 Welcome. Thank you. Sheila Lynn is actually here. She's that little box. She's sitting in front of Sheila. Hey, everybody. So you can put her in those. OK, you got her. Welcome. We still don't have, and if you wouldn't mind, I know that the introductions sometimes get a little annoying. But if you really wouldn't mind going and doing it again, I'm really trying to memorize everyone's name. And I would really be grateful if we could do that. Just go around the table and do it very quickly and be fun. So Chief, do you want to start? I'm sure. Sure. I'm Don Stephens, Chief of the Maltese Get Out and I can try. Ken Shatz, Chief of the Department for Children and Families. Rebecca Pernard, Defender General's Office, Karen Richards, Human Rights Commission. I'm Jessica Brown. Sheila's not here, so I'm going to say that my preferred pronouns are she and her. And I am the managing attorney of the Public Defender Office in Chittenden County. Brian Rearson, Chief Superior, James Pepper, Descending for Department of State Services and Chairs. Aitshaan Nassarapamongo, Chair, He-Hen. Julio Thompson, Director of Civil Rights of Vermont Attorney General's Office. Ruben Jennings, President's Right. Nancy Waples, Vermont Superior Court Judge. I'm angry, Jonas, with Vermont State Police and the designee for Commissioner Anderson for Public Safety. Lisa Menard, Commissioner of Corrections. Great. And all the rest of you. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait. Sheila. I can't do any curve, but a great social death disaster. Thank you. OK, Anne. Did you have something else? Sheila. That was it. OK. Got it. Thank you. I'm the attorney general with the Oakland County People Power ACLU. I'm Jesse Rosa, I'm the Vice President of the Oakland County NWCP. Gary Stock, the State Police. Monica Weber, the Department of Corrections. Brenda Churchill, the LGBTQIA Alliance of Vermont. Oh, wait, I'll see you back here later in the month. OK. Varn? It's just feedback, yeah. OK, it's just feedback. I'm just going to be a little old. No, it's fine. It's fine. I want to, let's start with the approval of the minutes, which David sent to all of us. There were few sets of minutes, one from the 14th of November of 2017, and then the other from our last year maybe, which was June 12. So let's start with the minutes from November 14. Maybe I have Sheila with the phone on. I'm mute. I think she might be going to speak back from the desk for a while. Sheila, is your phone on mute? It does not. OK, thank you. David also mentioned that if you had, in his email he mentioned, if you had amendments or changes to forward them to him, he didn't say anybody had to me. So I'm guessing. Make a motion to approve the minutes. Would you like to? Would anyone like to second that one? Second. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? All abstentions? I'm going to second it. OK, but it carries. Thank you. OK, those are approved. June 12, OK, you're all looking at me like you've looked that one over, too. We need a motion. Motion to approve? OK. Last month's minutes. There's a motion to approve last month's minutes. Is it seconded? Second. It's been seconded. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? All abstentions? We're hearing abstentions. OK, three abstentions. All right, it carries as well. There's a discussion, as you'll see on the agenda, later on, about minutes about the secretary's position and so on. Here, I managed to forget to do this because I'm so rattled because I'm on the phone. You will know I managed. I believe this is sort of extra, and I wanted to put that in the announcement. There's nowhere here where I wrote in way forward. What do we do next for the next meeting? I managed to blow that, people. I don't know why. I just did. So I'm going to stick that in after the discussion of the secretary's position and the quality of minutes and before the scheduling of the next meeting. We're going to talk about what we're going to do next. That was very productive last time, I thought. And particularly since today, Karen Richards, the executive director of the Human Rights Council, the commission is here, and we were very clear about wanting that to happen. So I think that discussion will impact, give us some direction as we go forward. Are there other announcements? No? OK. I could be very formal. I took your bio off of the website, and I figured you really would rather than I not do that. Because I think you know everyone in the room except me. So anyway, just to refresh our recollection, there was some discussion about, actually, there's a lot of discussion, about starting with 6A of the statute, which is on page 4, if you have it. And I will read that if it concerns how to institute a public complaint process to address perceived implicit bias across all systems of state government. There was discussion last time about having Karen Richards come in and talk about complaint process processes. And we were hoping, I guess, that you could do that. Perhaps we could start a discussion off with talking about, oh, pros and cons of the system as it exists presently through the commission, suggestions you might have for improvements in that that we might benefit. So I guess I'll stop talking now and give it to you. OK. Do you want to give a phone call to Karen? Not at all. Hold on. Hi, Sheila on the phone. So the HRC has jurisdiction to investigate complaints of discrimination in state government employment, public accommodations, and housing. And that process is basically triggered by someone calling our office or emailing us or, in some other way, getting in contact with us and then providing us with the information necessary to make a determination of whether their case presents what we call a prima facie case of discrimination. And if it presents such a case, then we can take a complaint. We're not obligated to take the complaint in every single case. We have discretion to take or not take the complaint. We try to take all the complaints that come our way that say the prima facie case. But sometimes resources are foundation. So basically, once that happens, a complaint is drafted up, sent to the complainant. They sign it in front of a notary, send it back, and then it gets sent out to the respondent. The respondent has a time period to respond. And then it's assigned to an investigator and the investigation starts. And that investigation includes looking at it in all documents that need to be looked at, looking, interviewing any witnesses that need to be interviewed, and then trying to settle the case, as we put it along, if that's possible, if it's not, then a investigative report gets written up, it summarizes the facts, and does a legal analysis of that. That gets presented to our commissioners who then read that in any responses. The parties come in and can make brief arguments to the commission about their position with regard to whatever the recommendation from the investigator is, which is grounds to find discrimination or not. And then they both up or down on the recommendation of the investigator. And then from there, if it's no reasonable grounds binding, it's dismissed, and it goes away. If there's a reasonable grounds binding that comes to me in what we call the post period, where I will then spend another six months, which is my statute of limitations for filing in court, to try to resolve the matter between the parties. If it cannot be resolved, then the commissioners will authorize me or not to file a matter in court. And then we go forward with a member court overseeing from there, doing the traditional. And that's a no-go here, so it's all, there's no record in which the court is off from me. Okay. So that's the current process. Does it work? You'd like it. Are there problems? There's always problems. But I think generally it works pretty well. We are able to settle the vast majority of the cases that either usually as we go through the process and we start to get a sense of where the case is going. It's lean, evidence is leaning this way or that way. We can then give the parties a heads up who doesn't look like they're gonna be able to prove this or it looks like responding. You may have some problems here and perhaps you want to discuss how you might wanna make this go away. And so we will do that. If we enter into a settlement agreement and the HRC is part of it, which we always are unless the parties go to an outside mediator and do it through there. If we're a party to the action, then we will, we can enforce the agreement in court and we can also, if we put in deliverables in there for the public interest, like changing policies or entering or all those things, we track those and make sure that they get done. So I think it's a pretty effective process and I think the downsides to it are it takes a long time because I have three investigators and they are carrying a case load of anywhere from 12 to 16 cases at a time. And some of these investigations as it's the nose are nasty, you know? Really tens of thousands of pages of documents sometimes and you know, multiple, multiple witnesses being interviewed and so they can drag on for a long time and I don't, which is why we try to settle them because for many parties that is not the best thing, right? Is to have this thing dragging on for sometimes after a year and sometimes a little bit longer. So I would say that's one of the problems is the process doesn't move as quickly as we might like it to. Karen, can I ask you a question about your clarifying? So the six month timeframe. To allow for the out of court informal process to work. How does that compare to the one year you were just talking about, the one year on average time limit is to work on it? Oh, so that's just from the time that there's a finding by the commissioner. So there's six months after that finding to try to work out that settlement before we file for. And that statute of limitations can be extended by every member of the party. So if we are in the middle of a negotiation and we're not quite done, the parties will usually step to more time so that we have an opportunity to try and continue to work out a