are municipalities, there are cities, they're trying to change how license suspension happens. So one thing that's been done in some places is that licenses are no longer suspended automatically given certain conditions. You've given kind of an inability to pay prior to previous tickets or something like that. So there are kind of different ways that you see that the concern about disparities of suspended licenses can be addressed. One is legislative by the state or by the state, changing how licenses get suspended in the first place. Another would be kind of how BPD handles cases of drives that have suspended licenses. So the question is first, do you know whether BPD has kind of discretion in how it deals with drives that have suspended licenses? Is it guarantee, is it necessarily the case that drives with suspended licenses get certain outcomes? The second question is, does BPD, would BPD play any role in promoting a change in how licenses get suspended at the state or state level? So I can't, in this instance, we are at a loss because I'm not the chief. And as far as deciding whether or not it would play a role in that, that is a prerogative of the chief. I think with regard to stops, officers are limited in what they can do. If you have somebody who does not have a valid license, that individual can't be driving. That individual can't drive away from the encounter. That individual can't be allowed to leave without indication of why the stop occurred or given that warning that allows you to continue on your way. It is a result of a system that also equates not having a license with not being licensed and safe, therefore, and to a certain extent, the conduct that would follow that would be the responsibility of the officer. And something that we would have to determine as a department our willingness to absorb the risk of allowing people who are not licensed to move on. I'm aware that sometimes the lack of a license is not predicated on previous driver history, for example. But it often is, and we don't really have a way of determining that roadside. So whether or not this is something that is the result of one or two missed payments because of issues with poverty, whether it is the result of a person not being able to navigate a sometimes complex system, or whether it is the result of somebody who has had a couple egregious instances of bad driving is not readily discernible to the officer and would drastically affect, in my opinion, as somebody overseeing those officers and the choices they make, whether or not they could, in good conscience, allow that person to continue on. I have more questions, but I don't want to. All right, second question. Crash data, so you suggested that, so one hypothesis, one possibility is that officers are better able to focus on driver's particular crash that might result in injury and that might be why the crash with injury resulting is down. Do we have comparisons for that across state data as well? Do we know how the percentage of crash resulting injury compared between Burlington and the States? Here comes that bus, guys. No, but I don't. So, I think it might be worth comparing both the percentage of crashes overall in Burlington with the state and also as a crash with injury resulting between the city and the state as well, as to see whether there is a general trend, why that might be happening, whether there are things that EBD is doing or not doing, affecting that. Yeah, something that, I mean, it'd be difficult to look on the state level for traffic stop volume just because there's different systems that would need to be queried on. But in the past, we have looked at other cities, traffic stop volume over time, correlated with their crash volume over time. I haven't necessarily seen a connection with reduction in traffic stops resulting in an increase in crashes. They don't necessarily have to move together because we've seen a couple of examples of that here and elsewhere. Yes, it seems like there might be a lot of various initiatives happening both in the city and the city might be affecting the number of injuries. And by the way, this is a clarifying question I've asked before. So, the percentage of crashes with injury resulting so it's also included in the incident between a vehicle and a pedestrian was it included in the crash? Yeah, I mean, the pedestrian liking the injury. Yeah, so that would still be considered a crash. My comment was a hopeful hypothetical and one, as I stated, that it wasn't entirely supported by the data yet. But I do believe that officers have curtailed their, the frequency of stops, we see that. I don't believe it, we know it, we know that it has dropped. And yet, I do believe that officers witnessing egregious driving conduct are still going to respond to that. They are going to respond to somebody going 70 miles an hour east on Main Street up the hill. They are going to respond to somebody who is doing burnouts in the New North End. And I would like to think that there may be correlations in that continued enforcement activity, even as overall enforcement activity diminishes, but a maintenance and, in fact, improvement in crash data that has injury. But you are 100% correct. There are plenty of other mechanisms that could be contributing to that or even