 My name is Chaplain Colnapper, and on behalf of MOCA and NOAA and the Athens Anti-Discrimination Movement, I welcome you to tonight's town hall. I'm thrilled that MOCA has asked me to be here tonight to help facilitate this conversation because I'm also a former commissioned officer in the United States Army who served in four tours of duty in the Middle East in support of America's war on terror. So I know truly what it means to back the blue, and it is with that spirit that we start our conversation tonight around community policing and building good faith relationships between average citizens, the business community, and law enforcement. So tonight we're going to leave politics at the door. There will be all sorts of people who will tell you that you have to be red or blue or black or white or conservative or progressive. I stand before you today asking you to choose unity. Let's agree that Athens, Georgia is an amazing place that we love and that we know can be a better place. So without further ado, I'm going to introduce you to our amazing panel tonight. First of all, we're going to start with our Executive Director of AADM, MOCA Jasmine Johnson. MOCA is a passionate educator, activist, mother, motivational speaker, and entrepreneur. MOCA's awesome. We love that. Next. We are honored to have Athens-Far County Deputy Chief of Police Harrison Daniel. Deputy Chief Harrison Daniel has served Athens community for 17 years as a police officer with the Athens-Far County Police Department. During his tenure, Chief Daniel has worked in varying capacities across the department. His recent assignments include serving as the division captain in standards, records and the training division, as well as being the commander of the Office of Professional Standards and working within the criminal, leading the criminal investigations division, personal crime section. Deputy Chief Daniel is a double graduate of the University of Georgia with a B.A. in criminal justice and a master of public administration from the Department of Public Administration. He is a recipient of the Governor's Office of Public Safety Award for acts of heroism and the American Red Cross Law Enforcement Hero Award. Had to get all that in. That's good stuff. All right. Chaplain Shane Sims is the executive director of People, Living and Recovery. That is a local non-profit which assists families and individuals who are facing substance abuse, mental health and homeless challenges. He is also the co-owner and director of Modern Pathways to Recovery, an in-house treatment program for men seeking long-term recovery. Chaplain Sims is a chaplain with the Athens-Far County Police Department and he serves as chairman of the non-profit Feed My Sheep and sits on the boards of several organizations. We love Chaplain Sims. Our next panelist is a strength, there's absolutely no one in this room. Tim Jensen, Athens-Clarke County Commissioner. Tim is currently employed at the United Campus Workers of Georgia as a labor organizer. He has worked as a community organizer in Athens since 2011. He has served on the Athens-Clarke County Vision Committee as well as Tim graduated from Edison College and he has received multiple trainings on organizing communications and community engagement. His initial term of service for the Athens-Clarke County District 5 Commissioner seat was in January of 2019. We're very happy to have you here, sir. And last but not least, Mr. Lee Reed. Mr. Reed is the executive director of the Atlanta Citizen Review Board, a board designed to provide citizen oversight of misconduct accusations against sworn members of the police corrections, police and corrections departments in the city of Atlanta. Prior to joining the ACRB, Mr. Reed held the position of assistant director of the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights for six years with primary responsibility for the Minneapolis Citizen Civilian Police Review Authority. He is a graduate of Morehouse College and North Carolina University School of Law and School of Business. I read that right. He went to law school and he went to business school. Overachiever. All right, prior to college, Lee served in the United States Navy aboard the USS John F. Kennedy. So he is a veteran as well, a true superhero. So we are very excited to have this awesome panel and we have, we're going to go ahead and start off tonight with Mocha. Mocha, if you could let us know, give us an overview of the Civilian Oversight Review and what it's all about and I'll let you take it over from here. So thank you everyone for joining us today. So thank you to our awesome panel. We made sure it was diverse. We have representation from the police department. We have representation from the local government. We have someone with years, over 12 years of experience dealing with these types of oversight board. We have Shane and I that were co-chairs of the police advisory task force and both him and I are engaged in the community through our nonprofit organizations and all the different work that we do. So after spending a year on this task team, we got to learn a lot about civilian oversight throughout this country. So a civilian oversight, also known as a civilian review, typically it is an office or referred to as an agency or it's made up of a review board. So a civilian oversight, also known as civilian review, allows citizens or community participation in reviewing complaints regarding police misconduct. Members of a civilian oversight or civilian review boards are passed with direct involvement in the citizen complaints process and recommend solutions to improve government accountability. The purpose of this agency is not to simply criticize the police, but to help improve relationships between the community and police officers through accountability and transparency. The benefits that they have been able to document from having such an oversight. And I'm only going to name seven because there's a lot of other benefits as well. Complaints are given in place to voice concerns outside of the law enforcement agency. Whether people know it or not, our organization receives a lot of complaints from local citizens. Whether or not they believe that they can't go the regular route of following it with the police department or they don't feel comfortable following with the local government, we get a lot of complaints. So we're seeing a different side of it. We're seeing people's stories and voice not being heard. We're seeing people complaining about the fact that they filed a complaint with the police department and not getting back whether it's someone getting back to them in a due time or they don't even understand the process. So people are filing these complaints. It's not some imaginary thing that we have made up. So this oversight will create a space to where people can voice the concerns outside of the law enforcement agency. The oversight agency can help improve community relations by fostering communication between the community and police agencies. An oversight agency can help reduce public concern about the high profile incidents. An oversight agency can help increase the police, the publics, let me repeat that, an oversight agency can help increase the public's understanding of law enforcement policies and procedures. An oversight can help hold the police or sheriff department accountable for an officer's action. The community at large can be reassured that discipline is being imposed when appropriate while also increasing the transparency of the disciplinary process. When the oversight agency confirms a complaint allegation, people in the community tend to feel that it's valid. So whether or not the outcome