settlement. See, so other things that don't work as well as they could. One of the things that's always troubled me is that the statute requires that a complaint be submitted under oath. But it doesn't require that the respondent respond under oath. So it's as if we make an assumption that somehow the complainant is always might be lying. We may bring a case forward unless we make them swear under oath that they're telling the truth whereas the respondent can say whatever they want and we don't really care whether they're under oath or not. It's always been a little disturbing to me. It seems like both parties should be either under oath or either. And sometimes that notarization of the complaint is actually very problematic for people who don't have access to a vehicle or can't find a notary or can't afford to pay a notary. So there are some barriers associated with that as well but I think I'm not necessarily helpful. And then I think the other thing is just trying to move the process along if you've gotten a lot better at so that the complainant can see the result of the complaint coming within a fairly short time after calling so that they're getting the complaint in the mail and they can follow through because we used to not have that as tight as it is now and then people would drop off because by the time you got the complaint they lost interest. Or it had moved on to other problems in their lives. And so it's been important to really get those complaints out as quickly as we can. Those are just some things to jump out of. I'm happy to answer any questions. I have a question that's curious in terms of the process. Do you accept all complaints and investigate everyone? Do you refer any to other places or how does that system work? So we take almost all the complaints in as long as it states a prima facie case and as long as we have the resources to do it. The ones that we may turn down are ones that really are really marginal about whether there's a prima facie case there. We might turn that case down just, or if it's a marginal sounding case and it's gonna be really complicated we might turn it down because we don't have the resources to do it. But short of that, we try to take in any complaint that's a jurisdiction. We do refer any private employment cases to who we those office because that's where those get done. If we don't take an employment case from a state employee because we don't think it might meet the prima facie case we also refer them to the EEOC so that they can file with the EEOC. And then people can also, if we turn them down in a housing case they can go to HUD. And then if HUD takes it, HUD sends it back to us. So sometimes we turn down cases that we think are really marginal and HUD takes them and then sends them back and we end up investigating them anyway. So that's just the way it works. Maybe I missed it. Who determines whether or not they're marginal and who? Yeah, it's the executive team. And you'll take referrals from other agencies like disability rights. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, we get a lot of referrals from the community. Karen, I might have missed her. Did you say there's actually a small category of cases not the marginal ones but the ones that meet the prima facie standard that are so complicated that your commission can't take it? Did you say that? Yes. And where did they go? Don't fall within. We would refer them generally to private counsel. Private counsel. Or legal and native, it's something legal and it does. But those cases, I can't even think of one that I've turned down on that basis. It's more that they're marginal and it may be somebody with a mental health issues for example, where you're not really sure if what they're telling you is reality or not reality and there's indications that it's not reality. Maybe because we've had experience before or in those cases. And in those cases though, or the ones that you send to other places, do you keep track? Do you follow up to find out what happened? We don't, to those. I'm curious, is there, I know what prima facie is. I would imagine a lot of the people who bring complaints don't. Is there some interface within the commission that sort of explains to people what exactly is going on? They need to tell us. So we have questionnaire, complaint questionnaires online and those basically seek the information that we need to figure out whether there's a prima facie case there. If they send that questionnaire back in and the information is incomplete or unclear then Jocelyn, our executive staff assistant, calls them or contacts them by email and says I need you to tell me the following information. And usually where most people either don't get that they need to be in protected status somehow. So they call and just say, I'm being discriminated against but they don't understand that it has to be based on protected status so that's pretty easy. And then the hardest part is figuring out the because of, right? So what evidence do you have that this is because of your disability or because of your race or because of your sex, right? And that's the part because most people are much more sophisticated about the way that they discriminate these days. They don't come out and say things. And so you have to kind of sift around and try to find out what led you to believe that this was based on your status. And then if we get enough, we can pull enough out of there and then we'll take a complaint and we'll investigate it and find out what's there. I'm just a librarian. I'm not the one that carries there. I just elaborate just for the folks who aren't involved in this. So then for monitoring general's office, we do a very similar thing. We have to prima facie case, prima facie means at first flush. It means if everything you told me is true, there's a violation of the law. That's part of the reason why some jurisdictions are people to sign something under oath. So if someone we're investigating says we're not gonna answer your letters, we can go to a judge and say we already have a sworn statement. And they haven't disputed these things. And these things that happen if they're true violates the law. So that's what prima facie case is. In Karen's shop and in our shop, the work to find out whether you fit the prima facie element, that's really our job, right? Where lawyers, all your investigators are lawyers isn't very good. But what basically we do at the intake level and your questionnaires the same way. We refer cases to her when they don't follow the law. This is basically ask somebody, what happened to you? Usually people have a story. They say, and whether they realize or not, they will describe a right to something they have. I write to a job because I'm qualified or I write to go into a grocery store. Something bad happened to me. And the reason that the bad thing happened to me is because something the law prohibits that we enforce. So I was asked for additional identification at Home Depot because the person said I had an accent, right? And I didn't provide the identification they denied me service. They don't know anything about prima facie case. They just tell us what happened. And so it can be a very interactive process where someone says, yeah, this happened to me. Why do you think it happened? And sometimes the why story is not within the laws we prohibit. So I remember years ago, heartbreaking telephone call about someone who's being harassed at work because she's overweight. And our laws don't prohibit discrimination on the basis of weight. So we have to walk that person through the story to find out whether the person is so heavy that she might qualify as disabled or regarded as disabled or something. But we never really use the word prima facie case but they're just like, why do you think this happened? And we elicit that story. So Karen said, we kind of pulled that out of them. I just want to explain how that actually works because most people don't understand this. I'm kind of lots of lawyers who don't understand it. So, and we get cases all the time and sometimes they come to us, maybe it's a hate crime and law enforcement doesn't think it's a crime. Maybe we look at it, we don't think it's a crime but it might still violate one of the laws that Karen enforces or the Human Rights Commission enforces. And so we'll refer it over to them and then let them tell their story to Karen and then she's trying to figure out. So if what you're telling me is true, does that violate a law that we enforce? And sometimes it doesn't. Or we have some gentlemen complainants that have stuff that happened over 15 years ago. The statute of limitations is six years, a max. So we have nowhere to go with that. We try to explain, if I went to court, a nice judge, there's a couple judges in Rome, are gonna ask me why am I listening to your case? I'll write, how do you get past the statute? And so we have to explain it to them. And so I just want to, even though they're questionnaires and that sounds really impersonal, our experience, and we refer people to Karen all the time and then they call us back and say thank you. We try to make that very, very user friendly because they would just say, what happened? What happened next? Who is there? When did it happen? And then they do all the work from the outside. Yeah, and my assistant will spend sometimes an hour on the phone with somebody. And it's very clear of what, as I'm listening to the conversation, that it's not going anywhere in terms of jurisdictional, but she will take the time to listen to their story and to try to get them someplace else that they can go. So she spends a lot of time. And then when you have a case, you always listen because as a story develops, a person thinks it's because of this and it's because of something else that they go. So we had a case a few years ago where someone was hard of hearing. She had a hearing aid, she didn't view herself as disabled. To us it sounded very much like a disability case. And she thought it was her age. Right, people? She can get around, she has a hearing aid, she can do what she needs to do. But the evidence really pointed that way. So we