 Great. Wonderful. Welcome. Good morning. It is Thursday, February 11. And this is a joint hearing of House Judiciary and House government operation committees. And we are here to hear the 2020 report on model statewide policy for law enforcement use of force. And with us today, we have the commissioner of DPS department of public safety and the executive director of policy development for the department of public safety. So I welcome you both. Good morning. Thank you. Good morning. Thanks for having us. Thanks for the record. It's Mike Charling, commissioner of public safety. Apologies. I'm pivoting from one train of thought to a completely separate train of thoughts. It might take me a minute to get. With the program. Appreciate being before both committees simultaneously on this. Our plan is to just spend probably less than 10 minutes walking through some background because you do have the report in front of you. And then we can answer any questions or go in whatever direction the committee would like on additional information. For background in context. I probably sound a little bit like a broken record at this point, but for any new committee members. The context for much of the work that is going on includes a modernization strategy that we put forth last January when this session kicked off that in part was informed by a number of decades of reports. And we at that point had begun talking about accelerating the pace of change relative to training information technology statewide policy development and implementation. While balancing the needs of local control for certain components of public safety operations, both in law enforcement and other areas. But balancing that against the need for standardization and key areas. Additional background and context. You'll recall that I think last year on a number of occasions we testified about the extent to which forces use specifically within the state police that the state police respond to somewhere between 120 and 125,000 events per year. That conservatively creates about a quarter of a million contacts with the public. And on an annual basis the last three years there have been approximately 200 instances in which force beyond compliant handcuffing was used. Additional contextual information also in part related to some of the things we were talking about with modernization that policy, which we're going to talk about in greater depth in just a moment, goes together with a variety of other key things including training the development of policy supervision and then ultimately accountability and on not only for individual officers and for organizational operations but that accountability also takes the form of constant evolution of policies and procedures and debriefing events as they happen whether they're critical events or non critical events in a constant state of evolution that occurs throughout the public safety footprint and in particular in law enforcement and the fire service. Also important to note that multiple policies and training and all the other things that I mentioned actually we've together to form the basis for complex operations. There's no one policy across the dozens that exist. I'm speaking particularly about the state police that can be taken alone to guide any particular response or event. And just a couple of additional contextual notes. There has been renewed emphasis on de escalation and we'll talk more about that relative to the policy itself but I just want to flag that that is something that has been in play. Throughout my career which spans back 30 years now de escalation has been a key component of training policy development and the operational landscape despite some of the narratives that have sort of driven our acceleration of these strategies in recent months. And I also want to flag that our alternative response models which have been in play in Vermont for more than two decades in particular the use of mental health clinicians or social workers in tandem with criminal justice response to really weave together a criminal justice and public health construct. These are some things that we've accelerated with funding from this body over the last year we now have funding to deploy nine, excuse me, eight mental health clinicians to barracks around the state, bringing that total up from to, and having those operations exist in tandem with similar operations around the state so all of that forms the background context within which ultimately s 119 was passed last year which is where we're going to pivot now and then the policy development that occurred in tandem with that. So, last year General Assembly passed s 119 which became Act 165 and while we had differences of opinion relative to the mechanisms to achieve a, an updated statewide use of course standard and how to get everyone on the same page. We embraced the general tenants contained within that bill and ultimately the act. And as soon as it was passed and signed into law, I believe first of first week of October I think it became law. We began initial drafting work and engagement processes which will outline in greater depth in a moment, because of the scope of work set against the pandemic and all of the other things that are happening. It's necessary to add some capacity. So, the goodness of her heart Jen Morrison came back into the fold having extensive experience in law enforcement and public safety in Vermont and very much a change agent and a community engagement in her time as an area Lieutenant and the health section of Burlington dealing with town gown relations and and engaging neighborhoods there through her time as deputy chief and and chief of police and in Colchester. She was nice enough to come in and help us run a very robust engagement process and drafting process and I should also note in terms of her background. She was the very first national accreditation manager for a law enforcement agency in Vermont dating back to the mid 90s in Burlington when Burlington became the first agency in Vermont to be nationally accredited. So on that note, I will pause. Commissioner I do, I do see a hand. Go ahead. Thank you. We in government operations her testimony that there is currently no mandated de escalation