is we didn't see any wrong doing in this process and procedure whether you believe that this incident was a bad way of the officers handling it after the review board looks at it and they come out and say we didn't see any wrong doing. The community should be able to trust that board in the same way as the police department should be able to trust the board or that office to do the right thing and not be compromised or swayed to the left or to the right. So that is what a civilian oversight is. It is throughout the nation. It is nothing new. They have established from Atlanta to Denver and throughout the country. So that is what it is. Beautiful. Okay. Thank you for that. I know that one of the things that we had talked about was the task force recommendation that whole process that you all went through a couple of years ago and I know that it lasted over a year. You all met monthly and the task force came up with recommendations. Can you explain that process to people? I think that that is something that you know people we've been tossing around terms but I mean people really need to understand the work that you all did. So Chaplain Sims can you explain? I think one of the first thing that everyone should know is that the work that we did wasn't just a shot from the hill. It wasn't just a bunch of emotionalism. It was guided by principles and it was guided with the assistance of NACO who is a national authority on Police Advisory Task Force and of the seven principles that we used to guide our work the most important to me was what are the benefits for the community because ultimately that one principle encompass all of the other six what are the benefits for the community and in order to see how we could benefit the community we had to see what was wrong with the community what need to be fixed with the community and we didn't come into this work as Democrats or Republicans as conservatives or as progressive we came into this work as citizens and people fellow community members people that love this city and wanted to see this city get better and I don't think anyone in this room can deny the fact that relationships between the community and the police department is something that can stand work on whether from the side of police department of the community that doesn't matter what matters that there's work that needs to be done and we've begun this process with that in mind and trying to understand what other things that could be put in place. When we looked at the police advisory council we didn't simply look at Athens and say okay this is what Athens need we took the benefit of all of the work that's been done across this country we looked at Athens in terms of demographics, its size, its makeup, population, crime rate and we were guided by NACO in looking at other demographics other areas that had similar demographics and we looked at what was implemented there and tried to the best of our ability to see what were the pros and cons of those advisory councils and we came down with the one that seemed to provide the most benefits to this community given our demographics given our makeup and given the issues and things that we face within this community so it's important for the community to understand that this work wasn't guided by any ideology it wasn't done by an individual that had no expertise we had the expertise of NACO and this was the product of us having a whole year of going at this of reaching out, consulting with one another and this is what we came up to be the best advisory council component for Athens Park County. And the advisory in addition to that we did community surveys during COVID-19 we did wrestling with are we going to go and knock on doors we did multiple surveys extended over 30 over 30 days we did maybe two rounds maybe the three rounds of surveys we did town halls but the most important thing that I want you all to understand that this is not just one-sided it has to be a working thing to where the community voice is involved and so is the police officers and it has to be a thing where we all figure out how to work together for the best interests of Athens Park County. Some people don't understand that there are people that feel like they're they're not being treated fairly and equally so there is trust and it's broken trust and if you see what's happening in the nation it's not necessarily getting better I fight for Athens because I believe in Athens I feel like Athens can be a model of like this great city so that's why we do this work and part of this is as a preventive measure to get ahead so we can say we're already doing the work we're already working towards building relationships and making our community stronger. So as Shane stated we didn't just we had NACON that was a national organization that's worked with different entities throughout the country to guide our work we had a diverse group of people I enjoyed the makeup even though it was difficult the reason why I enjoyed the makeup of the board is because it truly was different voices and not all those voices got get along and we have to learn how to have our differences it might not see either eye but find that mutual pace to where we can build and grow. He had a high schooler he had people with previous records he had people on there from various organizations different backgrounds so even chief school was on there blame the city manager attending those meetings there was multiple voices at the table and even though it was a difficult process for him and I I love the diversity and I love the fact that we had opposing voices and different perspectives because we wanted to get the best model it is a hybrid model it consists of what what they call when we refer to the auditor we're not talking about the auditor of Athens Clark County this is a separate type of auditor they call it an auditor monitor if it confuses people forget about the title of auditor just call it a monitor okay so the monitor is the person that works every day Monday through Friday okay the review board is made up of citizens from Athens Clark County if they're not just randomly picked there's a process to where other organizations can say recommend someone from that organization the government is involved in the picking of this review board body so it's a hybrid model we wanted there we wanted someone to be able to work regularly on these situations and we also want the community to have a seat at the table so that we can all come together to resolve some of our issues and to build trust and just as a segue one caveat that's important for everyone to understand is that when we ask Naco how often does the decision of the advisory board conflict with the decision or determination of the police department and she said that upward of 80% of the time the advisory board comes to the same conclusion as the police department so now the question may be if the advisory board comes to say investigate the conclusions of the police department then what is the benefit of the advisory board and that's one of the things that we realize that many of our problems are perceptive you know and i as an example i would say you know as parents you know you you may tell your child hey go to school avoid that crowd and we may preach that to that child you know being up the word of figures but that child may not hear it but that child may need a friend somewhere and the friend may say well man we don't need to go around those guys and before you know the light comes on the child say well yeah maybe we don't need to go around them it's about relationship a lot of time the police department may come to a conclusion that is absolutely correct but because of the free