causing it wholly. You talked to one of the things in the disparities to reduce section is the qualitative experience of some drivers. So, how are you measuring that right now? How are we measuring that right now? How do we know whether that's improved or not? In virtue of whatever it is you seem to claim that that is a disparity right now, I mean, yeah, what does that look like as far as what we know, what counts as success, how many of us have gotten there? So, I believe, actually, and I'll ask you guys to clarify to determine whether or not the chief's thinking was that there were other methods. But certainly this comes from, it comes from complaints, it comes from anecdotal evidence or anecdotal things that we've heard from people who were stopped, people who are speaking on behalf of someone who was stopped. We have complaints and we have looked into some of those as you know. We've discussed some in executive session and I won't discuss them openly here owing to the fact that they're internal investigations and personnel matters, but that is currently the primary way that we have insight into whether or not somebody's qualitative experience was either negative or positive. It's that or it is opposites where we have somebody right and say, I was pulled over for this and the officer couldn't have been kinder. I don't believe that either of those represents data in the sense of being anything that is close to complete, but it's what we have for the time being. And it certainly is something that we are looking at and it goes back to ultimately, fair and impartial policing policies and our own internal expectations with regard to implicit bias training, et cetera. And if we are seeing evidence of negative applications of those two things in the anecdotal data coming our way and so that's part and parcel to what we look at internally. So what these organizations do, they're looking for good. Sorry, I just wanted to just follow up on the, you know, the complaints being one of the primary ways we have just for historical, I think since then, but then we also, the vice chair, the chair myself delivered complaints around the city to departments to Peace and Justice Center, Migrant Justice, the high school. CJC. CJC. And those are all listed on the website as well so that individuals can feel comfortable coming forward and not having to come to the police department. They obviously can come here as well. So we could probably do a better job of making that more public that they don't have to come here, but there was a kind of an effort to try to make it easier for people to make complaints. It was a general complaint staff, so that's a problem. Correct. Traffic staff. So one thing I was going to say is, so organizations are looking for client experiences of the service that the organization provides. One thing that's kind of standard to do is correctly solicit opinions from people rather than waiting for your give opinions directly, right? And so one thing which is possible, I don't know whether, I mean, there's gonna be about, the benefits and negatives, but when it could be done is to take a random sample of traffic stops, correctly solicit their opinions, your surveys, et cetera, say like, are you willing to give feedback on your experience with this traffic stop? So the idea of police surveys has been a hobby of a horse of mine for a while. I've discussed it with the chief. It turns into the mechanism of it, the cost of implementing it. There was a former officer whom both the chief and I knew at our previous department who was looking into creating such a system. It would be essentially the equivalent of a customer service survey system, not unlike what you get from airlines, not unlike what you get from other things. This is not in the works. I'm not announcing some sort of new idea. I'm simply discussing with you the idea that this has a lot of potential. There are a lot of obstacles to it and it has been looked at for those. Part of the issue is determining in a fair and open way that companies don't have to do how you are going to discount positive and negative user experience. When JetBlue sends out a questionnaire to every person who flies, it knows darn well that the majority of people are going to be at two ends of the spectrum and probably more on the negative side. That was the cruddiest flight I've ever had. It was rude, it was delayed, it was yada yada and that's when they are moved to actually fill that thing out when it comes into their email box a day or two later. Also, people at the other end. This was, my son had a tantrum and that flight attendant, he was the nicest man and helped me. We had a gatekeeper, she was great and she worked with us to do these things. Those are where you fill it out. The vast middle doesn't end up really factoring in as much but they have ways of waiting that, that they believe work and yet they are under no obligation to share that waiting system. A public entity would be under obligation and that waiting would be up to endless debate about whether or not it was fairly pushing one side or the other and you could use proxies for private companies and how they've waited but it would still end up being, we can't decide how many drivers there are in Burlington completely. So we are, that's a