training for police I'm curious if you can tell us more about what this initiative looks like for building out de escalation. I'd be happy to take that one. Yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll let Jen talk about the next steps and in terms of what is in place now I would probably want to bring in both the folks from the Vermont police academy and the criminal justice training council and the state police training division to give you an overview of the last decade of evolution in that, in that arena, I could speak historically to our efforts in Burlington but they'd be a little dated as I've been out of that for about six years, and I will flag as I turn it over to Jen that I don't mandate for de escalation training, but I would also flag that there are more than 90 policies within the Vermont state police roughly the same number in Burlington, based on my experience and the number of training topics is enormous and the number of mandated projects I can count on one hand so mandating training and policy is not typically needed to push the evolution of these things forward that not that it's, it is sometimes a good idea it's just it doesn't drive the vast majority of the work that's in progress on any given day so with that I will stop talking and hand it to Jen. Thank you commissioner and thank you for the question. The level of de escalation training that is currently offered at the Vermont police academy, I would not want to speak to because I know things have been different in the last year and a half. I think that going forward as part of this process around the use of force policy. We have already begun envisioning a roll out of statewide de escalation training, and it's not decided which, which type, I don't know, I don't know if it's called a vendor or whatever but in Burlington they've been using the police executive research and my cat training for numerous years and they have had significant success with that model and it is one of the only evidence based models so for the sake of this discussion. We are in the process of gathering up the cost of putting on not just train the trainer sessions but also attendee sessions to within the next year try and reach every sworn law enforcement officer with a 12 hour de escalation. It's a very holistic training model. So, we are trying to get those numbers and that vision together in anticipation of federal funding becoming available through the, I think it's BJA funding but it's certainly coming from the Department of Justice. And we anticipate seeing those grant announcements in the next six to eight weeks. So we are we want to be ready with a proposal to fund de escalation training statewide. I'm glad you mentioned that at the front end because I want you to know as you look through this use of force policy draft that we have, we believe that we hear where you want us to go, we are trying to go far above and beyond what is contained in 2019. And we can speak to some of that in the next, when we get into the meat of the policy so to speak. But I hope that answered your question. Yeah, thank you as a quick follow up how are you defining success for a de escalation training. That's a great question actually let me interject here and actually bring you back to the mid 1990s and I'm going to give you the example of one of the first iterations of this that I was involved in. In the mid 90s, we were training and I was one of the members of a crisis negotiation team that was created involving folks throughout Chittenden County, other places in Vermont and the state police, trained by FBI crisis negotiators to de escalate serious problems like hostage taking barricaded subjects with weapons, things of that nature, and then the methodology that flowed from that was to train first all the first responders and how to initially go to crises whether they were at that level, or that they were at one level of folks presenting threats, acting out with unusual behavior, etc, and taking a cross section of that, the high end rubrics and best operating practice and apply that in first response and we were doing that back in 1994 1995, and it has evolved substantially since then to involve to include more training from crisis clinicians recall in the early 2000s bringing in the clinical directors from the Howard Center to do de escalation training in Chittenden County and multi agency training that we hosted at Burlington PD and those things were happening on on an annual basis so that but my earliest recollection of that was what I just described back in 1995. In terms of it's a great question in terms of how you measure success. The measure of success is actually the thing that you don't see on the front page of newspapers when things go poorly in law enforcement interactions their front page news. When there's a use of force where taser is deployed where have to be really careful not to jinx us and knock on wood and say what a firearm is discharged. Those things happen a handful of times in any given year. At the same time, there are literally thousands of events that are successfully de escalated on a day to day basis. And those do not make front page news because they're not really click worthy. There's a variety of ways but frankly in in state government. We have had systems that have been a bit antiquated and unable to tell us with great granularity what cross section of our events involved some kind of crisis that that needs de escalation. We are pivoting now to a statewide computer aided dispatch and records management system signed a contract just a few weeks ago to deploy by July one within the state police and then to deploy to the remainder of Vermont agencies over the months to follow. That will give us the ability to measure with far more granularity. What types of things are being de escalated what are the root causes of various kinds of responses. Historically we've been very good at being able to tell you what kinds of things contribute to crimes that occur, but crimes are about 15 in some cases as low as 10% of the responses by police departments to events statewide. So, being able to measure with granularity what's driving neighbor disputes or some other cross section of things that are