 and I will be doing that on the fourth. Oh good, where you going Eric? So my family is all in Portland, Oregon. So my dad and my mom and my three sisters with their kids. So I'm gonna flat there with my oldest daughter who's seven and then I'm gonna go with my dad to Alaska to go fishing. Nice. My daughter's gonna hang out with her cousin. Nice. Yeah. So you're gonna be over on the BC side? Yeah, good. I mean on the far west coast. We're gonna fly into Ketchikan. So if you look at Alaska, there's like that narrow strip that's next to Canada. Like we're kind of that narrow strip there. So southern. There's very little of the United States that I haven't visited and that happens to be that part. Yeah, Alaska's on my list too. Never been to Alaska, I've never been to Oregon. Now you can almost name any other state besides Hawaii. And I've been there. And you've been there? Yeah. So if I kind of put you- Right here? You know, obviously deliver a chair for you. You want me to sit in the craft? No. I can do that, Eric. I was struggling with like the chairs, like how to- I can do that. I'm actually gonna sit in the seat of whoever vacated because I think you guys normally sit in the same seats, don't you? Yeah. Well, Shareen usually sits here because she keeps me in line. So Jim, Peter, we're over here, right? So there's the- Yeah, you're sitting in the right spot. And then Bob was over here. I'll sit in the right spot? Yep, right there, it's fine. We're lucky. Okay. And is our junior commissioner coming today? Who is he? He did not say he wasn't. So I'm thinking he is. All right, so my name is Shareen. I'll see you here. What's his name? What is- Eric, what's his name? I'm drawing a blank. We'll figure it out. Can't really- That's good when he comes in. Hey, what's your name? Your name? Yeah, Jamie. Yeah, Jamie. I guess I'll have to name what's his name. Of course it is. So you're, what we used to call in the military, you're a short timer. I say you're a short timer. You get ready to hit the road. What's that? Short timer. Short timer. Yeah, when you get ready to take off for a while, you know, a vacation, a vacation thing. Yeah. All right, this is an interesting- Started a little late. I was gonna be doing the third of the life I was. So exciting, man. You get ready to take vacation, man. You're just always getting a little antsy at the end, you know? It's like, man, I can't wait to get out of here. So, thank you. And did some digging, just trying to figure out where we are and what's going on here. And I think I could have dug all day. Just like a never ending hole there. Yeah, I had one of these and I had to like, I filled it so quickly. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, it's a lot of paper. I usually don't kill trees, except for, it's that old school part of me. Yeah. You know that. I'm with you. I'm with you. I printed out. I got it. I wanna turn that page. I wanna mark it up. Me too. I'm not reading books online. I'm reading the whole, the real thing. I just can't do it. Looks like I'm struggling with my kindle. Yeah. I've been coming around on it. I can't do it. I can't do it, man. I can't not do it. No worries. So that's felt right? It's huge, GHS. Yeah. So you're gonna get a more formal one once we've had them made. Christine told me to just bring hers. She said, here, just take mine and just, I said, yeah, I'll just take it and just slam it down on the table and look around. Yeah, yeah, just take mine. I don't think they wanted me to take it. Well, you might as well. Yeah, that's what you're gonna do with it. You all? Looks like I got all the pens. So I'm glad I called you. Oh, yeah, land in. Who's land in? It's land in, that's right. I read that somewhere. So this is what I came up with in terms of questions. What do you think? And this is not just the commission. This is the police, all of us. And or the commission, but if you had to, I'd name two or three priorities. You mean for the commission, but for the department? I mean, I would hope if we're doing things right, they would work hand in hand. I'd hate to have priorities that the department didn't share. Totally. But I guess that could be possible. I think that's a, yeah, that's a good question. I like it. I like the question. And then it gets us focused on at the end of the year, like, what are we going to accomplish this year? Well, I saw how you and Sharon struggled with that report. And I saw the questions that you asked. And I've looked at the three years previous reports. And I've looked at the, whatever that is, that's wicked cool. Okay. That's a cell phone. Nice. I've also seen. My ammo, obviously. Because by charter, which is by statute, title, 17, I think it is a title. Well, anyway, wherever it is, the commission has the authority as delegated by the city council. And there has been specific powers delegated to the commission by the city council. And they're very specific. They are in terms of oversight and also very recently with this, this resolution that came out a month ago. For the chess force? Yeah. Included in that resolution. Some very specific. Get started. So welcome. Welcome to the police commission meeting tonight. It's a beautiful evening out there. So I really appreciate everybody, especially in the public taking time to come to the meeting. Today's the first meeting of the new fiscal year. And I'd like to welcome, first off, our new commissioners. We have Jabul Gommash. Jabulani Gommash, or, I'm sorry. Jabulani Gommash. And these are just fake mics. Okay. No, they feed into the TV. Noted. And Mark Hughes. And you all, here's Jab. So welcome to the three of you. I also wanted to, there's some actually folks from the department here that I thought might be helpful for the new commissioners in particular to introduce yourselves. So maybe start with John in the back. I'm the chief of operations. Welcome and welcome and welcome. Thanks, Nancy. I'm a co-founder of Patibull and filming and as the clerk today, Wal-Mart is on vacation. I normally work in policy and also special projects. Great. And chief, I think everybody knows you. Chief. Right in the close of this time. Great. And Shereen Hart is on her way. She's flying in, so she'll be a few minutes late. She's the one that usually keeps, she's our vice chair and she usually keeps me in line when I go off track. So hopefully she gets here soon. So first thing, any additions or modifications to the agenda? No? Okay. So the first sort of item of business is our city attorney, Eileen. Eileen's gonna be reviewing sort of some of the necessary things that are helpful for commissioners to understand. I know that when I started, and I think Randall mentioned this when he started, it would have been nice to have more of an orientation. So this will be a good refresher for all of us and hopefully helpful to the new commissioners. Thanks. Great, and what I really wanna do is give you information that you wanna hear. So please, at any point, raise your hand and ask a question and I will try to answer it if I can. So I'm not gonna necessarily tell you every detail, but the big issues that tend to come up for boards. So I'm gonna start with the open meeting law. And the first thing that I wanted to say is that it's critical to understand what a meeting is. And there has been a lot of, there've been some changes in the open meeting law to try to help define that so that you all know when there's a meeting or when there's not. And a meeting means a quorum of you. So that means if four of you are talking about police commission business, it doesn't matter where or how or in what context. If you're talking about police commission business, that is a quorum and that is technically a meeting and you gotta stop talking until you go through the formalities of having a warning and agenda and have it be a formal meeting. You have to stop talking about police business. So what's become clear recently is that people had lots of questions about, gosh, what if we're at a social gathering and someone else raises a question that might have to do with the police or something like that. And the law now has exemptions that says it doesn't include social gatherings or press conferences or conferences, training activities that you might do. As long as you don't discuss with other commissioners the business of the police mission. So that's the real key that you will have to think about is if you're at a rally, say, then you're all there. You gotta not have a quorum of you discuss police business. You can talk in less than a quorum, but a quorum and a quorum means in your group four people, one more than half. So Eileen, I have a question because this has come up where we have a citizen that emails the entire commission and wants to engage in dialogue on the entire commission. It seems like it may be in that gray zone or maybe it's not, maybe it's sort of, you know. It's not really in the gray zone. Okay, good. Then let us know. But their email communications to the whole group are limited to scheduling a meeting, organizing agendas, and distributing materials that you're planning to discuss. So those are the only reasons why all of you can get together on an email. That it is not a place for, if something from a citizen comes in you either should have a protocol that says the chair or some designated person is gonna respond to that and you're all treating it as a copy or one of you, or you can respond to the citizen individually. But you shouldn't be responding back and copying everybody. Now, when I say it's not a gray area, what I mean is it's very clear that if you get into, if there's some dialogue back and forth and multiple people start emailing and copying everybody else, it's pretty clear that's now started to become a meeting because people are discussing business. If there's one email back, it is less clear, but the Secretary of State's office, which is the office in the state that administers this law has been pretty clear about saying that, look, don't do it. If you get one from an email from a citizen other than just an acknowledgement back, that a discussion of the issues is probably starts crossing the