primary obstacle. The second obstacle is whether or not there are privacy issues with regards to sending things to anyone who, for example, let's say we started with anyone who was a complainant. So anyone who calls in an incident in Burlington and wants police service and we send them within a couple of 24 hours a very quick text message that has two or three very short instrument, a simple instrument that is how is your service essentially? That's what it boils down to and you've fixed it out for what you want. Are there privacy concerns there? These are all things that have been, that are still being wrestled with which is why the device doesn't fully exist yet but there are some companies that do it. The chief and I have looked at some of those companies. There's resource issues about rolling them out. They are, you know, they, those are private companies that provide a service and they claim that those services work. It's a terrific idea. It is the crux for actually determining how we switch our metrics from the most obvious which is crime control and saying that we're gonna determine our efficacy almost entirely on raw crime data and whether or not incidents are going up or down or these types of incidents are going up or down or whether we're going to tailor our actions and our service to the results that we get from people in so far as how they feel that service has been. That is, that's the big way that something like that happens. That would be a sea change for the profession. There's things in the way. Yeah, good. So, and we won't discuss this at length right now, of course. I'll just say, as far as, if the concern is just people's qualitative experience of traffic stops, some of the concerns you mentioned about the use of surveys to assess how traffic throughout the police room overall wouldn't apply. Right. If you just want as kind of comparisons about how, for example, black jobs and white jobs experience, you have a couple other projects that are stuff. You don't need to care about kind of how to discount positive and negative responses. You need to care about whether you have equity across those responses. That's true. That's very true. Likewise, as far as kind of the privacy concerns, you're not calling in for a certificate. You have already been marked for service by the officer, rather than the people that are calling directly. Yes and no, but I do believe that would be surmountable by some sort of of forewarning the person that you may do this or getting permission during the encounter that you may do this. And that would certainly be one way to do it. You kind of touched the last question I have and this is a broader question, which the Chief should probably be here for anyway, I suppose. But basically the question was how are we measuring success in implementing the department's mission overall given the fact that if traffic stops are decreasing, right? And it's okay, so traffic stops decreasing and someone might want to wonder, is that affecting the overall commission of the department or not? One question of course, how do we know that? And what are you counting as success in terms of saying okay, so traffic stops are down, disparities have decreased, and yet you want to argue that the overall service is still just as good. What metrics are you pointing to trying to make that claim? Well, so you gave me an out by saying that this is something that the Chief should comment on and I'm gonna take that out, but after I say that for me, policing needs to be about safety and fairness. The goal is to be as safe and as fair as possible. Safety is, I get calls personally from people or I go to NPA meetings and have people ask me for more enforcement. They want people, people are rolling through the stop sign at the end of Loomis. They are doing this dangerously in this location. What are you gonna do about the fact that people don't go slow over, even despite the speed bumps on Stanaford? Those are real issues for residents, for people who want different kinds of enforcement and want conduct curtailed. There are also safety issues and we've seen I think that right now the measure as far as safety goes with regard to injury is trending in the right direction. As far as fairness goes, we are trending in the right direction. We can strive, we must strive towards more. We can argue about how well the trend has addressed the disparity based on what sort of baselines we're using and what metrics we're using, but the trend is towards fairness and thus far we see a trend towards safety as well. If that were to change, we would have different questions and that goes for driving, it goes for any number of things that police deal with, with regard to crime or disorder. But now I will defer to your opening first and say that it does need to be, this is something to bring up with the Chief. One last point, I'll answer this last one. Other than survey data, another way to try to get access to what the clock did was very much the more proactive engagements with the community and that's not gonna be random selections, but that's another way to get that quality of experience. So I don't like that. Agree, agree. I mean, I do, I go to NPA meetings and that is a self-selecting audience. I solicit from them complaints or comments or I hope