not don't rise to the level of crime, but are impacting communities in other ways has been a point of weakness that we are remedying right now. Thank you very much commissioner. So committees we have it's 920 right now we only have another 40 minutes or so so I'm going to call on john Gannon and then I'm going to hope that we can shift our focus to the report and maybe ask clarifying questions about the presentation that that that we have before us and then we can ask broader questions if we have time afterwards so john Gannon go ahead. I think this is a pretty quick question. Jen you mentioned that I believe it's the ICAP training for de escalation. And, you know, could you just tell us when that training will go live. I don't have that level of detail yet sir it's, I've been in contact with the police executive research forum to get a, like a package envisioned of how we would reach all the officers in within that one year period of time, including training up a cadre of our own trainers. So not just hosting training that we attend but then creating our own trainers as well. I have not gotten details back from them on it and and in this has to be undertaken in conjunction with the Vermont police academy. And as you know they're in a little bit of flux right now, and they are onboarding a brand new council so this has been something that's staying in my wheelhouse right now but as soon as we're able to get some bandwidth on the Academy side we're going to be doing this jointly. My goal would be to get the trainings rolling before Labor Day but not much before Labor Day because those are sometimes staffing shortage times before Labor Day and going into next spring so over about a seven month window between this coming fall and next spring would be the goal. Thank you. You're welcome. We had a couple more things planned to say, how we finish up with our planned report. Yes, please. Thank you. So the commissioner was explaining and the report very clearly walks through how we, the process that that we took to create the draft that you see. And I wanted to share with the group the the goals of policy I mean policy development in of itself is a is a very discreet and thin slice area of law enforcement and it's part of a much broader context within which we operate. And in this case, to create a best practice use of force policy, I have been keeping the following goals in mind. One, that it meets the statutory statutory mandate, while to providing clear direction to the officers in the field who have to be able to operationalize this policy. To be able to build a policy that lends itself to clear realistic training curriculum, having a policy is no good, unless we can train to it. And unless we can convey it to the officers in the field who have to be able to understand it and make it work in the field. And I would also say that this is a, this is a pretty big lift to try and create a policy that can be operationalized by a game warden on their own out, you know, dozens of miles from backup. And it works equally well in an urban area, shall we say. Those are the main goals of, of the policy development, and we have focused hard on emphasizing getting to yes so that when we hear feedback and as you'll see we've had quite a bit of feedback. We're, we want to get to yes in as many places as we can when we receive feedback, and we are very appreciative of the collaboration that we've had so far with the bill sponsors s 119 bill sponsors and others who have provided valuable feedback. I want to point out that we've done significant work to get consensus statewide on the post lethal force incident investigation procedure and it shows up as an appendix in what in the policy. And I point this out to you because it is incredibly important to know how much collaboration and talking and meeting and work went into getting the Chiefs Association the Sheriff's Association the VPA all the large membership groups of law enforcement and collective bargaining units as well to agree that we are all going to have from this point forward, a uniform policy of what happens when an officer takes an action that results in serious bodily injury or death to it to a citizen. This is something that has never existed before and I call your attention to it because it, it is demonstrative of how we are trying to go beyond what the mandate is that you laid out for us in s 119. We want to do these things consistently from the north southeast west parts of the state. And there were some pretty hot conversations that happened with law enforcement groups across the state. But this is the first time that there will be a statewide policy that provides consistency anytime one of these incidents occurred. Furthermore, you'll also note in the draft policy that there is a placeholder for an appendix which will be built in collaboration with stakeholders to provide statewide guidance to officers on interacting with persons experiencing or perceived to be experiencing mental impairment. So we hope that these efforts will show you the seriousness with which we have approached this task and the degree of commitment on behalf of the entire Vermont law enforcement community to not only meet but to exceed the expectations of our communities. As we take on these most important projects and policies. It's a lot of work as you can imagine getting everyone to and they won't all agree but to getting to a place where a statewide policy can be embraced. So that is how we've gotten there we have drafted a policy that was posted in December. We have sought feedback we have received feedback you have a spreadsheet that details that feedback. We have a small working group DPS and the Vermont League of Cities and Towns has a small five person working group, and we have already met once to go through the feedback that we have received we've gotten through about one third of that feedback. We have a second meeting this afternoon after lunch to go through another third we hope of the feedback. And we hope that the following week we will get through the rest of the feedback that we have received. And that you can expect to see an updated draft, which it's a little chick and a rag at this point. Until we know what happens with h 