line from their perspective. I know you have a different feeling about it because we've talked about that before and really I'm just trying to convey what the current state of things are. Another issue is that if you can't be present, there can be ways that a group can arrange to have you be present by telephone or conference phone. I don't know if you all ever do that. To have someone. We haven't, but rather, okay. Because it does require some technology because one of the keys is you have to be able to hear everybody in the room and everybody in the room has to be able to hear you. So it requires you having the right technology. The city, in my experience, tends to struggle with having the right technology to do that, that everybody really can hear and participate. But that's a key of it. And then the other key to remember is if somebody is on the phone or on a Skype conference call or whatever, that if there's any vote taken by you all and it's not unanimous, it has to be by roll call. So if somebody's on the phone, it has to be by roll call unless it's unanimous. So the next big issue about meetings is that minutes have to be taken of every meeting. So there have to be minutes and those have to be posted on the website within five days after the meeting. And you have staff who does that, but just in case you're wondering, that's the goal that everybody is working hard on, making sure that we meet is to get minutes done and up on the website. What has to be in minutes is only a fairly bare minimum. All the topics covered, all the motions that are made or resolutions that are made, all the members of your body who are present and any other active participants. And then finally, the results of any votes you take. That's all that technically has to be in minutes and different boards in the city have different practices about how much detail they do in the minutes other than that. So if any of you has questions about the level of details that are in your minutes, that is something for you all as a board that has some discussion. So the next issue is sometimes you will want to have an executive session. An executive session is the only time that the public can be excluded from your meetings. Otherwise, your meeting has to be open to the public for the entire time that you're meeting. And that means we've got to make sure doors remain open and there's a way for the public to come in and out throughout the whole meeting. And an executive session can only be held if two thirds of the members who are present at the meeting vote to go into executive session. So you've got to remember that you have to have a vote for that and you have to have two thirds and it's got to get recorded. And then the other thing is it can only happen for certain very specific reasons that are laid out in the statute. And one of the reasons you have some of the materials is so you all can make sure you are familiar with what the reasons are for going into executive session. There are a bunch of reasons, the primary ones I'd say that boards go into executive session, that require you to make a specific finding that premature general knowledge would clearly place the public body or somebody involved in the matter at a substantial disadvantage. That requires you to actually, somebody needs to make that motion. So someone needs to say, I move that we go into executive session to discuss and one of the big issues is labor relations issues or contracts with employees. So one of the things you all do is that you often review after action reviews of police officer activity and somebody should be making a motion that says, I'm moving to go into executive session to discuss this but at first we want you to be making, I move that premature general public knowledge would clearly place either the public body or the individual officer at a substantial disadvantage. So you need to do that before you, and then based on that finding, you move into executive session, okay? And I think we've, so I think you can look at the various reasons but one of the big reasons is the, for you all to review after action activities. When you're going into executive session, everything that you learn and hear in executive session is confidential and you are not allowed to share it with anybody outside the executive session unless your entire board has some discussion about that and says this information is not protected. Otherwise, will you here in executive session stays right here in the executive session? Is there any questions about the action and that's sort of a critical piece of the question. Are there currently any provisions for information being discussed in executive session to be shared with, for example, city council or is that, are there no provisions for that being shared either? There are no provisions. What suggests is that if that I think, we haven't finalized your guidelines on public complaints. No, the public safety hasn't. Yeah. So I think I think there is something in there that provides for some general report and probably you're going to need to think a little bit about what is contained in that. When you're dealing with employee labor relations, in addition to this general executive session law, there are a bunch of labor laws. First of all, the police force is unionized so there's union laws and then there's general employee privacy laws that we have to be concerned about and ever review public information. I think you want to talk a little bit about what the law specifically precludes from executive session and how we might deliberate on, I guess, I think you see where I'm going with that. So there's a list of things that you can go into executive session and talk about contracts, labor relations agreements, arbitration of negation grievances, pending or probable civil litigation, confidential attorney client communications, negotiating real estate purchases which you will probably want to, employment or employment of a public official and there's a few more in this list. When you look at that list, that's all you can talk about in executive session. You cannot, if you go into executive session, for example, let's say you went into discuss an officer, a specific action or an issue about an officer, your discussion in executive session is supposed to be limited to discussing that particular officer and that issue, not spraying into other officers or general training matters or things that may relate to it but are not specifically the reason for the executive session. Sometimes when you go into executive session, therefore you want to go in for more than one reason. Sometimes you might go into discuss an employee matter and then also or to discuss a matter about one employee and then a second employee. Sometimes you might want to go in to discuss a contract that you want to enter into. Sometimes one of the exemptions is that you can go into executive session to talk about a clear and eminent peril to the public safety. So again, that's something that may come up within your, but again, you have to specifically say that. So if you start drifting out of a discussion about an employee's actions into public safety issues, then you need to come out and go back into executive session saying you're using this other exemption to talk about it. So that has to be in the minutes that this is why we're going in. Okay, got it. And you have to limit yourself to what you said you were going into executive session. Okay. Got it. That is primarily what I wanted to say. Oh, and part of the issue of meetings being open to the public. Burlington generally operates by putting a public forum in each of its meetings. What the law requires is that the public be allowed to comment on any item of business on your agenda. And you can choose how you wanna do that. So you can allow people to comment during the middle of the meeting, at the end of the meeting, or the way that Burlington as a whole generally does it is through a public forum that lets people know they can always come and speak at a particular time or place in the meeting. The second thing I wanted to talk just briefly about is public records law because as you are now public officials, you are a public body and any record that you have or do the notes that you are taking here technically are public records of the city of Burlington. And that means that you have some obligation to hold on to them, to produce them. If you are asked to produce them to the public, generally what we ask if some member of the public comes and asks you for public records is for you to notify the chief and then the chief's office notifies our office if we need to be involved. There are a number of exceptions to even if something is a public record, we don't have to produce that public record if it contains certain information. And our office coordinates that for the city of Burlington where there are possible exemptions and looking at what those exemptions are and whether or not something actually fits it or not. You all should have been given from the Clerk Treasurer's Office a Burlington.gov email address. We ask that everybody use that address for any business you do. And remember that for you all business means if a citizen is contacting you and you're responding as a member of the police commission, that's commission business. That's a public record if you're putting something in writing. And if we are asked for public records dealing with a particular topic, we have to produce those records as well as the records that the chief may have generated or the mayor may have generated. We have to, you all are public officials now so we have to produce those. If you're getting emails on your private email account, someone contacts you and gets started talking about commission business, we suggest that you just forward it to your city account so that it's in the archiver. That way you don't have to get bothered by us bugging you and there's a very short timeframe for producing documents when someone requests them. So I just, most people sort of say what? My notes are suddenly part of the city of Burlington record and the answer is yes. They technically are. We generally