commendations and get them at times. So I see the value in that. I really do. Figuring out how to target it more effectively towards drivers or towards certain groups of drivers as well is an open question and an open discussion. Last point, just we can be, instead of doing service, we can get more information also by just going out and communicating. WT, do you go to every, do you try to go to all of the NPA meetings? I try, I have not been fully successful in that. I have not, I'm working on it, but I have been to several and they're all on my calendar and it is my intention to go to all of them. Okay. So you could always ask a commissioner from that. Sure. That would be terrific. That would be terrific. And they will, they'll absolutely take you, especially if we call ahead and sort of arrange for a time to give you five minutes or what have you. Available for their district, it would especially make sense. That would be wonderful. And it would be an opportunity to do what Commissioner Harper has indicated and sort of make that kind of outreach. Yeah. Any other questions or comments about, and I think we'll put this on the agenda for next month when the chief is hopefully here, but are there any other questions or comments this evening, especially if it would help the chief anticipate what we might want to talk about next month? Madam Chair, I have a couple. Sure. First, thank you, Nancy, for all of this hard work that you put into this. I know you've put a lot into this and also wanted to acknowledge the department for your service. The process is what I'd like to talk about, but I'd like not to see in the future is to get questioned about this report referencing the free press and not even know that it was gonna come out in the free press and being kind of stuck, answering questions as a commissioner. So I kind of, what I'd like to see like in a perfect world and moving forward is is if us as the commission, if we had the opportunity to kind of get a pre-notification and maybe even have a pre-review of the report to sit down with you and just have a conversation about it, it probably would short-circuit this meeting a little bit as well. We probably wouldn't have so much to talk about here, but it would certainly would prepare us to engage with the community, which I would really like to do. I'd like to engage the community on this and not read about it at the same time that they do in the free press, if that's possible. So I think a part of that was the, we didn't have the emails for you guys, so they didn't get added to the police commission list, so you didn't get when it went to. Did this report actually come to that email address? Yep. Okay. Yep. Okay. I don't know if they came out and seconded it from your email. Okay, thank you. So just for clarification, I just want to make sure so, because I did look through those emails, I saw highlights of the report, but I don't, you're saying that the report. That went yesterday. So this came out yesterday? Yep. So just for the record, it was reported in the free press a few days ago. But only based on the pieces that had gone out. Okay. So only based on those same pieces that had gone out and the commission was on that list as they were sent out prior to it being in the free press. Again, thank you. I do appreciate the work that you've done. If I, instead of getting stuck on that, I just want to ask you a couple of questions if that's okay. So it's true that 13% of African-Americans are driving with invalid licenses. Is that the numbers you reported out? 13%? No, no, I believe. 13% of those who are driving now? Yes, 13% since 2012. All right, okay. And overall, okay, and it looks like the marijuana, the introduction of marijuana caused a dramatic drop, is that correct? The introduction of the new marijuana law, yes. Right, so the numbers are down significantly. Maybe you said they were down, they were almost, sounds like they're almost like a third down a third or something like that. That is what I said. I said that the searches have fallen a third for 2018 to for the years since the law went into effect on July 1st, it is a third of the previous year. And by all counts, the disparity rates are down. The stop, the traffic stop disparity rates, they're down, right? Yes. Okay, thanks. I think it looks like they're down like two points, actually, right? I think they were up at 10% last year and they're down to 8% this year, is that correct? Just the stop rates, yeah. I think it's down like. It's 9.2, yeah. It's 9.2 now. It's 9.2 the previous year, it's 8% this year. It's down nonetheless, right? Okay, and these are the numbers that are being reported to the criminal justice training or the crime research group, right? We haven't put out our data yet. But these will be the numbers that are reported to the crime research group as per Title 20, 23, 66, okay? And in addition to that, you're gonna also be reporting out the training hours. It looks like you were also required to do four refresher hours for anti-bias training. Is that something that's in the mix as well? Title 20, 23, 58? I would have to talk to training, yes. I see a nod back there, okay? So that's also gonna be, so where are we on that process? Are we trained? We're reporting to the county once a year, and that's usually at the end of December. So we have an entire year to get all of our hours in whatever subject it is completed by December 31st. So that would be the four hours that are required for that refresher course that's to train folks to the policy as well as anti-bias training, correct? That's correct. Okay, I have no other questions. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Nancy. So in terms of commendations, so if there are any commissioners who did not get their mail, I do have a copy of the commendations. Mr. Commissioner Hughes, do you want the commendations that were circulated? I sure do. Okay, so that went out to the email with the agenda. Everyone has them in their email. Okay. So we don't usually go over all of them, but if there are any to highlight, we do that. Sure. We have a sample. So these are letters or other feedback, email calls that come to the department about officers in the month before. Yeah, and I know there's so many important issues to talk about. I do know it's important to chair Ash and it was important to chair along the challenges with some of the positives that they get, which are very frequent. So, as well. So just to hear is one, I'm from Essex Junction, Vermont. I just reviewed the body cam footage that episode Corey Campbell was involved with at the UBM Medical Center. I just want to say, I think he is an outstanding officer. I think he went above and beyond what the average person would have put up with and I would support that young man, his employment and his career without a questionable doubt. I'm a retired RN who worked at UBM Medical Center and I know how crazy things can be. I think he was absolutely professional and absolutely in the right. So please let him know that the community outside of Perlington is behind him as well as just to give him our support and hope he's not going through a horrible time with this. Another one, this is about a more recent officer. I believe one who is I think just off FTO. And then one who's been an officer about three years. This individual came into the PD to speak with Sergeant DePranco to share this. She wanted to convey a gratitude for both professionalism and compassion in several incidents. Officer Marvin showed hard work and follow up with her bike theft. She was impressed and he took her calls so seriously and professionally. She also shared that Officer Bartle helped her through the L&L she was involved in and she felt safe and was able to speak to Bartle on an incident that was hard for her to talk about. She was very impressed with the high level of service from both officers. Thank you for your great work. And then I'll just read one more from the succeed team at Howard Center. Dear BBB, we wanted to extend our sincere appreciation for your support at our building on Friday, June 7th. We didn't catch the officer's name who helped de-escalate our client but wanted to particularly thank her for the way she approached the individual and supported him to exit the building safely. Masterful work, we're fortunate to have this partnership with your department. So that's just a couple of examples of some unsolicited outreach from our community members that we're having with. Thank you. Thank you. Next item is commissioner's updates, comments. So for those who are new to the commission, this is an opportunity if you attended for example, Creamy with the cop or we want to report back anything, any interactions, concerns, this is a time to raise it. So if anyone has anything they'd like to add, otherwise that's the agenda item. I would just say that the ice cream was good and shame on you if you didn't make it. Is that? I did, I made it. We had a blast. Sorry I wasn't able to stay as long as I wanted to. It was hot out there though. And I think we should do more stuff like that. It was a lot of fun. Yeah, we're working on our next Creamy with the cop we're hoping, look at the date wrong, going to be August 21st. And we're hoping, we're just waiting for some confirmation, but we're hoping to have it at the bagel where the previous commissioner, Barenberg, he owns the bagel and we did it there. I think not last summer, but the summer before. So that's tentatively in the works. I just wanted to see if it was possible if we could do something like a dinner with a cop, like someplace swanky or something like that. Probably not, huh? To actually communicate, raise some funds to the foundation. Great, any other comments? Okay, thank you all. Next item is, we have the minutes from last meeting. I had a couple of comments about it. Okay, page two on task force update. Hold on one second, my document is updating. See you, chief. Okay, so under task force update, first sentence is actually commissioner Harp with a P, not Hart, who volunteered. Not that I'm not interested. No, I have to like think through that every time I type one of your name. And then there's just a typo. Last, so task force update. Very first sentence, commissioner Harp. Okay, got it, okay. And then last sentence on social media. Yep. There's just an and after the words existing policy. Anyone else with anything to add? And if not, then do I have a motion to accept the revised minutes? We'll do accept. Second. Second. All in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed? Great, thank