amended our original investigation to go over the evidence. Yeah, well that's what we do too. It's very, it's very, it's very, well, at a college sometimes, sometimes we'll add sex when they think it's age or at age when they think it's sex or whatever it is. And our, the other thing, the other thing is it complies how to be filed with us within a year of the last act of discrimination. So you only have that one year window to look back. I guess the question I have is also for yourself, but also the Attorney General's Office says, do you guys keep statistics on where the complaints are coming from and then what kind of roadblocks might be thrown up? The reason why I'm saying this, because one of our purposes of what we're trying to do is have a unified complaint area. We kind of need to focus on problem areas. Like say for instance, say you have, not to pick on corrections, but say you have inmates that are spending all day making complaints because they're not being treated well, they're not being able to have religious practices or whatever it may be, it could overwhelm and flood your office. But I'm just saying, is there a way to break down those so you know where people, whether it be in the new position that's being created, or whether it be this area where we're saying we need a centralized complaint system. How do you focus on putting the resources to the proper places and also seeing how to mitigate some of the where the problem areas may be, right? So we do have a question on the questionnaire or we have a data log that we keep all the calls in and what happened and who called them and what they called about. In that, we have a space to ask how did you get to us? Who told you to call us? I noticed as I was filling some things in the log that it's not actually being built in. So not that helpful, so I need to talk to Jasmine about that when she gets back from vacation, but sometimes it's just hard to get that in when somebody's trying to tell you a story. Well, how did you, why'd you call us in the first place? That sounds a little rude, so anyway. So anyway, we do that and we also track where people are calling from. So what town, city, whatever. So we have that data, but in terms of micro level below that. It's more in terms of since we're working from the state end of things, right? I mean, because you control the state complaints as well, right? You said, so, I mean, the state police have done an awesome job being able to identify where there are problem areas so you know where to focus. If we get to the micro level like saying, all of a sudden you see 50% of your complaints coming from inmates that are in corrections, then you might be able to put something in place to mitigate that or try to work that. And I'm only talking about within the state because that's what we're concentrating on from our level is how do we create a unified area within the state? Like what department's being complained against? Like is it the HR that's being complained against? Is it the Department of Transportation? Is it? Second and just a little bit list on our end just for comparison. So whenever we have enough information that we think we're gonna at least set out a questionnaire so like it's possible, it's a violation. If they send in a questionnaire, that gets logged into our system. We log the complainants name. We log the employer's name for a lot of these cases are employment cases. If they identify, let's say it's a perpetrator, harasser, decision maker, we log them in as an involved party. And when the case is that the files then turn over to an investigator, the paralegal who does the intake who creates the file identifies, let's say it's Acme Rocket Company, right? So let's use a funny example. Acme Rocket Company is the complainant. So the investigator, they get the file. And now the file numbers and dates, the last five complaints we've had against or any against Acme Rocket. And let's say there's a vice president at Acme Rocket named Johnny Mascher. But also, if he's named as an involved party, he'll show up on our list. Have we ever had him? Yeah, he used to work at, you know, WAMO Rocket Company. Two years ago, it was filed for sexual harassment. Now he's had a new job and there's a new sexual harassment. So that investigator will pull the WAMO file and maybe talk to another investigator who interviewed Johnny Mascher. And we also have complainants who file a million complaints. So we have one fellow who applies for jabs, using it as a jabs in key complaints. We have many, many complaints. And then we didn't find enough evidence. And then he went to the EEOC Boston office and haunted them for a while. But you know, every case we try to take that we still run them down because people who are eccentric or maybe imagining the slights can still be victims, right? Make pockets can get stabbed or robbed. So, and that guy ultimately, when the ban the box law was passed, he was applying for jobs and he would come and report to us employers who weren't complying with the laws. So now he's actually, this guy's actually doing more work in the field than our investigators do. Because he keeps applying for jobs and sending us the job applications and then we'll find them out and we send out a light letter usually to the employers because they have a caught up speed with the law. But we do keep those cases, but we're not going to just say, we're not going to take someone serious because it's their third complaint. Because some people, like people who are disabled, for example, might be the victims of serious discrimination and that could happen. I guess I'm trying to narrow, maybe I better narrow down the definition of what I'm trying to discern is, is there a way within your systems currently that you could check a box saying, this is a complaint against the state entity or something else? Because part of what we're focusing on is complaints against the state agencies. So if you could break that down saying, like I said, I don't care who made the complaint, it's just like, is the Department of Human Resources, do they have a complaint? Why? And or does the Attorney General's office have a complaint against it? Why? Not that I don't care about Joe Schmo or any company or something. What I'm saying is- Well, we don't investigate stick because we're lawyers. Right, no, no, I understand that. I'm just saying it's a conflict. It's a comparison of how our case is. But you don't want to see where we're going. Yes, and so we do have that information. We can tell you how many cases were brought against the Department of Corrections and whether they were public accommodations cases or employment cases. So we could tell you that about the AOT, we could tell you that about any agency of state government. We don't get a lot of, this is good, like a lot of complaints by state employees of discrimination. So we on average, six to 80 a year, sometimes up to 11, 12, 13, but not, I think that- I'm not gonna apply to- Complaints of discrimination, employment discrimination. Employment discrimination, yeah. Meaning somebody works for the state. Somebody who works for the state gets the state. Right. But I'm trying to expand, I guess, I'm trying to get to the meat like, say there's a lot of people that are individuals complain about Vermont State Police are profiling, they're not treating me well, they're not employing me. That could be Joe Chmo from Kokomo, but it's a state agency that's being complained against. I'm not so much saying just employees that work for the state complaining about the state. I'm talking about anybody complaining about a state agency and how that breaks down. So we know where the problem areas are. I guess that's- So those complaints that are not about employment that are against a state agency would be a public accommodations case. In other words, a state is a place that provides good services to the general public that makes them a place of public accommodation so anytime they discriminate against somebody who's receiving services from them or somebody who just tries to come in off the street in a wheelchair and can't get in, like all of those come to our office and would be against whatever a state agency would be involved. Including police passes. Including police passes. And Karen, when can you get to track that down to the officer level, to the detective level, or? We don't track it in the database down to that level, but we certainly know which officers are involved because of the investigation and who the witnesses are. So just to follow up, so since we're dealing with criminal and juvenile justice and we're looking at racial disparities and also a place to send off complaints, you have that mechanism in place. You can identify those complaints and could keep statistical data on that if you have the proper resources bill. Yes. What we can't do is tell you that Joe Shmo called and made this complaint against the state police and give you any factual information because that's all confidential up until the point that it gets to a reasonable ground. Right, we're looking for a vessel to send complaints to and that's why we're kind of going down this road. That's why I'm trying to narrow the focus a little. Because we're trying to make a recommendation on the A which is how to institute a public complaint process to address perceived implicit bias across all systems of state government. And we're saying we think there's something in place and how do we capitalize on that if there is and if there's breakdowns, how do we fix that in part of what we have to do to make it work for you? What's that? You've been made. Back to your, would you add intake? How do you deal with a complaint that on its face there's a concurrent court proceeding, whether it's a criminal court proceeding or a case in the family court? Or maybe pre-family court for DCF is clearly involved in the family. How do you deal with those cases? So the statute says, and I don't know, wait a minute, but it basically says that if there is a complaint, I don't know if it's statute or rule actually, but statute or rule says if there's a complaint filed with another entity, we