don't require everybody to turn their notes over to us unless we have a reason to know what those are. Any questions about that? So I presume that you draw a distinction between matters that touch on actions that the commission might take specifically and just kind of general matters involving kind of police oversights or kind of the ways in which civilians might interact with police commissions in general. So I might talk to people all the time about general matters of policing ethics given my other job. It's not gonna touch anything relating to PPT specifically. I take it that that would not be a matter of an open record. So I'm not talking in my capacity as a police commissioner. There's no kind of active matter which might face the commission specifically. Here, this probably depends on the specific situation. But what the law says is if you are doing the business of the commission. So I think we rely on you to determine am I acting as a police commissioner or am I acting in some other role? And we have taken the position to date. Our office has that you'd get to decide that. You tell us. Are you acting as a police commissioner when you're responding to this or not? Is that? Yeah, no, that makes sense. So how do you understand the business of the commission? So there's a definition in the law for the business of the public body means your governmental functions, including any matter over which you have supervision, control, jurisdiction, or advisory power. It's really broad. So if you are as a police commissioner, discussing the business of anything that over which you might have supervision, control, jurisdiction, or advisory power, that becomes a public record of the city. Where's that definition? That is in one VSA section 310. The first section. So this is the first section of the open meeting law. Thank you. So that is really what I wanted to make sure that I covered. Do you all have any other questions about these subjects? Is that helpful? Okay. And I or others in my office are available. If you have questions and Michelle can certainly invite us the department can invite us back to another meeting if you have anything to advise. And I will say that the city, my experience just for the new commissioners, the city attorney's office has been really helpful. If something does come up, we can reach out to you and just ask, yeah, or you or your staff. So thank you very much for coming. Thank you. That's great. Okay, the next item on the agenda is the public forum. I have four people that have signed up. I'm just going to read the names because if anybody else would like to speak, let me know. Sylvia Knight, Adam Roof, Bruce Wilson, and Dave Hardnett. Okay, and so how we've been doing it is we've been just giving folks four minutes to talk. Usually, Shereen is our timer and she'll raise her hand when there's one minute left. Does anybody want to, thanks, Jibu. So Jibu, when there's after three minutes, just let them know and okay. Thank you. Let's start with Sylvia Knight. Hi, Sylvia. Do I need to do this thing? Yes, please, that's fine. Thank you for this time. Thank you for the public forum piece. This is my first, I never attended one of these commission meetings before, but one of the reasons I came is that I'm, I've been rather upset by the incidents of police using, abusing power over my black brothers on downtown in Burlington being thrown up against a wall and being knocked unconscious. I has seen this for too long in this country I lived in Philadelphia in the sixties and seventies, but we're here now. So I'm hoping that there will be a way that we can get a handle on the issue of how police use their power because knocking people out is not law enforcement. It's brutality. So I'm just taking a risk at being right up front to tell you where I am on this. Can someone tell me whether there's some movement of foot to establish a council to study this problem? So the city council passed a resolution to set up a special committee, a task force made up of citizens, police commissioners, city council, police officers. Who else am I missing? Is that, and this task force was given the charge of looking into the issues just as you've described. So there is movement. Pardon? And a separate budget. Yes, there's a separate budget assigned to that. So does that, does that. Thank you all for being interested in seeing what happens there. Great, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for coming to the meeting and thank you for speaking tonight. Adam Roof, Councilor Roof. Hello. Hello commissioners. Let me start by saying welcome to the new commissioners and I find it, I like that Jabu is on time duty because he's been known to cut me off when he needs to. Hello commissioners, my name is Adam Roof. I live on Pearl Street. I serve on the city council and I chair the council's public safety committee. I'm not here, however, to speak on behalf of the council only for myself. I wanted to take a minute to come down here tonight and share some reflections with you all in the community as well. Because as of late, there have been a host of police related items that have proved challenging for the council, this commission, the department and our cops, as well as our community at large. I'd like to start off by saying, as I've said before, that our Burlington Police Department and its cops deserve respect for the work that they do. They put their lives on the line to protect us and serve our community and any one of the 30,000 or so police interactions that occur in this community on an annual basis could result in harm or death coming to them. I hold strongly as I hope we all do the belief that the vast, vast majority of policing work done in our community by our cops is world-class and should be called out as such and, frankly, more often. We also know, however, that there are communities across our country who fear police interaction out of the worry that harm will come to them at the hands of those charged with their protection. And yes, those fears exist amongst certain communities here in our hometown as well. While there is worthwhile debate to be had about how we improve this dynamic, I, for one, have no doubt that this department and this commission are committed to not silencing or undermining these worries, but instead are committed to working to change the hearts and minds of those living in fear through both good work and good policy. This is why I have and will continue to support our chief and his team's hard work and not just reviewing existing policy, but innovating new practices. And we live in a world today where it's far too easy to fall into team versus team mentalities. And we see this playing out again nationally as well as here in Burlington. And I trust that this commission will be cognizant of falling into these traps while grappling with complex and nuanced issues relating to policing in the 21st century. And we'll continue its focus on the changing needs of our community. I'll close by speaking not as a counselor, but as a resident, and I'll speak a little more plainly and make a request. I ask that this commission continue its focus on doing right by all residents that this department serves, takes care of the cops that take care of us, cut through the noise and get some good work done. Thank you. Bruce Wilson. Thank you for letting me say a few words. And I'm Bruce Wilson, Executive Director of Service Renewed Incorporate. We are a youth service provider. And I've been in Vermont since 1989. I just want to say thanks. Welcome new commissioners. Proud of you. I know I work with you on a lot of things. This young guy here was on my youth board, part of my youth programs years ago. What a measurement for us. So I also sit on Vermont State Police, Fair and Partial Policing, and community committees. And in our studies, we find that all the police agencies across the country is going through some situations. And a lot of it is with people of color. And they're trying to work it out. Let me tell you a quick story. So, I came here in 1989, and my mother used to bring me up here when I was a kid. Enjoy what Vermont had to offer. And after I graduated from Northwestern University, I said to my mom, I was coming back here because I walked to the documentary on discovery, talking about what Vermont had to offer. Unity and freedom on the ground railroad came through here, was against slavery. And I was like, wow. And I was raising civil rights movement in Chicago, Illinois, like Jesse Jackson. All those people used to come out of my house, my mother was kind of popular then. So I told my mother, I was coming. She said, you are gonna make a difference, you know. So one year I called my mother up, and I said to my mom, I made a difference, I made a difference. She said, what you do, what you do? I said, Vermont is the second whitest thing now. So I thought I'd share that with you. So I made a difference. So since that time, I've seen some difference being made since 1989 in Vermont. Part of it's being, I've been working with Dr. Larry McQuarrie and Tucker, you know what I mean? I'm part of that group and part of Uncommon Alliance, where we created data collection. Now people can understand, you know, to get the numbers right, you know what I mean? Kind of sort of, you know, with the data collection. And through the years, we've helped the city do, because since I'm a youth service provider, we helped the city create a, and the city council approved it, so I was like 2001, 2002, getting youth on boards, like police commission, planning commission, school board, things like that. And we had, was proud to have all this youth on these boards and advisories. And somehow it fell off. I'm working now to get it back on. But I just want to say, thank you for continuing, I have, I'm sharing with the community, events years ago, we, you know, we put that together. And I want to thank the chief for continuing with the community events. That's awesome. I mean, so many people show up to those. And I think that, you know, a little more help, we can get more older kids there, people color more of more activities for them and let more of