relationship the community is skeptical and accepting that result and before you know it all the theories ideas they they blow up if you have an advisory panel that walks side by side with the police department they don't use their power they don't take over the investigation they simply walk side by side and when the conclusion is reached that advisory panel say yes this was a full and fair investigation and the result of the investigation was this and it's more acceptable to the community to come from community members so at the end of the day the advisory board would accomplish the exact same thing as the police department hoped to accomplish through their transparency and that is building up community trust respect and building that relationship and so it is important for the community to understand that over 80 of the time the conclusion of the advisory board is in agreement with the conclusion of the investigative report of the police department and I will also add from that is like our goal is to have the best officers on the street just like they may come out 80 percent and say hey this matches up this was a good investigation we want to also find that bad apple so even if the board comes and say hey something is wrong I think there's a pattern here there's something going on we should be able to trust that board in the same way that they were saying we think that this investigation was fair in the same way we think we got a bad apple and those bad apples is what make the whole police department or a large mass of police department look really bad and it's causing the distrust so I think that that is perfect a perfect way of you know discussing like what is the Athens-Cart County police department and thank you deputy chief Daniel for being here how does that you know I know that you you I'm not asking you to speak for any more than you can but you've seen the task force recommendations and can you just give us an idea of of your thoughts on the task force recommendations pluses and minuses any any of your thoughts sure so thank you all for having me I appreciate the opportunity to be here thank you for in seeing the event yes you know what you've heard already tonight from mocha and shane are a lot of things that I think we can agree on and the first thing I want to emphasize is that though we may have some disagreements about small things and like mocha said there were some tough times during these meetings I didn't participate in all them but I got to watch you know most of them there's a lot of things we can agree upon when it comes to the oversight process what it looks like and what it's designed to be what its purpose is and you know to speak for chief sprule just just for a moment he's been very consistent you know from the beginning that he believes in police oversight he comes from a jurisdiction for the majority of his career where police oversight was part of their process and so he's comfortable with it he's in favor of it when it's fair and when it's impartial and when it's not geared in a way that can become adversarial and so that we can all agree upon we want to build positive relationships that there is opportunity there for the you know for a police oversight function to help bridge some gaps you know certainly we don't always communicate the best you know in a lot of walks of life including the police department and we want to get information out there but sometimes it's hard to overcome the perceptions you heard Shane mention and and so in those in those cases it's good to have those voices that can help bridge that gap and so there's a lot that we can absolutely agree upon when it comes to building positive relationships finding positive opportunities to improve how we police within the community for seeking new ways to do business if you want to say that but the underlying concerns I think that were raised from our perspective from the police department and as expressed by Chief Sprule is there are a few little things where from the beginning some adversarial undertones kind of took hold pretty quickly and you know to a point where early on in the process when you know the chief spoke up in opposition of a few things was asked not to return to the next meeting and that kind of created a you know an initial rift and that caused some issues I think we've worked through a lot of that but that kind of set some tone to begin with with some of the adversarial nature that was developing and that's not consistent across the entire group but certainly that that was felt from Chief Sprule felt from the police department with that and some of the recommendations I think that some of them have a few potential fatal flaws that need to be examined a little further in that they may further some adversarial relationship between the board and the police department and that's not what we want we want to build positive relationships and so some of the potential holes for some adversarial relationships to develop is what we want to work on and I are now and some of that had to do with stepping into budgetary and defunding type issues with stepping into personnel matters and discipline and you know there's a structure in place through the government that does provide outlet for how we manage personnel how we respond in cases of discipline and and some of the recommendations might not fall quite in line with that and we think that some of that should still be worked on and cleaned up before anything is finalized you know last year we fielded 48 complaints last year and I know Mocha you mentioned there may be others out there and and we've worked with Mocha on some specific ones in the past year where people raised complaints to you and we brought you in and shown you kind of the inside and behind the scenes of what we've seen and what we've done and what information developed from the complaint and so you know we're already doing some of the things that you're talking about and the recommendations are saying that we need to be doing some of that's already in existence and we can definitely continue with that but of those 48 complaints last year 33 percent of that 15 of them I believe were internal complaints and so you know we do believe we're doing a lot of good work and if we can focus on some of that and be able to push that information out as well as you know identify those those certain bad apples as you call them or circumstances where we need to improve or fix something we're all on board for talking about and finding positive ways to work toward that and so I think it's just a few minor things that we think could be clarified and worked out within the recommendations but overall you know Chief Sprule said from the beginning and our departments has the same sentiment we support the idea of oversight when it's done in a positive way in a way that builds relationships and it bridges those gaps oh I think that is so so awesome okay you said that of the 48 complaints 33 or 33 percent so one third of the complaints came from within the department and what that means is that you had an officer or a supervisor reporting on the actions of another officer and so you know from the beginning we we train our officers we teach our officers and policy expects that you know they report up the chain of command when they believe that there's a policy violation that's occurred and we hold our officers accountable to that and you know the evidence indicates that our officers are adhering to that the other thing I do want to mention is you know when it comes to building relationships one of the philosophies our police department's grounded on is procedural justice and from the moment an officer walks in our doors they're