generally will not take it. The exception to that is housing cases because HUD requires us to take them up to the point that the trial begins. So we have to continue to investigate up until a trial begins in the matter in a housing case, but other than that, if somebody says, I already filed an administrative complaint at the Human Services Board about this, for example, we would not take a complaint on that because they're already in another form. And when you say criminal complaint in criminal court would not trigger that, me? I'm trying to think how a criminal complaint could have prosecutor files and information, a charging document complaint. Right. That doesn't mean that you are barred from accepting a similar complaint from the criminal defendant. Correct. If you could still accept that. Yes. Okay. It's whether it's in a judicatory body of some sort. I'm not following, I'm not quite following. All right, so I guess, Michael, let me give you a specific, I'm from the defender general's office. We are assigned to represent Jane Doe at time of arraignment. Now she's only there and has been assigned because there's been a criminal complaint that prosecutors have initiated proceedings against our client. That same client, Jane, alleges that the police officer who stopped her, right, stopped her only because she was driving long black. And so she has a complaint. Yep. She has that with you. Yep. But because of that stop, the detention results in some evidence that is the basis for the prosecution. So it's the same subject matter. Right. How do you deal with that? Yeah, so, it generally is, so this comes up in labor board cases where somebody filed a labor board complaint and if they are litigating at the labor board a claim of discrimination, we will not take it because they're litigating that somewhere else. So if you're defended was raising racial profiling as a defense in the criminal case or raising it somehow in the criminal case, we might not take it because somebody else is in that situation. But if she's just, if she thinks it was an unlawful stop that violates our statute and she called, just because there's a criminal case pending would not refuse to take it. So if the defense attorney at the suppression motion alleged that the evidence obtained in the unlawful traffic stop was because of implicit bias by the police officer that there is no legitimate ground to stop put for the racism. That would be enough to stop the complaint process. No, because we're a civil process, right? And that's a criminal process. So that person may still have rights under civil law to redress their discrimination. So we could still look at that. Concurrently, yeah. You don't put it on hold as a practice in the civil, the civil cuisine? No, not as a general. Do you connect with the defense attorney as a general? We try to, I mean, the investigation. Is the representative? Yeah. Karen, do you give any idea about how much of your case is complaints of racial discrimination and either law enforcement or a new criminal justice system you've done? Not a high percentage. I would say we get on average maybe one complaint of racial profiling a year, maybe two, some years. But not a lot of complaints about that. And the complaints that we get primarily in the criminal justice system would be from people in corrections who are complaining about things that generally are not within our jurisdiction, but it might be a religious issue or something that is. And then we would take those complaints from them. Sheila, you've had something that you've been waiting. Yeah, I just had a few questions. So going back to the perm-a-face-it case with regards to race, thank you, Jessica, for asking that. I was wondering what you talked about challenges that you had before. I was wondering, have there been specific challenges around proving a perm-a-face-it case with race with regards to the other protected categories that you've seen? I'm not sure I understand. So people come to you to make complaints on a variety of different protected categories when people are complaining that they've been discriminated due to race rather than gender or something else, has proving a perm-a-face-it case been more difficult in a certain protected category than others, such as race? Or does it seem to, you mentioned challenges and barriers. I'm wondering if they're unique or specific, either personally what you're seeing from being in the work for a long time or legally the policies or laws or rules that there are, are there specific barriers and challenges and we'll just focus on race, because that's why we're here, that you're seeing that is a disparity maybe as a lack of better terms compared to the other protected categories. I would say not, because I think that last because of peace is difficult pretty much with most. The disability cases are sometimes easier because people will outright say that they're doing X, Y, or Z because of the person's disability or it's an access issue. And sometimes in the housing arena, people will make statements that violate the law around familial status and receive public benefits, but for the most part in every other type of case, we're trying to suss that out from the general factual situation. I think we have through our own education gotten sensitive enough about what happens to people of color as they go through various systems to pick up on those little clues that this just doesn't sound quite right. And in some ways it's easier in race cases than it is in some of the other protected categories. So with that, is there current things, because I know from experience, I'm working with your office and working with clients that often they have felt like the rising total primal phase almost never reaches that. And if it does, it's these nuances of well, they didn't directly call you the n-word. They didn't overtly be what we would call racist, I guess. But clearly for the common person, my opinion, it's racist and discriminatory and for most common people nowadays. But what's that law that is challenging that? I hear that and that goes across where we're not just necessarily with race. But again, focusing on race, I consistently hear that bar not being able to engage for those nuances of not having overtly centered in something and wondering how that can be changed because it's shocking to hear that there's one or two complaints and those even necessarily be internal where many of us around the table may know more than that or better than that. There's either people not being coming for it, people that are calling lots of reasons, not being able to access it for a lot of reasons are feeling like the system is more troublesome for them than it is good. And so I'm going to go with the latter and wonder, there's so many steps. What is that that's happening with people? What do you think is happening with people who would or need to file racial discrimination complaints and failing as though this isn't an avenue for them? What has been your experience? I think to answer your first question first, which is the because of standard, right? So if there is anything there that we can kind of grab onto that seems like there's a difference in the way that this person was treated than somebody who's not in protected status, right? That's what we're looking for. And sometimes that's really hard to suss out because people don't make statements, but it's not quite like you have to hear the N word in order to take a complaint. I mean, that's helpful, and I don't mean that, you don't probably mean that. But it's not necessary. It's looking at the overall circumstances and trying to suss out what was going on here. Was there a legitimate reason and a traffic stop? Was there really a legitimate reason to stop the person? You know, if that traffic stop seems sketchy because there's a million other people that follow too close behind somebody else all the time on the highway, but this is the person that got stopped, we might look at that because there's reason to believe that it could be based on their race, and then the investigation is to suss that out as best as you can. I think for me that what I think are some of the barriers that are prohibiting people of color from calling about cases may be the time that it takes for us to investigate. So it's not instantaneous resolution. I think it may be that as a person of color you're experiencing microaggressions and issues all day long through your life, and so it takes something really egregious for people to finally say, that's enough, I'm calling Human Rights Commission. And so I think we get that a lot where somebody just has reached the end of their ropes and this one thing pushed them over the edge. But I think a lot of people choose not to file complaints about the kind of everyday slights because you'd be filing complaints every day all day long, right? So I think it's partially that and I think there is a lack of trust in the community's color with the Human Rights Commission. And we need to understand better why that is so that we can try to address those because I don't have a good sense of why that is and where the frustrations have occurred and how many of them may be related to something that was happening a long time ago in the agency that may not be happening the same way now or that's still happening the same way and that is problematic that we should know about so that we can fix it. The last piece of that, you said about some cases never get made public or if they go to negotiation, or mediation and things of that sort and so they essentially get sealed in a way. Would that mean? No, so cases where there's a no reasonable grounds finding get dismissed. All settlements that the HRC is part of which is any settlement that doesn't go to a private mediation where they enter into a confidentiality agreement all of those cases are public documents under the statute and they are filed away in our office and are accessible. They're online. The reasonable grounds decisions are on the settlements we put up there but we don't usually put parties' names on them. So it'll just say individual versus stated Vermont and we usually