145 we can't really say this is our final draft policy because we don't know what the, the statute is going to say, but you can anticipate an updated policy as soon as we have a clear indication of of where we're where things are headed. I mean, did you want to talk about improve or would you like me to talk about things that we believe could be further improvements to h 145 or would you like us to wait on that. How would you like to proceed. I would leave that to the at the chair's discretion if you'd like us to discuss that now or wait I know there's another hearing immediately following this on that topic specifically. We're prepared to address some of the questions that the House Judiciary Committee asked at last week's hearing. I took notes of what what questions were asked so we can proceed as you wish. Okay. Before I respond. I see that representative bird it has his hand up and then also representative cober and so that that might. As far as Jen's question goes I would love to hear that because I had that question basically the same question written down so I would love to hear that. Can you could you restate your, or maybe. Yeah, no, I, well, what I had written down and I pretty sure it pertains to what she said is, I had if you could fix the use of force. What would you change and why. Thank you. Well, I think that each one 45 represents a significant improvement over some areas of s 119. There are three things that we hope could be added. The first is I think a housekeeping item implementation dates. We were we were looking for a little more clarity and consistency to allow for room to develop policy and deploy training so it was unclear in reading the draft that we saw some of the implementation dates appear to be July 1 and some September 1 so we would ask that September 1 at the earliest be a consistent implementation date. Start with the easy asks right. We also would like to, we appreciate that the prohibited restraint definition has been made more clear, but the policy or the I'm sorry the legislation continues to be missing language that acknowledges the that the use of a prohibited restraint would be permissible when lethal force is justified. We know that some members of the committee have pointed to the justifiable homicide statute as being sort of the answer to this. We would ask that we don't believe that that it is sufficient for example if an officer is in a struggle where lethal force is justified, and instead of using a firearm. The officer uses a prohibited restraint and the instant is resolved without serious bodily injury or death, ie, the prohibited restraint resulted in a less harmful outcome. The officer would not be protected by the justifiable homicide statute and would theoretically be facing a 20 year felony and loss of certification etc. We would ask that specific language be incorporated into the statute, because that forms the backbone of this statewide policy that the use of a per prohibited restraint is permissible when lease lethal force is justified. And the third request that we would have. Section B five continues to be a very challenging section of legislation to operationalize and to build training around. Most use of force scenarios are very fast moving time limited events. There may be no time to assess the underlying cause of a subjects behavior. Section B five is written appears to be referring to the slow rolling situations and I know that your committees last year talked about some of those that have happened around the state. So it's important to note that we support the spirit of this section but as written it is still rigid and does not acknowledge that there are instances when time and information do not allow this level of analysis. We would ask that the following language be added at the beginning of section B five it is four words. We would ask that this that section B five starts to the extent feasible, comma, when a law enforcement officer knows and leave the rest of it as it is. It's really to acknowledge the fact that most of these situations happen very, very quickly and these slow rolling long drawn out events are are not the norm in use of force scenarios. And I would also point out that even when we know that there can be an underlying that there may be an underlying impairment with a person. So we can't always modify the response, even knowing that somebody is impaired whether that's experiencing a mental impairment or substance impaired. It doesn't always mean we can modify the response so that those would be the three asks the implementation dates inclusion of prohibited restraint being permissible in lethal force situations, and appending to the extent feasible at the beginning of section B five. Thank you. Yeah, Selena and then Martin. All right, I was trying to be so good, lowering my hand but someone had already done it for me. So, I just really want to say how much I do appreciate the hard and quick work that the Department of Public Safety has undertaken over the last several months to bring ideas and policies forward. And my question is specifically about the forthcoming appendix D and just wanting to hear a little bit more about your process there it sounds like you're working with quite a lot of feedback that's come in which is great. I'm wondering if there's more direct work that you all are doing as you craft that particular penance with key stakeholders. And, and also, if part of what you're looking at there is the question of when a police response is the right response at all in those situations and what some of the off ramps might look like when it's not. Yes, thank you that's the short answer to your question is the work has not begun yet on appendix D. It is probably going to be a more difficult policy to create given the complexities and really a rapidly evolving best practices in this field. And in Burlington we've been using teams and mental health clinicians out in the field with law enforcement officers for 15 years at least so it's not a new concept to myself or the commissioner. I would envision for process, engaging with disability rights Vermont mad freedom, the Howard Center, our own Department of Mental Health of course through through the state, and candidly any