learning about procedural justice it's built into our value system and if you're not familiar with it you should look it up one of the leading scholars on is a man named Tom Tyler and you look up some of his research and the work he's done but what procedural justice ultimately comes down to is it's understanding that the manner in which somebody's treated is more critical necessarily than the outcome so it's the manner that the traffic stops conducted that's more critical to maintaining good relationships and establishing police legitimacy and and whether or not the person gets a warning or a ticket that's how they're treated during the process and we teach that from the beginning and so you know like I said built into our our value system our training from the get-go is the idea of building positive relationships and understanding how to treat and interact with people and that's what we expect that's awesome okay thank you very much for that deputy chief so I have to I have to clarify because I hear things and I don't want it to keep circulating when Mayor Gertz created this task force there's no civilian oversight that can take away funds from the police department that was a myth and that myth continues to circulate conversations have came up to where during our call during our meetings where different members have made certain recommendations but if you look in the final recommendations there is nothing in there that permits allow this entity to take away or redistribute or do anything with police funding or budgeting this needs to stop this is not a political game people lives are at risk this is a not about defunding funding taking away black lives blue lives this is about a community that needs to be fixed we do not this people are here that do not trust the police and we want this entity here so that we can improve community relations and policing we cannot do anything with the budgeting this entity we cannot issue a discipline we can make recommendations to policies and rules that are ready there based on the investigations in the monitor being able to be a part or right alongside or be able to ask questions for transparency and accountability they can make recommendations just like the officer said they already have a procedure for a discipline recommendation and being able to cast down discipline is two different things so let's stop playing games the next thing is since our organization does get complicated we do have some officers that respond and and but it's not it hasn't been the best or easiest process and it could be better and it was better but it's not as the relationship is not like how it was a few years ago and i'm just gonna put it out there so i just wanted to say those things because i just want to keep accuracy yeah i think that a lot of times when we hear things like defund the police that you know it gets people sidetracked i think right that's not what this is has nothing to do there's no ability of the auditor monitor or the board to be able to impact any of that and i think one of the things that i learned from watching the government oversight government operations committee meeting from from February 24th was that the actual process the procedures that are in the Athens-Clarke county police department remain like if there is a complaint that's made the complaint is handled by the Athens-Clarke county police department the internal affairs division if i'm correct right so everything is done the entire investigation is done by the internal affairs department uh and then in in the case that you are in the model that you all recommending the monitor would just review the investigation after the investigation has been complete so there's no ability there's no funding issues at all that come into that and so i think that one of the the concerns that you had Commissioner Denson during the last government operations committee meeting was well one of how the auditor monitor would be placed in terms of the organization chart and then you also had some questions and concerns about general counsel and you referred to the issues that the Athens-Clarke county board of elections had had with trying to go for outside counsel so it possible sir if you could talk about the task force recommendations and what uh what your thoughts are about what it's going to take to move those recommendations forward to the commissioners on the full board i'm sure um yeah i think thanks for giving me the chance to talk about this so the recommendations which we kind of went over a bit is that there'd be two main components auditor monitor which would be like you said working like every day a little bit more engaged with the police department kind of going back and forth and then this over this committee that the auditor monitor would engage with kind of be able to the auditor monitor get kind of that connection back and forth and i thought i honestly like i thought it was pretty good recommendations i watched these meetings very impressed by Shane and Moka's ability to facilitate what was at times definitely difficult conversations and tell you this folks i mean watch those meetings if some of these conversations during these things weren't difficult then we weren't doing our job right i mean our entire conversation about leasing right now in our sorry nation it's a difficult conversation that we're really having a genuine conversation it's going to be hard and there's going to be some people are going to get a little upset and we're going to have to work through that all right put our egos at the door and and really put our community first and um so the recommendations came forward um like i said i watched these meetings go as they as it came so i got to see how we kind of evolved now people's how y'all stopped processed us there and uh for the most part i i mean i'll say right now i still i'm ready to go i think these are pretty good there's some there's some little things that we need to fix the legal counsel i think is one of those things we got definitely got very messy with the board elections um and there's some issues there with that i think we can work through that one uh all this pretty small my concerns again the um requirements for members they could get some of them are very very specific and will honestly be difficult for us to point um and i i would fear that we'd have a lot of vacancies not be able to have four of them to actually have these things work but for the most part i think it makes a lot of sense and uh jack one you're gonna do very well this committee we work in parallel to all the structure we already have parallel to and i think it simply gives that extra um perspective that people are gonna have a little bit um be able to buy into a little more um and this is not and also this is something that we do all the time uh last week we disappointed uh stormwater utility citizen committee we do this all the time that's overseeing the stormwater utility how it operates making recommendations back to the commission on how this thing should work so that we can make sure that we have the best system in place or in our system to serve the community this is no different this is going to make i believe our police department better it's going to be able to build trust with the police department i and i think and i hope um i think that what this really comes out to is it's trust on both sides we need the police department to trust that the people of Athens know what they're doing and aren't going to go on some kind of partisan witch hunt they're going to do their take this work seriously and they're going to do it well and then we need the same thing those people will be able to build up trust