the planning. Talking about getting a youth back on the police commission. We actually have a youth on the police commission and he's usually here, but he's not here today. Awesome, I didn't know. But you know, the good thing about it was, I'm sharing another good measurement for us, because I, yes, sir, go ahead. Oh, that's your three minutes. Oh, sorry, one minute. So, okay, so I'm quick now. So I'm as happy to have another good measurement that I'm one of our people who was a part of the gap we had put on to police commission was Terry Pablo, now he's with the foundation. What another great measure is that these youth continue to be a part of the police department. Now, another part of this tool is you're talking about, you're doing the implicit bias training. I'm hopeful that every person of color, every commissioner can go to this training, actually learn whatever, whoever, I hope somebody African or a person of color is doing the training. And come back and teach these wonderful officers our brothers and finest about how it feels, what they learn, and then actually, you know, implement some, what it feel like, what it is to be an African American like for me. I didn't go to school with most of the people here. We didn't go to church together. They're not my neighbors. And so how they learned about me is from some, from magazines, from TV shows, Oprah probably saying something good about us. You know, so that's, so when I talk to people, like, you look at me, when they look, when they see me, honestly, when they talk to me, I got, I said, No, go ahead, just gonna show you a thought. When they see me, they don't know my programs have over 50 awards. They don't know that my program is created that you've programmed for that. They don't know all the things that we've done for you in the state. They look at me like, you know, until they get to know me, then they know that, well, this person is all right, you know. So that's all I'm trying to say is that, so I think every person on this commission, she's go to that training and come back, I'm facilitated to mark, you know how to do it and everybody know how to do it, just put some flavor in it. I do a reenactment or something myself. So thank you. Great, thank you very much, Bruce. Thank you. Thank you. Dave Hartnett? Just interesting listening to all the people speaking in public form. We're far from perfect here. I remember going to when it comes to policing, maybe, but we're so much better off in a lot of other places around this country and we should be proud of, I think the way we do things here in Burlington. But that's not what I'm here to talk about. I'm actually here to talk about the process that got you all here tonight as a commission and no reflection on the individuals here because I think this will be a great commission and I think you'll serve well. But the process itself, maybe some were there, maybe some weren't there two Monday nights ago or last Monday night, but it was basically just a shit show in front of the council. And when I joined the council eight years ago, I worked hard to kind of change the process of how we choose commissions and make it a more open and transparent process. I think we thought we had some good changes in place, but obviously we don't and we've failed the public. We've failed the commissions. We've failed the commissioners. We failed the people that are applying for commissions and really the city council has failed itself. I mean, they've really lost respect for the whole process in my opinion. And I'm looking to move forward and make some changes to that. So you'll be the first commission that I speak in front of tonight, but I'm going to reach out to all the commissions and I'm going to look for a new process that would include going in the future, going forward, having at least one or two representatives from each commission being part of that process. So maybe it would be the chair and the vice chair with three city councils and a representative from the mayor's office that would be choosing the commission. And so there would be some skin in the game for you guys and you would have some say. And I think the commission here would probably feel better about some of the needs that they have, okay? And we can get that to the council in that way. Instead of having 12 city councilors making up a commission who quite honestly have lost their perspective of what commission should be. Not all, but there's a few and few long-term city councilors that just don't understand the importance of what a good commission is about. It's not about putting your friends on commissions. It's not about making deals with other political parties to get their person on and getting their person on because if that's the way we're going to do commissions in Burlington, it's disrespectful to each and every one of us here in this room. And that's not the way it should be done. And so moving forward, as I said, I'll be going to all the commissions. I'd be looking to get feedback from this commission as I would for the rest of them going forward, maybe bringing it to the NPAs and then to the council. I've already spoken to President Wright about this. I've spoken to Councillor Busher and Councillor Jang. So I think there's some interest in changing the way that we can do this better for all of us in the future. So I look forward to working with you and I look forward to hearing from you on this. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Thanks, Dave. Jane O'Dell. I'm happy to see that later tonight you're going to be talking about the bias training and early years speakers have talked about the very intensive work that will happen about excessive force policies. I'm here to talk about an idea that was floated at a recent city council meeting and luckily did not garner any support but I think needs to be openly addressed. And that is that there was a resolution that called for downsizing the police department, for reducing the size of the number of officers that serve the city of Burlington. And I want to express my very strong view that that would be the wrong direction to go. I hope that that is not a direction that this commission will go. In the recent city council election there was no, which I lost in the central district but there was no conversation whatsoever with the public about the idea of reducing the size, making the community more safe by reducing the size of the police force. And so I want the commission to understand that in my neighborhood in the Old North End there is a lot of support for community-based policing. And if we were to reduce the size of our police force that would mean a step away from community-based policing which is a more labor intensive way to pursue public safety because it is about making relationships, building relationships. We're happy to see the officers on the beat in my neighborhood in Palm Ray Park because we've heard that the drug dealing is kind of picking up again. We don't want to go back to the time when there was open dealing in our parks and on our streets and community-based policing which I fought for with the community between 2013 and 2019 and got great support from this chief, got great support from the commission, from the department. It has made a big difference in the Old North End. North Street is now a place where everyone feels comfortable. Our parks are a place where everybody feels safe and welcome, like it is their place in the Old North End. There is broad support for our officers. There's broad support for the chief. There's broad support for the direction that this commission has gone and we don't want to go back. So I just wanted to make it and I have a lot of contacts deal with people every day in the Old North End. So I want to thank you all the best to this commission and your work is so important to the quality of life of everyone in the city. And I just hope that you, it is a very serious trust that you hold on our behalf. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Does anybody else that hasn't, yeah, would you like to come up in a public comment? Thank you. Could you just tell me your name? So Amanda Hannaford. Hannaford? Okay, just want to make sure I get this. Thank you and welcome. Thank you. And I actually came, I've never been to this meeting before, so I didn't know you could actually ask questions and get answers. So I just raised my hand before. But I just had a question about, I live in downtown Burlington and there was a death behind my building on April 18th in a dumpster and an accident of some kind. And I've been trying to find out information about it because the individual, Dan O'Golmes, who died was somebody who had been around for a long time and it was briefly on the news and I reached out to Laura Cheney and I just haven't heard back about it a few days ago. So I was wondering the best, and I've been looking on the press releases that are now published, which is very nice. I like that. But I haven't seen any information about that and I was wondering the best way if that's public information and how one gets that information. It is public. Deputy Chief Murat, can you give an update on that? So you're describing, there was a situation with an individual presumed to be transient who was when he fell asleep inside a dumpster. He was not discovered by, also we're guessing he was discovered at the Waste Facility in Williston. I don't at the moment have off the top of my head a follow-up on that incident but I can find it for you and... You know who has the case? Is it Williston had the case? Because he was discovered there? I believe so, yeah. Okay, I knew that was the case. Okay, that's it, yeah. I'll follow up with you. Great, thank you. Thank you. What, anybody else? Yes, Kurt, welcome. Good evening, Madam Chair and members of the commission. Thank you for serving on the police commission and to the three new commissioners. Congratulations, I hope you do good work. I do wanna make a few comments to follow on what some of the other comments that have been made tonight. I agree with the previous comments that the work you do is incredibly important. Going