put the agency there because it's the state government and people should know that but it's not individuals' names in the settlements but people can call and ask what settlements do you have against DHR and we can pull those up and provide them. So just so I understand to be clear that if you go to mediation that one is not public. It can be public if we're there and or the parties don't enter into a confidentiality agreement. We don't get a lot of confidentiality agreements because we like those cases to be public documents where the public can see what's going on. And are you allowed to let people publicly know how many actually go into a confidentiality agreement? And I say that because what I've seen what I've experienced personally working with people is I've been through that mediation process and it happens to be people of color and then it's a secret and then nobody ever knows that that incident even took place. And I find that bothersome as we talk about that and we talk about numbers that then how does that actually get computed that there was this that happened? They actually were found to have done some wrong to it to want to go into mediation and make an agreement and I don't want anybody to know about it which raises another red flag and concern in my work and it raises another red flag when we as the people are trying to discern and disseminate that information, that data and just wondering do you keep track of those ones that you're not allowed to disclose but that is under the confidentiality clause? We track the settlement information in every case in a database. So even if they do a confidential settlement if we know that they paid out $40,000 it will say for that case damages of $40,000 and you know whatever other relief may have been granted but we don't Well the same protected category which Yes. Yes. Yeah. So all that's in the database. We don't get that many confidential agreements because most of the cases are settled by my staff and when they're settled by my staff they're not confidential. So the confidentiality ones tend to be the employment cases where the complainant gets an attorney and they decide to go to formal mediation rather than using our informal process and those cases can end up being confidential if the complainant agrees to it and there's a lot of pressure to do that in the mediation. There's no question about that. Major? Do you have I think it was from a while ago I just was going back to something I think back when you were pointing out about the concurrent nature so we can at State Police we have a division set aside to investigate allegations of misconduct and we can get a complaint or an allegation of any number of things excessive force or just racial discrimination or any type of discrimination and we will open that investigation even if there is also a related car stop or related UI arrest or something where that mat's going on at the same time or conduct the investigation as best we can while those are going on at the same time. And HR also investigates complaints of discrimination and their investigations can be going on at the same time when hours are so they'll be investigating, we'll be investigating, we usually get their investigation and then we can use that information in our investigation so that's also one of the ways that we gather information and sometimes we'll let them finish their HR investigation before we move forward. I just want to point out that it's two minutes to seven. That's all. Just saying. Any other questions? Do you have the final year report with the legislature? Yes. And does that normally have a breakdown of all like AOT had this many complaints against them? Does it have something like that? It does not presently have that. But that's something that's information you have. Yeah. And that just says the legislature, does it just sort of go there? Yeah, it goes to the speaker of the House and the pro tem of the Senate and I think I doubt they ever even look at it. Right. That's great. My question, you may have said something about this already so thank you for answering. I'm going to ask you to repeat yourself. But something struck me in your responses to Sheila's questions, particularly for someone who is not a state employee and might not have clear guidelines for what you do if you have a complaint, if you feel like you're being discriminated at work, just the average judge from coconut who feels like he got pulled over because he's black and had Massachusetts license plates, how would he know to call you? How would people find you? I think sometimes they get in touch with various advocacy agencies around the state who will refer them to us. But that's one of the issues is how much does the public know about what we're doing and that's one of the things that I have been struggling with as executive director because my job description is not doable by any one single human being which is what we're talking to the commissioners about right now and to that extent, the things that slip off the radar tend to be the things that are going out and doing outreach to let people know who we are and where we are because, you know, I'm litigation and I'm doing all this other stuff that I don't have time to do that and I don't have any other staff so that's just, you know, one of the realities of the situation. If I can, I want to bring it back to somewhere that Chief Don was going and Sheila was going and I think this is a question. You said six to eight cases that are based on that have to do with what's going on in the state in terms of discrimination. Not necessarily public accommodations but, right. So, I guess my, what I'm thinking is how many, I'm sort of going back to the statute that we've got to come up with a complaint process and I'm trying to figure out how many people are we meeting? I think you were right to mention it. Let's check there, sure. But I'm just feeling, it just feels like I'm just trying to get it to a point where we can start coming up with some practical suggestions since we're an advisory panel and we've got to write something that says we want this or we'd like this. We'd like this. So, we've been having these ongoing discussions out of the commission about the understaffing of our agency. So, what in my ideal world and his ideal world we would have a designated legal counsel who could do litigation, who could do negotiation in both cases, who could maybe do pre-conciliation even before that so that the investigator can just keep investigating and this person's trying to settle the case while they're moving forward and any other things the executive director needed and then to have an outreach and training person who could both do that outreach and be the primary trainer because right now all of that is on my plate in addition to doing everything else that I do and it's not doable. You're even talking about the new laws. Every year the legislature adds more work than you can see without any resources and so it's become clear to me that the agency is understaffed. So, can you give that in numbers so you mentioned legal counsel outreach and training can you just give us numbers if you were in fully staff the way you need to be to effectively run your organization what would that look like? Additional staff. So, that would be the executive director, the staff assistant, the investigators and outreach and education person and other people counsel so it would be seven people. That's what you would need so you would have five. So just two more people you think could help get your job done. Make a huge difference. Is there anything to ask for? So it's starting coming up in the legislature this year. I talked to my person in appropriations I think they're offering to the idea that it's a really impossible thing to do. So there's that barrier to start with but this year we sort of tried to plant the seeds with the various committees around the need because I didn't want to actually start pushing for more staff when they were trying to do this racial disparities panel because I was afraid that if I started pushing for more staff at the same time I was going to tank everything and so I just let that go through and then we are planning now to try to figure out how to approach the legislative discussion. So any support you all can give us. We're working. And again exploring the need versus the unfulfilled the demand. What did you say the numbers of complaints are to this total regatta without just breaking it down to employment? So we take in on average 70 to 80 complaints a year. And how do you break them down? It's 7 to 8 of those are employment. The vast majority around 20 are housing and the rest are public accommodations. So that puts it at 20 80 minus 28. 