other stakeholder who wants to be part of the process, and I would envision being similar where we, we publicize and ask for input at the front end before we even put pen to paper, receive what people want us to consider for guiding principles or, or best practices or model policies from somewhere else, and then start drafting and pushing it out and receiving feedback so it will be an iterative process. But really we need to hear from the people who are the professionals in this field about that and yes I anticipate that there will be some recommendations on types of situations, understanding that some communities won't have any resource to fall back on in terms of health professionals and again, we have to send out guidelines that will work statewide. There will be recommendations on situations that perhaps law enforcement shouldn't be the first in the first one called. So it's a work in progress, and I don't even I can't even begin to give you a date on how quickly we could move on that but it is high on the to do list as soon as we get another draft of the use of force up and as soon as we get the body worn camera policy tucked away and a couple of other things that are out there. Thank you and I would just add that I encourage it sounds like you'll be doing lots of work to identify who those key stakeholders are but I encourage you to ask to add nomi Ramon to your starting list we heard from them earlier this session and they have a lot of experience around this issue and a and a pretty clear point of view they're advocating for and they seem like a key key group to get in the mix early yes yes ma'am they. I'm actually quite good friends with their one of their spokespersons and I would absolutely include them they they they were pretty close allies when I was the chief and Colchester so they will be on the list. And if I may madam chair I just want to add a couple of historic comments here. Working back to front. Relative to nomi I agree. Great organization that brings a lot to the table I actually co chaired their fundraising walk for I believe three years in a row when I was chief in Burlington. I do. I don't say this to cast dispersions but I really want these committees to understand the context within which we're continuing to do this work. When I became chief in Burlington in 2008. I began literally begging the state of Vermont to build this capacity. So much so that I had secretaries of human services coming to meetings on a monthly basis with service providers in our community room in Burlington where we collectively were begging for additional resources to respond to things in the in the loo of sending law enforcement in the loo of people having to go take up weeks in our emergency departments waiting for services. And you know quite frankly those who preceded you and those who preceded me distance themselves from their core obligations to deliver these services. We are now trying to remedy that and most of the blame if you will is a landing on law enforcement. When these are systemic failures unrelated to law enforcement that date back decades. So I want to take this opportunity just to call out the extent to which law enforcement is being vilified and in this in eviscerated for not responding to these things. And with the depth that a physician could is not the fault of law enforcement leaders. I hear you commissioner and you know was heard your advocacy often and loudly in in Burlington and appreciate it and I think you're absolutely right that the state needs to be funding and building out a mental health response. Thank you. Martin. Yes, thank you, Jen for the testimony I did I had a couple of questions. Just follow up on on your suggestions. I think probably the first one is fairly straightforward to deal with the implementation dates. The second one as far as prohibited restraint certainly like to hear what your if you have any recommended language for that. I know that we did have several different attempts to try to get their last summer and and there was various language that was proposed and I can look back at that but would certainly be helpful if you have any suggestions on that. The third item, the as far as with respect to be five, the to the extent feasible. I mean, I, that seems to me and I'd like you to comment on this to be somewhat, you know, goes without saying or or it's kind of surplus surplusage as far as the language because elsewhere I mean you can't read be five. By itself, you have to look at what has to look at the definition of totality of circumstances. One should look at before, which talks about the use of force having to be objectively reasonable but evaluated from the perspective of the reasonable officer in the same situation. That's on the totality of circumstances in new language which we still need to discuss and I would like you to weigh in on whether you do that now or the next part of our, our session this morning the without the benefit of hindsight, but it seems it seems that that's not necessary but then on the other hand, I'm not terribly bothered by it because I think it's, it's just restating what other sections say if you could just comment on on on that. Go ahead, Commissioner. I was going to say I'm happy to take the first crack at that. Well, it may eventually be interpret those sections may be interpreted together it is not unusual for a section to be interpreted by itself and the most important piece here is that we've got to train 1200 people that are not lawyers that do not sit in committee and try to digest the political ramifications of a policy that there are a policy that is set in statute, they have to be able to operationalize it on the fly. And to the extent to which we can have each section be clear unto itself that vastly helps the implementation and training that goes with something this complicated. I think if, if I could just add to the commissioner's comment and please understand that being able to make a policy that can be operationalized and trained to is the primary objective. It also is in our estimation, somewhat of a recognition that there is not always time to do this laundry list of assessment in B five. And that that that that is, it is a recognition that when you're