forward, we know that we've had some high profile incidents that have caused a great deal of concern in the community, rightfully so. We have taken action to take a look at those incidents and review policies, procedures, et cetera, with the new committee. I know two police commissioners will be serving on that as well as two counselors and as you said, Madam Chair, a number of citizens as well. I do wanna make a few comments about the process. One is, I didn't vote for two, I voted for two that were brought back, one incumbent and another commissioner and I did not vote for two others. No reflection on the candidates, but it is my belief that I'm not comfortable with removing incumbent commissioners. I hope when the time comes that you are reapplying for a commission spot, you'll understand better what I'm talking about when you reapply and you certainly will not want the city council to remove you quickly. We had one commissioner who was removed after a year and a half approximately, and I think that the city council should not be in the process of discouraging citizens who have served faithfully and well and be removed after a short period of time. What I hope to see from the new commission, and these are my hopes as a citizen, as a city councilor, I'm not speaking as president of the council, but I hope that you keep in mind is along with the incidents that have happened that we have a tremendous police commission and when you look at the data, you will see, and I'm sure you've heard it before, but the vast majority of incidents in Burlington are handled well. There has been judicious constraint used over and over again. We have a great chief and a great police department. Can we do better? Yes, we can. But I think what I hope that you also keep in mind is that I know for a fact right now that many of the men and women that serve in our Burlington police department are feeling demoralized with things that they have heard said in our community, sometimes by citizens, sometimes by leaders in the city. And I think that is really unfortunate. And we have a very serious issue here in regard to keeping the good men and women in our police department serving on this police department. And we are in risk, I believe, if we overreact to some admittedly serious incidents that we are going to lose some of the men and women here that serve so great on our city, and we are gonna have trouble attracting new great candidates in the future. I hope that, I believe that the city council at times has overreacted to this. These are serious incidents, and we should be looking at them, but I do think that we need to be very serious about recruitment, retention, making sure our police officers, right now when I see a police officer, I'm thanking them for their service. And they appreciate it because they frankly are feeling under siege in Burlington. I also hope, and this again is just my hope as a citizen because you all have your rights to do whatever you want as citizens as well. But I hope as commissioners that now that you're commissioners, I mean, these are for new commissioners that you, community activism stops here at the commission, that when there's a rally there have been rallies that have sometimes been, really hateful things have been said about our police department and our police officers. And I hope that as police commissioners you do not engage in participating in those type of events or try to rally those crowds. Again, it's your right to do so as citizens, but I hope that you take your work as police commission very seriously and community activism in my opinion should stop and leadership on the commission should begin here and now. So again, I wish you all the best in your service to our community. We appreciate it. And I wanna say that we appreciate past community commissioner services as well. Though frankly, I think sometimes commissioners when they are removed the way they were here and a couple of other times in the past that they probably do not feel like they were appreciated. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, before we move on to the chief's report do any of the commissioners have any comments following public forum that you'd like to anything you wanna comment on? No? Okay. So again, thank you for everybody who participate in the public forum. We love it when people come. So please keep coming. Chief Delpozo. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for moderating that public forum. Thank everybody who came and commented. And I'm looking around it. In the vision I have in my mind that the city council there will be a quorum for the council out here tonight. So thank you for coming and participating. And it's great to see the city turning their attention to police matters. So thank you. A few things. I have six or seven. We can answer questions or go back and forth as needed. I think it's important to note that police, the city lost a court action to withhold the body camera footage from Corey Campbell. And if Eileen was here as the city attorney, I'd ask her to discuss that at greater length. But basically the court ordered the city to turn Corey Campbell's body camera footage of his incident with Mr. Kilburn at the hospital on March 11th over to him and the union. And in the next day, we anticipate not only complying with that order, but also releasing the judge was clear that this becomes a public document for body camera footage. So it'll be released to the public as well. As you know, we were acting on behalf of the state attorney general and the Vermont state police who said as the people in charge of the investigation, they did not want Campbell to see the body camera footage that he was ordered to collect about himself. His union sued and we lost. So we will be complying with that court order shortly. I know there's also footage that many of you have seen in executive session and I anticipate returning to that topic. So second is pride month was actually a good time to look at some of our policies regarding transgender and non-binary people. I was intrigued by Philadelphia putting out a policy about the right terms of address and recording of names, et cetera for transgender and non-binary people as a way to respect them. As you know, we took small measures like making our single occupancy bathrooms, gender neutral, that's all old news, seen pioneering at the time. But we do have a draft looking over a corporal credible that we'll be circulating with you shortly. This based on the Philadelphia policy about how to show due care and respect for transgender and non-binary people and address and recording their information, et cetera. So that's another thing. We're in the middle of, I know we've been circulating some draft reports of our car stop data analysis. Eric and Nancy have been very, very, very fastidious about reviewing and auditing the work, looking for missing data, sampling to make sure that the data that we do recover doesn't belize some trend that differs from what we've disclosed, all of that. So I think we've made a lot of progress with that. I think you're thinking, I mean, I'm looking, you feel we're coming to the end of that sort of auditing and review process? Yeah. Yeah. Almost done. And so we're looking forward sometime in July, which now we're in July to releasing the car stop race data. It'll also be interesting to know what the changes in searches and outcomes since the changes to Vermont's marijuana law, which is now a year ago. So we have a year of data with that. So that's coming shortly. Next on the list, because although we have the luxury, there are very few police departments in Vermont that have full-time analysts. We have two, one sworn, one civilian. Rutland has one, Vermont State Police has a few, but that's where it ends, right? So I say this to say, it's literally, I would love for you to think there's some massive machine that constantly turns things out with ease, but it's the same small group of people turning their attention to different things, like squirrels, and I don't help by redirecting their attention constantly. So use of force is another thing that they are analyzing. They've begun the analysis. They have not completed the analysis, but that's what we're turning to the moment we're done with traffic that will also be pertinent for the special committee or the task force or whatever you want to call it. That should be by mid to late summer. As you know, we just graduated five officers from the academy. They're doing well in field training. We're scheduled to hire two lateral officers and I believe three more academy-ready officers. That would tentatively, like for a moment, bring our staffing up to 102, which is great to have a staffing of above 100. I know there are officers who've applied to other police departments to leave Burlington. So we have to see how that works out, but I know at least two that are in process of experienced officers who said it's their time to leave the city. So we are at, I guess now 97. We're scheduled by July to go to 102, but that's not pending any of the other losses I just talked about. We've also done a four-year tally now and broken down our civilian complaints. I know we had a database online where we had them when we moved formats that came down, but we've just, as of, I guess, the last few weeks, done a tally once again and we should be able to disclose to not only you, but the public. It keeps with what we've alluded to before. We've had approximately 35 to 45 civilian complaints a year in total. That's with anonymous reporting, online reporting, in-person reporting, and written reporting. So it's consistently across the years, fewer than one a week. Almost all of them are not about force, but about courtesy, tremendous amount. I'm looking at Karen Paul about parking and parking enforcement. But like I said, we'll be able to disclose the nature and type and disposition of those going forward for the last several years. So that's another piece of data that's coming out. I guess I'll start with something that seems fairly trivial and then move on to one more weighty thing. But July 17th, we're having one of our