62. And when you say public accommodations how would you break that down for us in terms of our mandate So the primary primary complaining category is in every area that we investigate this disability then very high numbers can be compared to everything else. And then I would say it's I'll leave housing out because housing's got its own separate categories but and then it would be usually either sexual orientation or sex or age, race So now going down to that lowest number on race Do you have a sense of the numbers? The numbers are very small. Small? Roughly, I know we caught I should have brought my annual report with me I don't have it. You said 1 to 2 1 to 2 That's just profile That's just profile That's just profile No, so in each of the areas I would say we get 2 to 3 race complaints so it's probably 10 or less 10 or less a year I think the big unknown for me is how many we're trying to find like I said an avenue to send people but I think the big unknown for me is how many complaints stop at the department and never get to you like say if I had a problem with say employment the first place I would go to is probably the HR department and where does it stop there or like what the major said was that they might call her saying look one of your officers profiled me I want you to look into this and they settle it or it never goes past the state police you know so I bet you there's a lot of departments that where this stuff either stops and the only time that I would think of my own head if I was going to call the Human Rights Commission is if I can't get anywhere with HR or I can't get anywhere with the supervisor department then more than likely I might try to head to a different avenue that it's not going to cost me a lot of money potentially because if you go right out and hire legal counsel then obviously there's a lot of money so the first thing you do is try to complain to a department that might look into it they don't incur any cost no I understand but I'm saying that's why they would go to you first before maybe outside legal counsel because they want to see if they could get somewhere with you I just I don't know how we can gather the data from the different departments to actually see how many complaints they have because we'd have to ask the departments to provide the complaints to get a true picture of because all of a sudden we say okay we're pushing everything to the Human Rights Commission and we're going to advertise that they may not even know the impact until a year later and all of a sudden they get hit with 300,000 calls and they're like oh my god so I'm just saying is how do we get to the true picture so I think it's a good point and question and I think we should think about it because certainly it's straightforward you can ask every department to an agency to share the information and part of the Human Rights Commission's role could be to actually gather that information also the question you have to pose is the one to think about is do you want to refer every case to the Human Rights Commission I mean to a certain extent there are choices already and Karen talked about several of them and should the departments we do need to have our own internal complaint process I think that's actually important so the question would be and I don't know the answer I'm just putting it out there is should we give the complaint the choice and if they do choose to resolve it through the department should we go ahead and do that but share information so that we do have an accurate sense of how many complaints there are state by yeah I think so the analogy of the HR department I think might be helpful here in the legal legislation because existing state law to deal with employment discrimination in the area of sexual harassment for example of my employers have to provide their employees with a sexual harassment policy which tells them where to complain within the organization but also if there is state employee it says you may bypass the system and go to the HRC if you're a state employee or the EEOC in Boston or if you're a private employer you can go to the Attorney General's office so employers have if you go to any lunchroom you'll see the posters that tell you that that's also required by the state law I don't know that there is a parallel requirement for any other complaints of discrimination outside of harassment so it's more about marketing the law more than creating new policies or new laws it's about really making people aware where to go giving people informed choice I think that's right I mean that's quite a question because I think part of our task is going to be whatever we recommend whether it's HRC or some thing you're seeing some combination like part of this is going to have to be how we educate people about where they can go if they anything else I'm I mean your wishlist is obviously more you know more investigators more staff but in terms of this sort of information sharing have you had a wishlist in terms of what you wish you were getting from other agencies what you know is there like have you thought over the years like this could be better coordination you know have you talked with other people about coordination has there been progress you know before the board like you know what would be helpful to you right now in terms of coordination I think that to the extent that the agencies that non-profits whoever that are out there that know what we do simply to refer people that they think may be appropriate to us I mean that's another piece of to me that's another piece of the outreach just getting out there and really making those connections and that one of the reasons I think we get so many complaints from the disability community is they are really well organized and there's a lot of agencies that you know are know to send them to us and so they send them whereas that's not necessarily through the other protected categories that we serve so I think it is the work that needs to be done as part of that outreach that is just difficult to accomplish at the moment I'm just looking at 6A that says to ask is how would the institute a public employment process to address this advice as I listen to folks maybe those systems or placements more educating people as to how to access the processes there as opposed to how to use it and provide the resources on the other end to actually be able to investigate those cases just need to be more people anything else did you say who investigated this state again we you investigated this state so you're clear the reason that we're able to do that is because we have a layer of protection so I'm not hired and fired by the governor he can't touch me he has to go so my commissioners are appointed by the governor but they are the ones that hire and fire me so that we're insulated from the wrath of the governor's office if you do things the governor doesn't like which we often do thank you so much Karen have you absorbed the new law that passed we talked about this at the last month's meeting and whether or not our panel needed to exist the mandates seem to be similar the new S5 what have you in terms of how the commissioners role or the commission's role in light of this new law how is there overlap in terms of what we're looking at so there's really the person in this new position the executive director of the racial disparities board or whatever they're calling executive director is charged with figuring out where there are issues of systemic racism within government writ large so that includes not only employment practices but also provisional services to folks so there is a little bit of language in there that says that they are to act as a liaison with the human rights commission and then that was one of our major concerns as that legislation was moving forward was how are we going to be able to connect with that person so that they're not off for example looking at something in state government that we've already identified as a problem and they're going off this way on it and the human rights commission is going off this way on it and how we're going to have that and I think that's going to be a matter of building that relationship with that person and making sure that we all know who does what and how to interact with each other appropriately but I think it's an issue should I ask the same question to you Julio in the attorney general's office and the overlap of your office? I understand the new law they're really looking at I think disparate outcomes that might not actually violate a statute but that might cause self examination for the practices I mean the human rights commission and the civil rights unit ultimately when we do our investigations we're putting together a case that's going to go in court so people may have feelings about how are they retreated but the case if you're going to get an enforcement where you can't get a settlement you've got to put evidence on the table and it's often to shoot this point it's rarely direct evidence it's almost always circumstantial evidence and there's about 50 years of work in the area where people are very sophisticated at getting as much circumstantial evidence whether that's comparison to other employees or statistical disparities all that sort of thing but I think this panel will really look at might be looking at a broader picture and saying looking at numbers and saying we have these outcomes this is really large how are we generating these outcomes without having to prove in a given case that a prosecutor or a judge or a police officer or someone in our office or a biased decision are they aware of practices and maybe bias is linked to other determinations like poverty or be age discriminations people of color at a certain age or maybe subject to different treatment without people really realizing it and then making those choices I think institutionally and I think through training people maybe changing their practices and without ever having to say in these 5, 15, 20 cases someone violated the law because that's a very difficult to do and so I think what makes the legislation is promising and I think these conversations are promising as you can say okay let's not drill down to the individual cases but let's look at overall how are we doing things and elsewhere in the country people are doing these things without panels just generating changes so I pay a lot of attention to the DA's office in Philadelphia what their president is doing he just puts out a memo and says okay we're no longer going to require bail on these cases because what we're finding is that all the people who come in here are poor and 90% of them are people of color so and sometimes they will and they require the prosecutors to evaluate the cost of incarceration and deciding what cases to charge etc not because they ever found particular violations but it's just like we're getting these outcomes we're seeing the poor here every day they're dispossessed here every day and so we're going to change things and I think that part of the work of that panel and I think this coordinator on another position is they keep changing the name I'm hopeful that we'll look at and try to take the secret sauce from places in the country where people are doing it right now and just saying rather than the Human Rights Commission and our we're enforcement agencies so we build cases and we take cases we try to resolve and we try to educate and all of that but this is the idea of this panel and this next panel is bigger than that and I think where they will intersect is