you. Okay, so next meeting, it's obvious that we're not gonna have the benefit of share Ash tonight, unfortunately, due to travel, things beyond her control. So what I propose is we add to the agenda, we roll over the role of police commission and citizenship complaints policy for discussion. We roll over car stop data. And then last month we talked about the social media policy in response to commissioner Harp. And we said that we would roll that over. We might find that there's a little too much for one month's agenda. So I'm, I think I'm gonna propose that we roll that over to September if everyone's okay with that. The social media. The social media to September, is everyone okay with that? Yes. If I may, that might be a broader discussion because I think it could be a discussion about just communications as opposed to social media. It's a big, it is a big discussion. And I know that the city has their social media policy that we're waiting on. So I think that that could occupy a good deal of a meetings and we wouldn't wanna curb any of these three topics. So, okay, with everyone's consent, I'm gonna move it to September. Next meeting is going to be August 27th. How is that on folks' calendars? I had sent out an email also with regards to meeting topics, agenda topics, about essentially kind of partnerships between BPD and private surveillance companies, right, surveillance on rank and with that and also facial recognition technologies. It was suggested that today's agenda was too basic to be on the next one. So why don't we put it on the agenda? Why don't we put all of this on the agenda for next month so it doesn't get lost? And then when we set the agenda, we can bump them to the following month. So we'll put it on, we'll just tentatively put it in the minutes that it's on for next month and long with social media and we'll know that we have to bump one or two of those at the time. Okay, and if the 27th works for folks, we'll keep that meeting there. So I don't think we have any executive session. So thank you. Do I have a motion to adjourn? Yep. I just have one question. Okay. I'm not sure if this is the forum for talking about it. I guess I'm curious on, I guess what's being done was happening with the transient in the housing and security population of the downtown area. I just worked down there and it's last night, a lot of stuff happened downtown last night and I'm just curious and maybe if we can find out for next meeting, I guess, if there's anything happening, no, we'll be getting colder soon. So Mike, ease that, but. Yeah, no, I'm not sure. It preoccupies the NPA meetings, the discussion, both local ones, for example, the New North End cares very much about Letty Park, but also questions about I live in the New North End, but I use the banks and the vicinity of City Hall Park and those banks have curtailed their ATM hours. These are real issues. So, yes, we could absolutely have that as something to discuss. Do you want something right now? Or, yeah. So learning as I go, sorry. No, no, no, so I'm happy to address it. I think it's great. Obviously the closure of the park dislocated a lot of individuals who were habitual sort of attendees of the park, people who were there. The position of the department is that everybody is a Burlingtonian who is a Burlingtonian and everyone has the right to use our public spaces. There are restrictions on behavior in public spaces and those restrictions are spelled out in the law. The law has narrowed with regard to the discretionary interpretation of what constitutes, for example, disorderly conduct, most prominently the idea of obstructing pedestrian traffic. Once upon a time there were very clear definitions for that. Sitting on a sidewalk constituted that. That is no longer the case. There have been progressive interpretations by judges and through lawsuit about what is prohibited conduct. There are things that remain prohibited conduct. Open containers of alcohol remain prohibited conduct. Obviously fighting and disorder of that sort remain prohibited. Being in the street in ways that impede traffic remains prohibited and there are and public urination, public defecation, those kinds of things remain prohibited. Officers are down enforcing those when necessary. They begin with attempts to dissuade conduct through presence, then through warning, then through in the case of alcohol, for example, requesting somebody to dump that out or empty that, but to be frank, a lot, and I think you know this as someone who works down there, a lot of the individuals are folks who've gotten those warnings a long time ago. They are past warnings. There are limitations on what officers can do. Officers, you may know very well that two individuals sitting next to a tree on Church Street are drinking, but if it's not in the container that says right on it, you know, alcohol of choice, then the officer's ability to enforce against that is limited to having been able to see it happen or to have someone else have seen it happen done so in a way that preferably is reproducible, a camera or a picture, especially a timestamp one, to be able to say, I saw him bring the beer, the can that he bought over at Simon's and he empties it into this cup and is now drinking from that cup. That is something that