creamy events right out here at Beansies. If any commissioners want to show up. What's the date again, Chief? July 17th. That would be great. So the Beansies boss will be providing creamies for any member of the public who shows up. You just have to be young at heart. If someone asks on Facebook, is there an age limit? Like no, just don't be a bore, like no. So we'll be providing that as a way for cops to interact with the citizens. And again, everybody here is welcome. Public is welcome, commission is welcome too. We had officers who just got back, not just officers. I mean, Nancy Stetson went, one of our dispatchers went. Our Constance, Chris, our training and curriculum person went, but we just got back from a trip to Montgomery, Alabama, called the Lynchie Memorial, which is Memorial for Peace and Justice. The Legacy Museum, which is the slavery museum. Also, just to see what's down there, the Rosa Parks Museum and the Freedom Riders. So that was in Montgomery. Very interesting trip. The intent behind it is that I think we do a decent job, an okay job with implicit bias training as a state and as a police department. It's an annual training. And I said this and I said this to the city counselors as well. The implicit bias training is fairly static. I'm looking at the crowd. I know we gave some of our implicit bias training to the council a little over a year ago when Bryant Marks came in. The curriculum to that does not change too much. The principles basically remain the same. There is a requirement to deliver every year. I would love a way to refresh the quality and content of that training opens to suggestions. We went back to Bryant Marks. Bryant Marks is a victim of his own success. He's training the entire Phoenix Police Department right now. He's just not available for us. But what we did do is look at the new book that was out by a Stanford professor biased. And there's a chapter in it called Bad Dude which if folks remember a helicopter pilot in the police in Oklahoma was looking down at a black male on the roadway and said like he looks like a bad dude. That man ended up getting shot by police department officers in Oklahoma on the highway. So that's the title of that chapter. I thought that would be a suitable chapter for people to read as a jumping off point for implicit bias and policing out of the book bias. We'll get some feedback on that. But what I think the difference is and I just is that what what policing doesn't do well is I teach officers like number one about civil rights period but number two about the civil rights legacy in America and policing's intersection with that. So an implicit bias doesn't do that either. Implicit bias is about why you may feel a certain way on justly about the person you're dealing with. In my experience with the curriculum it does nothing to explain why that person might be afraid of you, why that person may not wanna talk to you, why that person may not wanna come forward as a victim or witness. And to do that you really need to understand like the civil rights legacy and the racist legacy in America and how the police intersect with that. Whether it's literally not protecting the freedom riders on their way down to New Orleans or literally enforcing segregation laws or literally being part of concerns about mass incarceration, all of that, right? So the idea is to do that not just in like a PowerPoint slide but in an experiential way and the idea behind the Alabama trip was to start going down that road. So we just had, I guess it was like an hour and a half Nancy or two hours of like feedback, right? Today from the folks that were on the trip and this is their takeaway. It was a very, very, very powerful experience. They all learned something they didn't know. They really drove important lessons home but it needs to be, and we knew this but we wanted to prove at least the initial concept. It needs to be well facilitated and well structured. It just can't be a self-guided trip around memorials and museums. And also it has to be two things. I think one thing I take for granted and the other one I call which is it has to be linked to contemporary policing and it has to be linked to Vermont. And like for me it's obvious why it's linked to contemporary policing. It's like we're still part of this. It's still going on. I think that young police officers who have ever been working in the profession for over 20 years might not get that right away. They need to go down there knowing the link, experience it while they're down there and they get back and reflect on it. And the other thing is they say, well, we're seeing all this stuff with Rosa Parks and we're seeing all this stuff with the Freedom Riders and it says it like at the memorial. There are very few states without a recorded known lynching and Vermont is one of those very few states. So people like, well, how does it come back to Vermont? We don't need to, it does in obvious and important ways and I'm not gonna get into the micro assessments of those ways but most people of color in Vermont are actually not from Vermont if you look at how either refugees or like the speaker said, people who got here and they bring with them a wider legacy and it prevails in Vermont too. So the bottom line is that I thought that was a very productive trip. I would love to continue to send new recruits as part of their training when they go. I'd also like to send more senior officers but it should not be, and we knew this but I'm reaffirming it, some unstructured trip where they just go down. One of the reasons we sent our curriculum development person is we expect this to be a real curriculum and a supplement to not a replacement for implicit bias training. So I thought that was pretty promising. So chief, I have a question about that. And I agree, because if you're getting the content without the context and how to bring it back, it's not gonna be as useful. Do you, is there a plan now or is the idea to put the plan into place to how, on how to have people make those important links to their, how does that impact them when they come back and they get on the street? Yeah, right, and so that's the thing. I mean, it's not easy to develop a curriculum but we need to, so there's no pre-existing care. I mean, I honestly think it's like a new curriculum. I know I've worked with the Center for Innovation and Policing at Georgetown Law. It's staffed by Rosa Brooks. You know Barbara Ehrenreich, the author, that's her daughter. And Christy Lopez, who wrote the Ferguson Report for the Department of Justice. So they run a program where they bring Washington D.C. cops in and they take them, they're in D.C. So they get to go to the museums, they get to go to the memorials but they also like, for D.C. cops every year, they bring them in and give them civil rights history training. They give them lesson plans on civil rights. Like, we don't have that, we don't have that in Vermont, period. Like, there's no training anywhere. And so I'd like to find some money that's not an appeal but I'm saying I think there's gotta be money in the city to actually properly get a proper curriculum built around this that involves the trip as an experience but that we can accomplish exactly what you're saying and not just make it like, our critics call this a PR stunt or window dressing. I'll take it at face value. They're not being really realistic or fair, they're just trying to be critics but we wanna make this something that is genuinely valuable. And if you know anybody, I've been referred to the possibility of a history professor at UBM who deals with the slain trade. There are some people on the national scale but I would love to, if anyone has any, especially, I mean at a randall or in the UBM community, if you know anybody who wanna develop a curriculum, I think there's some funding for it. I'd love to hear who I think good. My only thing when I think of curriculum is that if it stays heady and more history, you're not gonna touch the hearts of the police officers. The only, in my experience, the only thing that changes people is when you touch their hearts, then things change. So making those connections, I don't know who the right person is but somebody that's got skills in facilitating where even people can ask dumb questions because if you can't ask the question because you're afraid you're gonna get jumped on, you can't have that internal change happen. So I think Mark has asked some really good questions. When we were talking about what are the objectives of the police commission moving forward, this to me seems like a really important one to develop some kind of, maybe it's a curriculum, you know. No, so there's two, I mean one of the things that's worth reflecting on and I think this is what a good experience can achieve is one of the cops came out of the museum like really furious and said, I can't believe that all those people had all those horrible things done to them and no one, no cop, no one ever held them to account. Like there was no justice. As a cop he's thinking of, or tribute of justice and he's thinking of accountability and arrests but he's like, I can't believe that all those lynchings happened, all of those deaths happened, all that segregation happened, all the beatings happened, all of the, all of that happened and no one was ever held to account for this. Like where were the cops doing their jobs and government doing its job and that was like, so he's on the verge, the thing is to take that sentiment and I'll bring it right into the present, capitalize on it. And I think the most interesting thing that one of the officers said in our debriefing today was I just want to do what I can do as a cop to make sure that in 50 years people aren't looking back at us now and saying the things that we're saying about people 50 years ago as far as police and civil rights. And I thought that was like really, really insightful. So there's these like germs that are there, these seeds and we just have to like figure out how to engage and that's where I would love some professional like confidence for us or something like that. Not just like chief depose of trying to