with the police department this is going to be to me this is a win-win no matter how we go and do some of the recommendations need to be tweaked here and there sure but for the most part this is ready to go um i honestly am i am honestly ready to vote it out of the committee um unfortunately i don't have uh the authority to get that started right away um and we're still working on it but we are getting closer i agreed the conversations of the last couple of weeks gotten closer including the the chief's input and so um i think the recommendations i've got this 90 percent of the way there and i'm ready to take that last 10 percent steps that is fantastic when is the next government operations committee meeting next week well it's supposed to be this thursday actually over the weekend unfortunately um i got communication that has been canceled uh so we are now looking at august which i will stay right now i'm frustrated because the committee already only meets once a month for an hour so even if we met every single month that's only 12 hours of committee work per year that we get to do um and we normally don't meet july or december that's down to 10 hours so um i i i would like to see the committee put in a lecture work hopefully instead of just cancel the meeting we can have two meetings next month um so that we can go ahead and get this moving i appreciate that very much thank you very much for this one um one of the key concerns that you had was the general council issue uh with the auditor monitor hybrid model uh and our wonderful panelists mr samuel lee re here from uh atlanta uh has is an attorney uh and that could be fixed if you make sure that that auditor monitor position was filled by an attorney right so that was that was one of the recommendations that that mr reed had does that make sense making sure that the the actual monitor yes and i would have no problem with that but to me the recommendation was more saying that if there was legal issues that i wrote and that the representation was needed in court for some issue that they wouldn't use county attorneys and that they instead would bring on their own council and that to me that was the the the concern was a bit that right yeah well the commissioners concerned that we had recommended because we try to make it as independent so that people can trust it on both sides so if there's this issue legal issue that occurred like the boards of election we wanted the the monitor to be able to have that option of getting an outside attorney to to eliminate all conflict of interest but tim made some good points when we met so we'll leave it there and also hopefully it wouldn't be happening that often i don't think it would right anyways and i do feel that uh the attorney's office has the capacity to to walk those things and also it does happen sometimes where we do have conflicts and the county will sometimes go ahead and go ahead and get that outside council that does happen the the the issue was just simply putting is what happened the board of elections that happened without even telling us we needed a taxpayer to be getting on the hook for actually paying for attorneys that we never even knew that we hired and stuff so there's a lot of problems with that and we just don't want to see a repeat of that kind of issue absolutely and thank you for clarifying i'm sorry appreciate it so mystery yes you are my superstar i just think that you're so amazing and fantastic um sorry um everybody else but you really have done a lot uh both in Minneapolis before you came to Atlanta and since you've been in Atlanta um and so can you really uh just explain for folks what the past six years seven years here in Atlanta has been for you eight eight years forgive me can you explain you know what the Atlanta citizen review board looks like and how it's structured and uh yeah please the Atlanta citizen review board was actually created out of the death of a 19 year old um african-american woman uh running an illegal no-knock warrant written in 2006 they put the city had two prior boards to that incident that were strictly volunteer boards and um they weren't meeting regularly and they weren't able to uh group needs of citizens so in 2006 after the death of Mr. Allen Johnson uh they created this independent investigative model uh to where the board would have city staff and a board one to do the day-to-day operations conduct independent investigations and one to the board to make the decisions on the complaints and hire the executive director um as i mentioned before they haven't happened to previous models uh those models they didn't conduct any investigations the police department conduct investigations and the board sometimes met sometimes didn't it was just uh there was a mess for them at that time um so fast forward uh it was originally organized with 13 members no with 11 members and uh $250,000 since from 2008 to now we've grown to 12 city staff 15 board members and our budget now is 1.4 billion. As an investigative model citizens can file independently with us and we conduct the investigations independently of the police department the police department has to provide all the information uh they have to provide all the valuing cameras dash cam videos getting records sitting um provide officers must show up for their interviews um we have access to training so all of those things going to the investigation once the investigation is completed then it goes to review and goes to the city to the board who will make a disciplinary recommendation the recommendation we go to the police chief the police chief makes the open decision whether it's going to be disciplined or not so that's that's the the process in a nutshell we have other things that are involved in it like mediation for lower-level type of complaints from the citizens officers misunderstand or feel what type of thing get together trying to see if they can talk to resolve the complaint if they can't resolve the complaint then it goes on to an investigation another critical point of ours is outreach um communication because even after you create oversight you have to keep the citizens involved in it and engaged in it because with all the great transparency that you're providing citizens need to see and understand it so that they can continue to have this communication with the police department have this communication with the uh with the elected officials and that's how you get to their trust because you give them information they give new information you have this trust back and forth and be accessible um so that's really it in the nutshell um the model that I came from in Minneapolis was the same way uh it was an independent investigative model and generally you see independent independent investigative models in the areas where um there's been the mind and things come from a minus version but but there's been really really excessive type of force it'll that is that is Gavanagh's community community is enough it's enough and usually that has followed some type of review some type of model that does not have independent investigations you know to me you know it's like grows over time you know it's like I was listening to everything that you all had talked about it's like you start with an auto model if things don't improve if the community doesn't that trust is not established like you wanted things get worse the changes need to happen you know you need to think about a more robust type of model investigative models are more expensive um you need to think about the type of powers that the agency would have 2008 um when the Lannister Review Board was was formed 2007 2008 it didn't have all the powers that it has now we