if we have an individual complaint where we're also looking at systemic relief because that's part of our charge that's the public interest that's been violated here and how we fix that public interest so there's a possibility of some intersectionality there that is not, could be problematic but that's not going to be the majority of things so when I talk about that panel the way that I was, one of the examples I was looking at was that the health department involved this data around racial disparities and health outcomes so that would be something this person would be diving into potentially is why are these racial disparities showing up in our health care system and what's driving them and is it really race or is it something else and is it poverty, is it something else and so how do we address those larger systemic issues is what that panel is really on the criminal and juvenile justice system which there could be some overlap again but I don't think they're necessary I think they could also be mutually exclusive on the other side we can take disparate impact cases so it used to be a generation ago police departments had height and weight requirements and that just happened to knock women off all of the candidates lists and so those were lawsuits that were bought by enforcement agencies like ours permit that the challenge though in a race context is that the population is so low that you can't build up a statistical pool you don't have enough complainants so you might have someone where there's a standard and it applies in it and the people of color who don't qualify or who get a bad result but there's only two of them and the statistical standard in court you might have to have oftentimes there's many to show the statistical case but if you're doing this voluntarily if you just say you know we hear there are problems here and then we just look at it we can self examine it and say yeah why are we doing it this way why do we have this standard why do you have to be six feet tall so I mean that's part of the promise I think at least is that it's a voluntary examination and whatever you're ultimately trying to get as a state agency the question is can you go about it a different way that generates what might be more equitable outcomes I want to be a chair for a moment and it is now 722 and I think we have to make some decisions about the rest of the agenda and whether we're going to table it and bring it up at another at the next meeting or whether we're going to continue with this because we do have to get in public commentary and we don't have a lot of time frankly so I'm just bringing that up not necessarily making the motion but I am suggesting that someone may want to do that I'll make a motion I'll make a motion to table discussing the producer okay some of the second thing second all in favor all opposed all abstaining great it will be tabled thank you I feel power now I just have one quick question I think it's a yes or no question do you or any of the agency take complaints anonymously wait no you said no yes great because people aren't here will you say where you're from and say yes so people understand listen in our department of corrections for the record we're not simply we take complaints but we misconduct from anonymous sources as well for my attorney general's office civil rights unit well I act on anonymous complaints catch up department for children and families we also will accept anonymous complaints and take action according to thank you all are we done our people we have a lot more work to do with this right I'm just going to ask what the thinking was about next steps I think it is as we obviously do have the human rights commission and attorney general's office and even within different departments a system of sorts right and I think the question is what do and maybe that is for another time and maybe that makes sense to absorb this conversation and at our next meeting maybe talk about a proposal about how we would respond specifically to this portion of the statute I would suggest um you're not going to like this that at least you weren't that we get the minutes out fairly quickly about all of this and then we can do as Ken is suggesting and sit and absorb what's gone on and then have another discussion at the next meeting that is mourned perhaps not substantive that's not what I meant at all God I'm sorry more fun is not actually constructing what the statute is asking us to do that so would it be productive for all of us to have an opportunity to go around and do reflections or questions or comments to help us move into that for next time so we just heard a lot from Karen I'm just wondering and there's a lot of questions asked I'm just wondering if anybody had ideas or maybe I'm just speaking to myself or there's thoughts or whatever to what was said here today I'm just wondering and that will help us be like oh wow that's a great idea we should talk about that the next time in our meeting that kind of thing that would work we've got four minutes great I have I have a suggestion that it might be too early for this but after hearing what was being said and a lot of emphasis being put on education outreach which I agree is needed I was wondering so in poll overs and when police pull people over you give them ticket citations or whatever there's a thing on the back of the citation correct that says whatever it says and I'm wondering if one of the things they can say is their rights and this resource if we can actually end board the officers are fueled with those cards literally and it's not if they want it it's when they've given a citation this is the Human Rights Commission if you feel like this interaction or whatever was not whatever then you have the right to go to this entity and to file a complaint and to really start putting that in a more formatted way and I think that a citation and I understand because I heard it I think a year ago when we first started this panel about the money in citations and we just do them over or something happened but it would be a great idea and then to also have it on the police website which maybe it's already there because I'm not on the website every day and have it a little bit more open to the public and in your agencies so if I file a complaint with you I don't know if it says actually I think it does but I don't know if it says you can also file with the Human Rights Commission which I know yours does but I'm wondering if others people I don't know haven't been on yours lately so there's just some ideas that I wanted to bring into the space and look for as a tool Anybody else for two minutes I think what Sheila has said is really another piece of the education so I think really the question we have to ask ourselves to get ready for the next meeting is from what we've heard are we comfortable with the complaint process that is in place and can we then move into a real discussion of how we educate people to what's in place I agree and I think that conversation needs to be had in relationship to money and budget I think that I can't say yes unless the resources are there I heard that we're setting people up to fail without utilizing those terms and as a state and as state governments I think I'm very disappointed in that as a state personally Major did you you were just moving your pen okay intensively yes well we've done the way forward thank you that didn't happen when I thought it would but okay we got it so we're going to meet the minutes he's not going to like that thank you Karen Richards thank you very very much great we who knows you may be back I mean once we start actually coming up with some concrete whether it's to second what you're doing or coming up with I think the last time you was here we put her on a committee that's true you did don't say we worked for a while can we move on then okay thank you thank you oh you're welcome to stay yes I'll stay we wanted there has been some question about the quality of the minutes and the accessibility of the don't Pache sorry this really didn't come up very well there's been some question about whether there are detailed enough to adequately help us come up with what the statute's asking us to then to inform the public about what it is we are doing that is something that we need to we need to hear back from hear about how that's felt in general how other people feel about that if that's a concern others have had whether we need to look at other ways of getting the notes taken perhaps I'm putting that forward Chief I have a question if this is going to be videotaped every time and it's going to be on where people can watch it that's a complete record of anybody who wanted to watch our entire meeting could really do it that's the whole point or if it's just live streaming I'm not sure so I'm saying is if you're going to do that I'm not sure how much detail you need because the minutes to me are more to keep us on the board to remind us what we're doing we're talking about and that's really the public recorded record but I don't know if that's the case I don't know if that's going to be recorded every meeting or not we're hoping that's the intention where is this person from what are you on the media and not our website and about how long after you video us here today will it be up on your site tomorrow so this is a whole video of the whole meeting it's not live streaming it's a whole video and I know Sheila and we've been committed to trying to get this organized last time so I just want to thank you and anyone else for making it happen but and so I mean is it going to be possible to be recorded every we'll meet once a month it is set up to be recorded every month and the question on the table is whether we could afford well streaming because that came into the conversation I don't want to divert the minutes conversation but the streaming part is going to cost money for streaming and we don't have a budget and so I think streaming is a good way to have public participatory conversations I think it's a great way for people to like thumbs up thumbs down to question things I think it's a great way to have many people on many