figure out how to make a slide. No, it's actually not a pretty case of a car. I was wondering if my jacket was there. That's all I have for the, I mean, if you have any questions I need to talk about them. That's all I have for the, anybody have any questions? Very quick question. So are you able to say right now if it's with the two potential lateral hires where those are coming from or is that not? One is probably Atlanta and one is probably New Jersey. And do we have information about kind of conditions under which they're leaving those departments? Oh, it's, yeah, there's no, it's favorable. So one of the things that we, do you do, have you done any of the backgrounds? I mean, you can't talk about them. Not in these ones. So these are people who want to come to, they believe in Vermont. So, and I think one of them is actually, wife is a nurse will be working up here. So he's following his wife and the other one, just the pay is much better here than Atlanta. But by way of reassurance, we always, I don't know what you think about the efficacy of a polygraph. We can talk about that at length. I have very, very, very ambivalent feelings about that. But we do administer those, but the more important thing I think is much more important than that, that machine that measures sweating and breathing is a very, very thorough background check on these people with their employers. So it's not just, we'll get into this with social media too, but if you lie in your application, you get fired, period. And that goes beyond probation. That's just a terminable offense. So you have to turn over all your passwords or your social media accounts. We go through them. Is it turning over passwords or am I lying about that? We'll sit with them and lying into their account. Right, to review the contents of their accounts. We do a background check on them. We also always talk to their prior employers. And employers are not gonna say certain things about their personnel record, but they will say whether they've terminated or not, or whether they were in good standing or not. But then presumably, and I'm not talking about the two officers that we're trying to hire right now, but presumably it's possible for officers to have disciplinary concerns in their record, which are not disclosed and it's time to make a reliable transfer from one department to another. Right, so in general, right, if someone has a disciplinary concern that is minor enough for them not to be terminated from their police department, then there's a chance we wouldn't know about that. But I don't know if you wanna talk about the nature of the background checks we do, but they're not perfunctory. And that's one of the reasons it takes so long to hire someone. Yeah, I mean, I think, right, like one of the prevailing concerns is that an officer who doesn't lose their ability, please officer, here we go, please officer, right? I think that's a real concern. When we do our background checks, we talk to supervisors from our employment and also coworkers who sometimes are in a position where they can be more frank, right? Because some organizations outside of law enforcement also will have company policy that only confirms someone's employment or their employment needs. So we try to cast a wider net so we're able to catch areas of concern. Yeah, because of course the worry is that the bar to be terminated for a disciplinary concern is often pretty high. And so there's all sorts of misconduct which can happen shy of that level. And I mean, so over the last, I mean, I guess even since you've been chief, you know, if there've been any potential lateral hires that decide not to try to bring in because of concerns that were disclosed during that process. I think by the time somebody gets to the lateral stage, sorry, to the stage where investigating their background, we've weeded out most people. Like our application requires that you talk about any sustained serious discipline against you. If you don't disclose it, you're terminated. You know, it also requires that you provide the names of like all the positions you've held plus your supervisors. So somebody who's got something to hide, I think has to really be naive to think we're not gonna try to find it out. So the interest, no, and one of the reasons why we haven't had very many lateral hires, since the time I've been here, how many lateral hires would you say we've had? Like half a dozen? Two a year maybe? Less than a dozen. A dozen, I would say much less than a year. If there's been some kind of a hire, why would you have a position where we're seeing an iron cross? The question, too, is the cost of a background would have been that all of the lateral hires would have been quite a long term. So we do take the time and only think to get an entity to make sure the candidate's covered. The team is saying, I'll try to tie the gun into a background check. Is the tour of the supervisor going to plant a gun? Do you understand? Do you understand what we're going to say? He's going to the sergeant. We're going to plant a gun in our office, sir. Of course, we do take the team with the background checks to make sure we cut all our ends and make sure we do our best. And if my indicators ever lead us to believe it. Okay. I think John was going to say this. Any other comments or questions for Chief Del Pozzo on the chief's report? Well, I think that's a great. I mean, I think Randall has a good point. If you want to follow up on that, you can. Because our goal is to not end up having to fire or discipline someone to be made the wrong, higher position. I mean, just to reassure you to that end, I can think of like, in my time here, like two people who I fired in the last two weeks of the police academy. I said to someone, I may have said this before, you're not going to fit in. And somebody just graduated from the police academy saying, I don't like the feeling of getting your fired. So, you know, we're not just trying to fill boots, right? So Chief, with some folks leaving and some coming, what are, where are we at numbers? So right now, like I said, I think we're steady at 97, poise to hire another five, including the two laterals through to the academy that will bring us to one or two. But I know of two people who are looking to be in the police department. So, that application is out of the square. Thank you, ma'am. I'll be allowed to ask. Brandon, thanks for the updates. And I wanted to just go over to the traffic stop piece. You covered a lot of stuff, so I have a couple of questions, if that's okay. One is on the traffic stop data. So is that the 2018 data? Yeah, not only that, but for searches and some other data 2019 as well. I mean, where are we, I know we're up to date with searches in 2019. Is there other, what's that? That would be the 2018 data as per title 2020, 2066, okay. And the use of force data that you talked about, so is that somehow or another going to be incorporated in the requirements that are being put forth in the recently released, rather, I have a difficult time speaking, I had a tooth extraction. The recently released resolution, there's a requirement for some to start a data collection process that's also consistent with title 2020, 2366 as well. This is the resolution here in the city. Yeah, I could read it if you'd like it says, be it further resolved that in addition to data collection pursuant to title 2366, 2020, 2366 when reporting traffic stop data outcomes, law enforcement officers include the type of force employed to effectuate the stop during the stop, if any, and that this data, that this and all data collected pursuant title, 2020, 2366 should be included, should include data through June 30th, 2019, be reported to the police commission, blah, blah, blah. So is that- Is there any traffic, so I'm saying force use during traffic stops just to be clear what? I can just provide just to you so you can take a look at it. So I was just, back to the microphone. Just mostly curious just to understand if the data that you're collecting right now and use of force is pursuant to, would that be applicable to that requirement? Well, because what I'm reading, I just want to be sure we're doing the right thing, is saying that legally everybody involved is required to report traffic stop outcomes and supporting the state, 2266. And this is saying that we also want our officers to report when they use force during a traffic stop, right? So the data that we collect for use of force will include data that we collect during, sorry, for using force during a traffic stop. So we have to go, there's few enough incidents, meaning typically like we said, between 190 and just over 200, where we can go and say these incidents here were pursuant to a traffic stop and comply with that requirement. Okay, thank you. I just wanted to better understand if that was, if the use of force data that you're working on, Nancy, if that was the same data, if we're talking apples and apples, it sounds like it is. And I apologize for missing a meeting that I was supposed to be at yesterday because I would have had this question answered, okay? The other question that I had was relating to the, I'm sorry, oh, the trip to Alabama. You mentioned in your report out that there was, you saw some officers starting to come around because they were starting to ask those questions, those difficult questions about, how could somebody allow that to happen and so forth? So is there, were you able to make any correlation any connection to just the age-old angst of the, what the civil rights presented relationally between blacks and law enforcement as opposed to law enforcement's perspective of how blacks were treated in communities because as we know also historically, there was a criminalization of even activism, say per se. So there was, which remained to this day because clearly this could serve as well in our community here because that would help, to help law enforcement to better understand some of the angst that exists in our communities and communities of color and so forth. I just want to make sure that it was a productive trip in that particular way because it sounds like