able to you need an officer knows you need to take that into consideration about what force you use if any. Appending it at the beginning is a recognition that there is not always that that luxury of understanding what is driving behaviors. We train police officers to address behaviors dangerous behaviors. Dangerous behaviors are frequently addressed, either with a use of force or other technique. We have a lot of mechanisms on the back end of an encounter with a with another person for identifying the root cause of what drove their behavior we have mental health court we have the drug court. We have regular court we have repetitive processes for lower level offenses, we have all sorts of avenues on the back of back doors of an encounter to identify the root cause of what drove a behavior. We don't have the luxury all the time out on the road of understanding what is driving someone's behavior. Very frequently we roll up the behavior is already happening it's underway, and we have to resolve a situation, or it goes from a benign encounter to a very escalated encounter very quickly. I think appending those four words at the beginning is an acknowledgement that it's not always possible to assess the root cause of behaviors as you're on the scene. So, so a follow up question if I may. So, how does that. Well, let me back up. So, so I see the, and I think that that this is something you've been doing very well. I mean I see the, the standards were setting forth in the statute working hand in hand with the policy. You know that that's the idea that this alone does not get to where we want, you know the statutory standards alone don't get to where we want to be so I definitely want to see these working together but I guess the question is how, how does adding those words even really impact what you would be putting in the policy. Yes, I'm not understanding, you know, it would be nice to understand what the policy says on this particular component which we don't have in here yet. Relative to what we have, having B five, you know we don't have appendix D, you know, in in the policy. We don't have language from B five in the draft policy. Right, right. I've seen that but but it's it's it's the actual, as you say the operationalizing language and I'm just kind of curious how, just having to the extent feasible necessarily changes what you would be putting in in the appendix D and kind of adding flesh to this whole concept. The way it changes is that both the policy and the training will train folks in exactly the way Jen just described it that when you roll up on this thing, if it is feasible to do something else, and to slow things down, do it. If it is not, you, there is no, you, you have the option of, of acting within the bounds of the rest of the, the statute, the policy and your training to act. Our fear is that as written this is going to paralyze action, because there it is almost impossible to operationalize and fast moving situations that's why this language is needed. I will reiterate a request I made early last summer for anyone who has not spent at least one shift in a police car, responding to these events and seeing how they unfold. I cannot stress enough how important that is. So just one one again, I don't mean to belabor this but it seems to me that the policy that you could be writing right now on dealing with those situations could be precisely what you're talking about with or without this additional four words but you know so so I don't think that I think that this language be five particularly when you look at the rest of the of the statute is plenty flexible for, for you to put that into effect with the policy but having said that you know I did I did want to hear what what your rationale is but it doesn't seem to me an initial blush to be a big deal putting those four words in but we have to hear from obviously other people. That's why I'm pushing you on that. I'm not saying I disagree with this language one way or another but I'm just kind of pushing to make sure I understand. I'm just one real quick. I'm wondering if, if we're going to be talking with with Jen later or if I should ask the questions I have about that other provision as far as without the benefit of hindsight or if we're going to have additional testimony later and I can save it for them. I think actually we are going to have additional testimony but I think it's good for government operations to to hear these questions and responses as well. And should I wait for representative Anthony to ask his question and then he can come back to me. Sure. Good. Myself. Yes. Okay, thank you. I want to go back to representative Colburns discussion about stakeholders around a table, and also tie that to Ms Morrison's urging to to try to focus on the reality at the front end as she described it in a response and interaction between a PD and a call. I think very quickly to again get to the practicality of operationalizing as you've spoken, you very quickly, if this is a response to a call becomes evolves into a team response that is to say, a law officer and someone else, alternately trained whether it's social work, mental health, whatever. I think very quickly, some guidance would be had from examining some kind of model, memorandum of understanding between the PD and for instance, the regional mental health, whether it's Howard or Washington County, because again, operationally, as you've explained things unfold very fast, want to be real clear as to who's responsible for what kind of scenario when you arrive on the scene. I happen to bury in Montpelier have already engaged with Washington County mental health. We have a model, I think a model memorandum of understanding thanks to Mary Bolton, happy to have her submit that. We also have a bill in age 45 to go to all the municipal departments and offer that team approach, when it's appropriate, but again, unless there's an understanding as to who's responsible for what and who's in charge, given certain facts, operationalizing any kind of team approach with non law enforcement people will be doomed or at least inefficient. I commend attention to trying to figure out what a model memorandum of understanding would look like. Thank you. Thank