changed the ordinance three times since then the ordinance the agency was added to the charter last year 2010 it was it received subpoena power we now can take it use it for us in a place that involves serious violating injury or death without a sign complaint we can take anonymous complaints I mean it's a array of things that we built up over time as things changed and the community expressed concerns that were not being met we have to adjust the model so I do want to say this though one I'm glad that you have you guys have this nice turnout to you know it's the difficult conversations that you have to have as someone was saying earlier in order to move forward and last thing is you know civilian oversight is truly about compromise collaboration and what is best for the community not for individuals not for the department not for the agency but what is best for the system I tell my people my staff all the time we exist for those that have nowhere else to go they have nowhere else to go they don't have a city council person they can go to they don't have a lawyer friend nobody's paying attention to them they may be the homeless person but they still expect to have respect and they still deserve we recognize who they are and that's what we do that's what we provide building that trust I think that has a question you did you did well you answered it well so at this time we'd like to invite you all to ask questions I know that I have many but um it's not my turn so um at this time yes sir in the red good evening good evening sir um I first of all to what can we find the recommendations not been kind of sleep on the board that is where the recommendations they have it up on the Athens-Clarke County government website they have links to all the the recommendations links to the YouTube videos that you can go back and watch them and I can send it to you I can send you the recommendations some of us are kind of slow on that absolutely do you have an email address sir yeah okay I'll get your email address and we will make sure that you get it yeah before you leave if you want to send it to you directly and you care to really go through it then you know put your name down on email and I guess a real overarching question who will the monitor report to who who who pays about who is the monitor obviously great question okay um we wanted it to be independent so the auditor or the monitor supposed to report to the mayor and commission so that the report the new board is there we're not blocking out the city manager but we just wanted to be as independent as possible so the government has to fund the this office so we feel that they should respond to the mayor yes exactly yes ma'am I have a question on the budgetary aspects of the whole entire project and I'm hoping I can get some information on that such as the committee itself I understand is going to be paid correct is that correct or incorrect um I have several a b and c questions on this we recommended for the committee to have a stipend and it's not on common there's other committees within a fiscal account do you know what that is do you know what this stipend is and do you have a budgetary outline of this project in general so that this that the town can review it we will but we do not yet because when will that be available once we actually have a real recommendation the recommendation hasn't been finished from ops but we are how much time between approval and recommendation do you give the town to review the budgetary aspects of the project there will be at least a month with multiple public comment periods available it would be presented at a work session and then usually a week later would be presented at an agenda setting session that public comment also and then usually two to three weeks after that it would actually be at a voting session and which people would also again have okay and then c and d is um some aspects that were recommended in the proposal I thought were not only all also funded traveled by the committee if they needed to go somewhere to view something it also included um budgetary means for outside council which you talked about and it also gave them authority to hire additional personnel within that department or committee so who's going to be in charge on increasing this budget over time who's going to be managing that aspect of the budget and question d of that is um where where is the money coming from out of what aspect of the Athens-Clarke County budget is this coming from these are great questions thank you ma'am I mean I can I can basically answer uh what I would imagine things are going that direction because again we don't have an actual recommendation yet but only only the mayor commission can actually do any kind of budgeting as pointed out for no no committee has its has its own control over its own budget increases its own budget travel expenses that is common we have a board such as the board of elections or planning commission that needs to have trainings that is common for every small county in Georgia all hundred and nine counties do that they would pay for travel or trainings but again that would all have to be still approved by the mayor and commissioners who's spearheading the budgetary aspects of this committee and project within the city who's spearheading all the money budget budgetary budgetarily wise and is the money coming out of the general fund I would imagine it would come out of the general fund as as do most things uh I mean we have a finance department that we'll be presenting all of the budgetary aspects of that again has to be actually approved by the mayor commission right but who's who's who's spearheading the aspects of adding up all the numbers who's on the on the finance department presents budgetary and we we celebrate our protest what we want to see done they put the numbers together because that's awesome enough and uh if we vote on that I mean the only people who have authority is on the budget dark parts as a commission yes ma'am thank you yeah thank you ma'am I just wanted to ask questions in reference to the points Ms. Mocha made in reference to the points that the deputy made okay you said that there was a myth that people thought that this was for or against the funding the police but did that myth grow or came about in reference to maybe uh any members or yourself anybody that was involved in localizing to defund the police that's one point the other question is what community demands for the police oversight do you have any numbers on that or who's saying it in reference to picking the people for the task right the use you mentioned that the government is picking the the task force there's a process for them to pick it if the government is not seen as representing the an equal share of the community how can we trust that community to pace to pick the right task for for that group if a lot of people do not trust the government right now because of where they stand um for example the first question because it's a myth I don't I no longer want to address I um we never this this has been circulating before it was or it is this was circulating because of political things it was circulating before people this task was existing but have you ever or your organization ever vocalized the funding the police I would just like to respect the fact she's channel no no no I'm just I'm saying that but my organization my particular organization ma'am no and that's a myth and I do not want to continue to to respond to a myth the next thing is that the mayor and commission they're supposed to reach out to organizations that's within this community so for example the chamber of congress was one of the people that