different places access something so important so I would like the committee to think about potentially investing and streaming and ORCA does provide that but that part is for a fee and if there's a feeling for that I will go hand on the wearing sackcloth steering with ashes and beg for money I promise so so you'd like us to tell you whether or not we think it would be yeah I would like some discussion about so are we going to finish the minute thing and then loop it out or whatever I don't care is it all one because there's got to be a budget for both I agree with chief that to me if there is going to be an additional media format by which the public can view the entire meeting then to me the minutes are really just for us to refresh our recollections each month and I have found what I've received certainly this last time to be sufficiently detailed that is my agreement I agree I agree too but I also would there are probably a conference line within state government maybe even the AG's office that if you didn't want to go to the expense of streaming and you just wanted to have a conference line where people could call into and we call in there too and everybody can listen to it but keep them on view so that way if at the end with public comments there then you could then open the channel to allow people to talk that might be a free version I don't know but most corporations or companies have conference lines where everybody can dial into and have a big old conversation just thank you Sheila, you and I should do some more work aren't we happy so I won't even put it to about we'll just go off and we'll do some more work on this and see about other ways of of making making this accessible can I make two suggestions on that and I'm like a total liar so I'm not going to speak on this but I happen to participate in an ACLU webinar so they might be a resource to ask sort of how they do it and then I think there's Facebook live right like something like that so okay and I was just curious how much the live streaming costs and maybe you don't know that I don't know 75 that's what we were finding 75 and I would just say to your point that with having videoing and then having the minutes not necessarily be as detailed as maybe some of us would like but also just thinking of different modalities of accessibility for people now everybody has a computer or TV to be able to watch this and I just want us to be mindful as we're talking with people with different abilities and different resources and access that again I'm looking from a perspective of many different people and how they might access this information which actually leads me to a really good question when these videos become available is there close caption and then who owns the video could we post them on the committee's website okay and the minutes will come up there too no just sleep alright moving on then maybe scheduling of next meeting if it is the second Tuesday of next month that is the 14th of August is this that conflict with any holiday I don't know about aid perhaps or no Ramadan's over so I think that will be a big one yeah I don't know I don't know no that's some David does the scheduling of the group so I'm not sure where it will be sorry but yeah no I'll send something out ASAP promise but it will be from 8 p.m. on that day everybody okay with that all okay say aye aye all not okay with it all having an odd abstention I'll be away you'll call them or I might not okay no vacation Sheila no hang up on you public public hello our guests and and Schroeder Wyndham County I'm from Wyndham County People Power ACLU and a bunch of stuff was answered during the meeting but I still have a few questions and comments I'll try to make this quick if possible one thing that the Human Rights Commission website and sorry back there I didn't want to interrupt so I noticed that and you mentioned in the November minutes public accommodations was most of state government including things like roads but there's nothing on the website that says that so how would people know about public accommodations and if they went to the website to look at to click on the different forms probably know what public accommodations is some of it would be obvious but I would never have thought of worlds as being a public accommodation so I don't know if I could go on the website or if this is just more about the whole thing which people talked already about the whole idea of publicizing all of this stuff the other thing I didn't see anything there on that particular page I didn't go through the whole website about what the protected status categories are whether that would be helpful to be right there on that page just so people could see whether they were in one of the categories whether that would be helpful I was thinking a lot about that this whole thing needs to be publicized more but that's one of the things you guys are going to do something else I wondered about this is just something to mention Act 54 says that recommendations in Chapter 6 says you guys are looking at 6A now but in Chapter 6 it says recommendations to address systemic implicit bias but then in 6A it becomes what you're talking about here the public complaint process to address perceived implicit bias I guess since the Act says this you really have to address the perceived part but I really think the systemic implicit bias is a better phrase and I don't know if this goes anywhere I'm just throwing that out there something else that this new racial equity advisory panel has of course they have been talking about they have a broader charge whereas you folks are focusing more on the criminal justice system but because you have this public complaint process I look through S5 and it's really more of an internal approach they have they're going to review racism the work through branches they're going to do data collection they're going to create new policy they're going to do training but it's much more internal they're about input from citizens about race any kind of racism or any other discrimination and to me this makes the charge of your panel even more important because you're going to have a public a way for the public to reach you and let you know what's going on so I'm just throwing that out there and let's see if anything this one maybe is too much but I'm trying to get a handle on implicit bias versus explicit bias and is explicit bias a criminal act no not necessarily some things can be like is that what you're I'm just trying to get a handle on with the two things some crimes can be enhanced to hate crimes on explicit but implicit would always be civil crimes if I could take a stab at it I think it might be I mean we could spend a whole week talking about it but I think the simplest approach would be usually explicit bias is where someone is consciously acting upon a bias so I am going to treat you differently because I treat that because I think you don't deserve the same treatment as somewhere else and this really tries to approach that we may be acting and not really thinking about thinking oh I don't like those people and I treat them that way we might just have assumptions that we all carry with us views about people of color and crime, the association of crime for example it's kind of for based on the future so I think that's the idea and part of the other panel is to kind of force self-examination of people to seriously question why they do what they do and whether there are biases that are motivating it without it being on the top of their head I think that's the idea when you're talking about enforcement if you're taking someone to court you're generally, I mean in a lot of cases you have to prove the explicit bias you have to show that but to change your culture in an organization you don't have to get to that point you just ask people to examine how they do things and kind of throw those biases out on the table and be honest about them thank you others no I have a suggestion do you have to find out your location next month? your website last month was there were a lot of problems sorry did everyone in the room get to sign yes thank you hold on that was that new business the only thing I'm going to put out there is brainstorming that will be the buzzword for August brainstorming given the conversation we had I think it was wonderfully theoretical and open and I think what we now need to do is go back to in a sense what we started with what did we do with 6A and both Sheila and Judge Pearson have really good proposals perhaps the Human Rights Commission is fine perhaps they just need to be staffed better I'm saying perhaps not saying definitely but this is the sort of thing that we need to be really thinking about and bring to the table in August for a really wide ranging discussion where it is not I would say completely unthinkable that we would start taking some notes from a document and I think that that would be a good idea in fact and a document that I think we should approach it perhaps the way anthropologists do this is something I know something about being one you write something and you take it back to the people that actually helped you write it and you go what do you think and they go you really don't get us and let's go through this again and you go back and forth and that happens about oh let's see I've done it about 12 times in fact and finally you got something that everybody can sort of live with and everyone's disappointed and then you know you've done it and so we may start putting some notes down that will help us all be disappointed in the end alright one quick question so what when you were focusing on 6A through C right that's over for are you planning on submitting something as we complete like A and doing something with it or are we waiting we're going to shelve that and then at the end do one big document I don't think we've had that conversation I was just curious what do you do with it so I guess we'll we'll come to that one we'll have that conversation but not tonight anybody want to make a motion to adjourn because I think we're trying to I make a motion to adjourn second favor all of those see y'all