you sir that's a helpful feedback and I would welcome an opportunity to see that MOU. We certainly had those have those with the Howard Center in the Burlington area and now across Chittenden County as we expanded away from just the street outreach team in downtown Burlington into other Chittenden County communities. I would say that this again highlights the difficulty of creating a statewide policy because in certain areas of the state there are not going to be the same resources available so the MOU while we could probably give a model of areas for consideration is going to look in Washington County than it will in Orleans County or somewhere else. This is again the trickiness of trying to write something that fits everybody shoe size all across the state. So I do appreciate that I would, I would welcome that a copy of that document I could probably get it from Chief Bombardier it sounds like. And Tim has it and so does the incoming chief in Montpelier both because they both signed on. Okay, very well. Thank you for the input. Okay, I do see a hand up and I know Martin you had wanted to get to you had some more questions so we may not have time for both but Tanya go ahead. Thank you madam chair. I work as a social worker and I find myself at times in escalated situations and I'm not able to use force I was trained first in the escalation and so that's my go to given that our police are trained first and foremost in use of force it makes sense to me that that would be their go to I am wondering what it would take to restructure our training program so that first and foremost our police are trained in deescalation with use of force as an absolute last resort. And other countries Germany for example where police are trained extensively more so than here they have two years of training, and they're only given use of force training at the in the very last two months of their training, and their rates of use of force are drastically lower than our so clearly we need to shift the framework and so I wonder what that would take. To be with the, the last part of your statement representative the, the need to shift the training construct is something that we've been talking about for more than a year now and something that is on the agenda for the criminal justice to find alternative paths to certification this is something Senator white has been advocating for for since long before I was at public safety and something we were advocating for in Burlington previously. So, there is a need to change the training paradigm to modernize it for a variety of reasons. However, the first part I would disagree with the first part of the premise. Police in Vermont are not trained to use force first they're used to, they're trained to engage communities and solve problems at the lowest level first. They're trained to prevent problems from happening. They're trained to engage and deescalate first, and then use force only when necessary. And I go back to my introduction, the state police responded to 125,000 events in on average over the last three years. They use force less than 200 times per year in over a quarter of a million encounters. So, I don't agree with the premise of the question. I completely agree with the emphasis on deescalation. And it is very rare. The uses of force are 1% or less of our encounters with the public and I think sometimes in these discussions we lose sight of the fact that 99 plus percent of our citizens citizenry are resolved without any use of force. We could certainly explore an answer to your question in conjunction with the Vermont police academy because they would obviously have to be looking at recruit class hours. They're already, as you know, many state mandates of how many hours they need to have on certain topics of training. So at some point when we add more mandated training it means more weeks of residential time at the police academy. I don't think you're going to find anyone in law enforcement leadership who doesn't agree with your emphasis on our need to see deescalation as the primary tool. I think it does happen in most PDs that people do just by the nature of the job we talk to people and the people who talk to people well use less force than the people who don't talk to people well. So we could go way down a rabbit hole of this having implications for recruitment and hiring of what types of people were bringing on to the job, and I'd be happy to have that conversation with you offline. It does have some bleed over into another project I'm working on on hiring and promotions. So if you want to talk offline, I'd be happy to explore that further with you and if you would like a estimate of what it would take to shift to that being a bigger focus I can explore that with the police academy. And if I could just add one more contextual piece to this there are over 200 patrol troopers in the state police. We have less than 200 uses of forces in a year. On average, less than one per trooper per year. Now there are some that are going to have two, three or four because of the nature of their assignment and some that will have none. But to, you know, to say that this is the first go to is just, I don't mean to sound argumentative I just want to set the record very clearly straight this is not the first line of action by anyone in law enforcement in Vermont that I'm aware of. And the testimony from the training, I believe it was the training council that there is no mandate for deescalation training and there is plenty of mandate for use of force training so there is obviously an emphasis emphasis on use of force over deescalation and your own testimony just said that it is impossible to deescalate certain situations and I will tell you that my work as a social worker if our focus first is on deescalation that is simply not true. I may, again, I don't want to turn into an argument but when you roll up to a, I'm going to pick one of a dozen things that are in my head right now that I've been to you roll up to a pharmacy where someone is wielding a sword and running at people. What would you suggest we do. In use of forces never an option an option what I'm saying is there are plenty of instances where we have seen people with in a mental health