wanted to have a seat at the table if they're written into the recommendations as far as having a seat at the table they get to pick someone or recommend someone um for example a lot of people don't trust the fact that they they're left-sided as far as and I need to say it but I'll say they're up to the table you know I mean their politics is left-sided right now in the government so how could Mr. Densut could you address that how can you know this out if you don't like us we I mean majority of the of the community we work for a majority of the community choosing us so we're all going to be the majority so it's true whether we might make you a minority of people who aren't happy with our decisions who's on the board that's that's for everything that's the situation for everything but our process is inclusive everybody can apply for one piece we would then interview them like we do everything else and okay I'm sorry I just want to be respectful yeah I just want to be respectful absolutely and thank you for that thank you for that um and I appreciate you answering that as well okay sir you had a question a couple just quick comment sure and then a couple very quick questions the defund the police movement myth that was uh cast on mocha and aadm yeah that would be the republican state leadership committee it was a nationwide campaign and uh representative hueson games perpetuated that myth here in Athens uh clark county and beyond so that would be carl row and the republican state leaders and our organization as far as aadm has never been I don't know why this is even coming up as far as aadm ever saying anything of that sort because we have not we have never made a statement we've never organized a rally that said a world without cops that was not our organization okay everything that our organization have done for the past several years just like how sergeant daniel says sitting here we have invited them to the table definitely I'm sorry deputy chief have responded to our emails and we continue even though we might not see eye to eye I've sat with chief school I've dealt with chief freeman I've dealt with a lot of police officers and that's one thing I will say is even though we might not see eye to eye every issue we have been able to come to some table and have some type of conversation and walk away whether respectfully disagreeing and showing how we can work together on the things that we do agree upon and we have never defunded the police you had never voice had so ma'am I've already answered that already see that's what I'm saying it's an ongoing thing and she has already answered that question so thank you very much excuse me joey took her answer out of context it was straight from joey card does he even you asked a question please so I'm asking a question I can't speak for her ask another question um move on but I'm gonna ask what I have my questions oh sorry go ahead just one quick question and commissioner densin who's the chair of the government operations committee commissioner mickey okay got it and then to the uh deputy chief uh I've had uh dozens and dozens of conversations with police officers I uh believe uh peace officers police officers are very important to our community uh a definite entrenched uh group of athens clark county police officer leaders believes a following statement all law enforcement is punitive isn't that one do you acknowledge that some of the leadership believes that number one are something close to that and isn't that one of our biggest problems in the community as evidence for instance by the police protests last year where 80 percent of police officers probably would have handled it differently but in fact a small group of officers that's that's my uh I guess that's my yeah we'll have to laugh at my own question I'll give you an opportunity deputy chief I'm sure so I can't speak to whoever you're referring to necessarily um but again you know what I would like to reemphasize and look at just kind of hit this point the nail on the head is it there's a lot of places we can work together and there's a lot of ways to build positive relationships there's a couple of small issues that I think you know we've raised and we expect the government operations committee to listen to all sides and make their determination and that's really what the process is that's the process that was set in place uh from the beginning um and so though I can't speak to the any individual beliefs or perspectives of whoever you might be referring to um you know there's a couple of minor things that we think should be worked out and I do want to point out one thing and though it's not a final decision authority but one of the clear authorities bulleted under the recommendations is uh for the the this commission is to make budgetary recommendations pertaining to accpd and so though it may not be a final decision one of our concerns is that does have an impact and it may potentially impact budgeting and that can be problematic if the board is not fair and partial uh and and that's you know what we're asking for is a fair and impartial board that we can work with and not against and so I did want to point that out also yes sir I think that Joey and then we're going to have one more after that um Joey can we walk through the mechanics of how the committee operates beginning with a complaint and ending with a decision needs to be more discussion about those mechanics that I think uh would be helpful for more people to understand in two minutes I don't think we can do it in two minutes so I think we'll do um process generally if you want yeah because it is it is all with the police department and again the police chief has the ultimate decision on all disciplinary on all recommendations and that's what we would ask for so the the way it works is uh a complaint can be generated from any location internal or external we accept anonymous complaints we accept uh written complaints email complaints uh we'll take any complaint and then uh the basic facts and information are weighed out complaints go through our office professional standards which reports directly to the chief of police and then from there there's a decision that would have to be made as to what's the nature of our complaint is it something as extreme as excessive force or is it a minor rudeness complaint and then that would determine our initial response so if it's an extreme complaint it might be handled independently of the chain of command or the leadership of that officer via officer professional standards it's fully investigated our reports written and then that's ultimately sent up to the chief of police with a recommendation on whether or not a policy was violated or more than one policy or no policies were violated and then chief of police would make a recommendation on discipline if it's warranted in that case if it's a minor issue then general it's going to be handled by our supervision and the supervisor would make a recommendation as to what the issue is whether or not it's a minor policy violation and what the consequences should be that's forwarded up also reviewed through our office of professional standards and checked off on and then all that's written up and documented in a report and then ultimately 10 days after the case is closed it's subject to open record anyway and so they're all they're already subject to public inspection the idea with the the auditor monitor auditor monitor model would be that the auditor monitor would be able to be a person directly assigned to reviewing because obviously a lot of people may not have time to get on our website and see all the policies that we put on our website or to file an open record