would allow an officer to go up and make contact. With regard to other issues about just talking to people, helping people, figuring out where to move, you know, we worked for a long time with Dragon, I think, who you probably know, to relocate from a waterfront position where he was into another one. I spent personally an hour and a half speaking to a transient woman named Lavender about where her tent was in an ecologically sensitive area and trying to work with her to move that. We have very specific rules that we work on with the city attorney about how to relocate encampments or where people have chosen to reside. We also have specific rules with the city attorney about how we can enforce no trespass orders in different places in the city. The Park, the city hall park, we had a settlement with the ACLU that was recounted in the papers. That settlement has been mooted somewhat for now since the park is closed, but the lessons from it are applicable proactively and preemptively on other trespass that we might issue. Once the park did close, people moved out. They are oftentimes many of the people who used to be in the park are now on the tree, immediately across from your place of work. They are increasingly in the library and the library has indicated problems with people both sitting in there and drinking in there and then also doing things in the immediate vicinity outside the library. We've seen some increases in Battery Park immediately next to us. And again, these are things that we hear at NPA meetings. They're things that we hear at even the commission meeting. I believe there was a couple who came into the commission meeting a while ago who were in the previous meeting who were in part discussing conditions in Battery Park. What we're doing about it is regular patrol and presence and discussion with individuals and enforcement. And last night was, last night was, I don't know if it was the moon or the water or what have you, the over pressure from this storm that significantly walloped to the new North End today. Maybe that was in the air somehow. But yeah, we had a couple incidents last night with known individuals, people with whom we have long histories, one of whom flicked a cigarette at one of our officers and burned him with that cigarette and was arrested for that conduct. It is an open question and something that we continue to work on. We are going to be doing some internal reviews about how we work with partners on mental health issues, on public disorder issues. Both that goes with bar closing and people just at bar closing but also about the population that is largely transient or in some cases service resistant. They've had a lot of services but those services don't seem to take and how we can continue to work with them till you get to the point where there's that moment for them, that moment of clarity that does cause it to take. And there are plenty of success stories out there too. People who have been, who years ago were, were people who had lots of contacts with law enforcement who no longer do. In fact, we gave, as you know, as the commission knows, we gave an award to one such individual at the most recent police foundation luncheon, an individual who interceded in that horrible murder on Pine Street who was once upon a time a person who was, he had a lot of encounters with law enforcement but really helped save a life that day. So there are success stories, there are models for success stories figuring out how to apply those models to the folks right now is an ongoing question. Thank you. Well, following up to that, I would say that it is, I mean, it's incredibly important that there's some, that there's this balance, I believe. And I think that I'm seeing that, I'm seeing a lot of that from our law enforcement here that there's this balance that exists where there's obviously a need to keep everybody safe but then there's also a need to be compassionate to folks around us. So I appreciate that. That's kind of a big deal. I think the challenge is, obviously, we wanna be careful not to criminalize poverty. We wanna be careful not to criminalize mental illness and not to criminalize race. So I think a lot of that stuff is intertwined and I hope in the future what we're able to find is again, a balance that we'll be able to leverage our community partners and organizations as well as the appropriate folks and the public safety apparatus to be able to bring, you know, I think a level of adequate safety and also protection to the folks that need it most without criminalizing them or placing them in a worse situation. So I appreciate the work that y'all are doing in that respect and I hope that we can figure out ways to come together and to create some kind of strategy to create some kind of strategy. And I don't know, maybe this apparatus already exists, but I think there needs to be some kind of strategy, some kind of apparatus that's out there where all of the right folks are on the bus and we're having these conversations and we're not deferring this off to be a law enforcement issue because it's not a law enforcement issue. I think certainly we need to be at the table but I think there's a lot of other folks that need to be at the table too and make sure that we keep that balance. So thank you. Second.