crisis die because people weren't properly trained in use of force we have seen people have their head bashed in to a to the cement because people weren't trained properly in deescalation so I'm not saying that there is never a place I'm simply saying that there are plenty of places where actually deescalation would work. This is the vast majority of the 125,000 incidents that the Vermont State Police respond to on any given year are deescalated and a tiny fraction of them result in the use of force and an even smaller fraction results in an ugly use of force like the ones that you're describing. Again, I cannot disagree strongly enough with the premise that there is a widespread fundamental problem here with the way in which Vermont law enforcement is trained and operates there is enormous area for improvement, but it is incremental improvement to make very good operations, even better. Thank you Commissioner. I'm sure that we will have opportunity to to continue this discussion I have one more hand up and then we only have about four minutes left here before this joint hearing is done so Bob Hooper go ahead. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good to see you again Jen, your answer to representative the Huskies very excellent question was pretty much what I was going to follow up on, but the offline conversation I think that we really need to dig a little deeper into the people that we had earlier. The incidents on Church Street that resulted in the lawsuits and yada yada yada. Clearly we're not appropriately done so we seem to have people on forces that maybe shouldn't be there I'd like to have more conversation about the screening tools we use and the how people are deemed eligible to police our citizens. Thanks. Great. Thank you. We just have the three more minutes. I don't know if Commissioner or. If you'd like to. One of the questions that somebody asked in committee last week was, and it might have been representative along the inclusion of bystanders and the definition of totality of the circumstances, and how that might impact it. As you can imagine there are times when a bystanders behavior might cause an officer to have to escalate their use of force more quickly and an example which I could give you dozens of. You are downtown Burlington or Barry or Rutland you pick it and it is bar closing time and you are trying to take someone into custody for an assault that just happened. The bars are closing and hundreds of enubriated people are forming a group around the officer bystander behavior necessitates that for everyone's safety including the person being taken into custody. That we very quickly get the person handcuffs in the car and drive away from what is turning into a mob mentality. There are also times where bystander behavior would dictate that the officer use a different level of force. For instance, if it was a situation as I just described where lethal force was justified. Yet there is a spill out of people and a crowd of people as the backdrop. It takes use of a firearm off the table for use of force. So it is a very real truth that when bystanders are impacting the thought choice the decision making process that it can change what type of force or how quickly you moved force or how slowly you moved to using force. So it is not a one way ticket to escalate force. It can be absolutely the opposite that use of force is appropriate but you can't take action because bystanders are in the way. So I hope that clarifies our position on the inclusion of bystanders in the definition of totality of the circumstances. And I know you also wanted to hear about the inclusion of the wording without the benefit of hindsight and to keep it at its most brief. I will say that this statute that s 119 was used California state law and the Seattle PD's policy as a large piece also some other New Jersey policies Burlington's others. That that language is used in those policies as well in in the California state law, and it is also a specific component of the the existing Supreme Court law that use of force is judged by. And it again similar to what we talked about the language in section B five. It is a recognition that it is unacceptable to try and evaluate a use of force from the safety and security of your office on Monday morning and not having to evaluate it from the circumstances of Monday morning at 2am in the snow and rain with all the circumstances that are happening that you have to evaluate the use of force. From the perspective of the moment it happened in that context, not from a sterile look back days later or weeks later. If I may add one more thing as well, Madam Chair, this is in part to what Jen was just describing in part relative to the somewhat uppity exchange that representative and I just had. And I don't offer this as rebuttal to the prior exchange, but as additional context that is on point with that. It is not uncommon for the rare instances where force is used by law enforcement particularly in Chittenden County I think this is less so with the state police given the nature of their operations. For those events to actually occur at or around facilities where social workers clinicians or other. Unventionists are doing their work and are unable to control someone by deescalation and law enforcement is called because that person is out of control. So there's a cross a substantial cross section of the use of force that happens in Vermont that occurs when those other systems that were previously described are unable to control someone's behavior. I just offer that because it is it strikes me as I'm actually disappointed that I have failed to bring that up before because it is such an important intersection with this conversation. So, I'll stop there. Thank you very much. And can I do see your hand up but we're going to have to adjourn this hearing. However, the conversation will continue in house judiciary and can will make sure that you. You can ask your question then. So, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you government operations for joining us. The house judiciary will get back together at 1015. Thank you. Government operations we are on break now until 11 this morning where we will take up each 122.