request and get you know a complete investigative file so that's the idea that they would be able to review it make a some determination from their perspective about the outcome of it and then and then produce that publicly and hopefully generate some additional trust with the community like Shane said 80 percent of the time these models typically find the same thing as the police department that's it in a nutshell I hope that was clear on time it was outstanding yes ma'am you'll be our last question yeah I just wanted to ask a question about the auditor monitor position and first I want to thank all of you up there and Shane and Muga I listened to a lot of the the task force meetings that were online and I actually would suggest that if anyone wanted to hear what was really going on in that committee from the start is just line those up on youtube you know and start washing the dishes and whatever else because there's a lot you can learn from the reality of listening to all of those things I also want to thank the deputy chief for being here I mean I listened to them as well in the meetings and there might have been some contentious parts but there were a lot of really good discussions in there so I want to thank you as well my question had to do with the auditor monitor position and whether or not we are a community that's large enough for that to be a full-time job versus a half-time job because I've been listening to the government operations committee and I'm just curious what the reflections are on that position and where that's going I mean with all the recommendations of um engaging with the community and doing a certain work yes it would be a full-time job and I would if we if you could just see I want everybody to know there were several different models and we did not pick the investigative model because we felt like the size of Athens and and like he said it wasn't a thing to where there was the same type of issues that were happening other places so we picked the model that would not cause Athens a lot of money and they're not going in and investigating we still the police still do their job and we build this relationship okay so we could have said oh we want investigative model subpoena if we had it's not it's not that type of city right now so could you just explain why someone would need a full-time job yeah um any type of oversight you have no matter what the model is you need to have at least at least one full-time person for the day-to-day operation police department all police departments operating 24-side right changes the policies that occur as needed independent on the powers that the that the agency for the review authority is going to have it's definitely going to dictate someone being on top of it every day I mentioned earlier about Atlanta they tried to purely volunteer type of review models never worked it didn't work you know it actually frustrated the community even more because when an incident occurred they said well where's the civilian review board oh well they haven't met oh well they behind all of these cases um they haven't looked at them because these are volunteers they have other things that they need to do the person who is operating or serving as that auditor is the one for the community to hold accountable the one for the police department to hold accountable and the 140 elected officials to hold accountable to ensure that everything that needs to happen with that operation whatever the powers are is a current that's why you really want to have somebody doing that day-to-day stuff this is not I mean if this was uh watching a flowers grow or something like that yeah we can have somebody part time doing that we're talking about real life issues here that citizens your citizens want to make sure would like to know that somebody is paying attention that's it so um sure go ahead climb it go ahead i've lived uh 50 of my 68 younger years here in Athens and I was on the original Clark County police force so far it's formed it's it did a couple years and got into business I'm now retired but I recently um well I had a patch that said to protect and serve and that's what I tried to live up to that and I understood custody meant they're in my care now but I never had anybody that uh rested and there's probably a thousand that said you know you got me there was a some level of resistance at every time at every look recently though I was at a meeting with officer Robbie Cochran you know Robbie and uh this blew my mind I'm just doing it quick and I'll shut up um and Katie McFarland who's with Advantage and I didn't know this but Athens Clark County police professional standards on advanced behavioral health crisis response training is exemplary and actually other agencies around the state and around the country are sending people here saying what are y'all doing how are you doing it and I really encourage everybody to reach out to Robbie and also to uh Robbie Cochran and Katie and let them come in they would be great here to explain listen this is what we do when we have mental health situation and how that's going to work out standards water they have each of these officers here or anybody at Clark County um no one I could be at least I'll tell you I can't run a computer but the training they get is over 82 hours and excellence I just felt I said wow and so this I always believe the biggest room in the house is room for improvement I'm not naive but I think there's a lot of real positive things going on to be directionally they're gonna pay some real good dividends I love Athens or I could somewhere else I will say with Robbie I was I was there when I know when that department was first implemented and it's because of conversations like these so there is improvement that needs to be made I remember when it was just Robbie by himself and did not have the staff to support that was a part of different processes to see that built up to wear three four years yes it's definitely the success towards ahead which will never be told the top downs and the lives saved and the mitigation and hey let's get you this don't just put you here let's get you some help and and the fruit is coming out of that I don't know how we make that more public but it's really phenomenal and it's a new department and that's the beautiful thing of having new entities to be able to address these issues so um we're going to we're going to have to close out I am so sorry um the mall does close at um seven o'clock and um you know it does close at seven o'clock but listen everybody I really want to thank each and every one of you guys for being here today even if you have different perspectives from myself and anyone on this panel your voice does matter just like my voice matter and my experience and someone else's experience you cannot discount somebody's experience just because you're not having it you know um so just like the gentleman said that mental health division did not exist a few years ago and people were going to jail not just because they were bad people but they had there was some mental health issues so when people think that we're so against the police department I've seen different things happen and have been a part of that process when I was a part of that board when I was advocating for something to make them say hey well maybe we need a little over here but there's never a time that I would not sit at the table and have a conversation to see where we can find a mutual space with the betterment of this community so that's all I have to say not answering anymore about no defunding funding these don't ask me that anymore I'm not responding to that thank you all for being here and have a wonderful day