it's a conversation. It's not happening. The memorial and the museum both made that relationship clear. And so any curriculum that gets built and that's one of the things, I mean, there are pictures there that are famous, but I think I'd be some younger copster, I haven't seen him, of police officers with dogs, like ribbing the clothes off of activists on the march. Like that's not, you know, if you go and take the museum seriously, for example, that can't be ignored. They also talk to the museum about how police would open up the jails and turn prisoners over to be lynched to, you know, lynch mobs and how the police would be at the lynchings, right? Like, participating. So that's a, you know, all, so it's not merely just how could that happen? And me, if you're absorbing the curriculum and it's well presented in the material, like it'll also convey what you were talking about. Thanks for that. That's all I have. Thank you. Okay. Anybody else? No? Okay. Thanks, Chief. This implicit bias training, I'm going to let Shareen talk about this because you had asked to put it on the agenda. So I asked to put it on because after our last meeting, we got a, I think that there was an email to all current, well, then commissioners about implicit bias training. And it was one of those aha moments of, well, of course we as a commission should be having implicit bias training. So I really got it there as a placeholder, but I think if the chief is doing training for the force, whether we do our training through that, but I absolutely think that the commission should have implicit bias training. You know, we can all read a book, but I don't think that that's sufficient. So, and I don't know if we do a, if I know you had mentioned you two had met and talked about a retreat, which I think is a great idea. That might be a time to do training, but I would be in favor of the commission. You know, probably each of us has individually done implicit bias training through our work or whatever it is, but I think we would benefit as a commission doing that as well. I think Commissioner Hart brought up, when we were in just some more private discussion about like the differences in the different, like there's varying levels of quality in the training and that some even, like if it's not done well, it can even exacerbate certain problems. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth there, but it seems like it does matter. It's not just checking the box. And that's what I'll say. I'll say I've said this many, many times. It's like a lot of training in human resources. I'm talking about looking at business people and like at a law firm or the police, just checking a box for regulatory purposes. Like that's not what we're looking for. That's why I want to do a placeholder because I don't think it's a quick answer. I don't think it's next month we have it, but I think maybe we, you know, work with you on what you're putting together for the force or if there are folks on the commission who have suggestions that I totally agree. Like it can't just be anything. It's got, we've got to be careful about it and make sure it's meaningful. And it isn't about checking a box. I know for me, it's been very meaningful when I've done that training. So anybody wants, I mean, I would love to have some help in this regard. It's not just a way to shunt work on, but I'm sure that like the Georgetown program where they bring in DC cops and give them a civil rights back, back office is a bias. Well, I'm sure they would be willing to share that. They're enthusiastic about that program and actually about money to spread it. There's got to be opportunities out there to figure out the right way to do this. You can tell I'm a little pessimist. I've seen most of the curriculum to be very static. I just, I'm looking for something. Unimplicit bias? No, no, unimplicit bias. So, Chief, because you said, we were talking about business, I think you were looking at me. But one of the things from an HR perspective, and even, you know, I have 15 years working at the university in student affairs. When you, in my opinion, when you do kind of a one-off training, everybody gets really engaged and it's present, but then you just get on with your regular life and unless it's sort of ongoing training, it doesn't really make a difference. You know, so I know in our company, we don't even bring in consultants anymore and I'm not saying that we shouldn't for this, but we have developed the skills internally, so it just becomes part of the fabric of what we do. It's training all the time. So I think if we don't want to just check a box off, it's harder to do, this is what I'm saying is not easy, but somehow working with someone to make it into the fabric of what we do as a department will have the most long-lasting impact, that I think that we're looking to see. Does that make sense? Even the folks going to Montgomery, Alabama, like they've had a, I'm sure, a meaningful experience. How do we continue that? I... Can you speak more to Georgetown, what you were referencing? Yeah, I'm sorry, so Rosa Brooks and Christy Lopez are two attorneys who are at Georgetown Law, who run, it's either the center for, if you Google Rosa Brooks and Christy Lopez, it's something for the center for police innovation or a better policing tomorrow, or tomorrow there'll be innovation. But something, I'm hitting two of those three words. I've gone down, I spent a few days with them. I talked at their class and I learned about what they offer. They bring in street level and low supervisory level Washington DC cops and they give them a curriculum on drug policy, civil rights and on other topics that bear on American policing. Use of force, for example. Christy brings in the DOJ background and talks about issues out. For example, Ferguson or St. Louis. And I think they're pretty, they're still a work in progress, but they acknowledge what I believe strongly in which is the idea that like, cops have to have very good everyday street skills and very good competency skills in the work they do every day. But you can't not acknowledge that this happens in the context of like, drug policy, civil rights, like important legal issues. They're trying to crack the nut of how to give cops that education. And there's not a good big model for that nationally. But they shoulder that challenge and I think they'd be interested in trying to spread that a little bit. So, yeah. Madam Chair, if I may, I think it's a great idea and I also want to just give a shout out to the Chief just for his initiative, just in the absence of direction, clearly. Just picking it up and running with it. I do, however, believe that what I've discovered and I think some of my colleagues here, commissioners would agree is that we are at a very important juncture here as a commission. I think from the report that was presented to the City Council, clearly that we struggle with our purpose here as a commission. And I think that I think at this time, I would strongly advise the commission at this point to as much as possible to try to give pause to taking on new initiatives, particularly surrounding training or others. Now, we know that there are statutory requirements like Title 20, 2358, which calls for the training of this agency as well as the other 78 agencies. And taking a look at where we are in that obviously is important. I think, but I think in addition to that, as we reset for lack of better terms and determine what our priorities are in conjunction with the Public Safety Committee as well as the Council itself relationally and what our charges are in terms of the delegation of authority that they deem appropriate for our purview of responsibility and also melding that with the culture of our community and our objectives then and only then should we begin to start to map out, if you will, our training priorities and what they might look like. And so I apologize for being verbose in the statement, but I just want to just make it clear. I think that we can go in a thousand different directions right now or else we can take that retreat and sit and think this thing out and figure out how we make sure that we keep the main thing in the main. Yep. No, I wasn't, I believe me. I wasn't trying to just like cast the commission with anything I'm just saying. I think one of the things that's helpful though is, is a lot of the times I relate, well, this is what happens, I believe, down at the police academy or this is what is going on in training. And I think that it's, I think it's sometimes for commissioners to fulfill their own curiosity about what the standards are or what the opportunities are by their own exploration of things rather than just relying on me to convey it. Like, I'll give a pointed opinion about what I think might be happening at the police academy. You may want to form your own opinions and then hold me to the standard based on your opinions. I mean, that's the, not just rely on me to always paint the landscape. Commissioner Herb, can I ask, Commissioner Hughes, can I ask you a question? Wow, you just called me Commissioner Hughes. I just kind of blew me away. I'm sorry. So on the issue of implicit bias training, are you saying that as a commission that we should hold off on that for our own, so set aside training for the force but as a commission, this notion of having implicit bias training for the commission? I would say that whatever training we require as a commission, it should be within the, it should be in response to and within the scope of whatever our responsibilities are, whatever, and what our values, what we agree our values are. And I think we haven't, I don't know that we've done that yet. For our mission, right? Oh, definitely our mission as well. Any other thoughts about the implicit bias? No, okay. Task Force update. So this is a question I have for the commissioners. Commissioner Herb has said that he would like to be part of the task force. I agreed to do it anyways. Yeah, you agreed to do it and you still agreeing to do it? Yes. I know that Commissioner Hart was interested but has some family things that may not, she may not be able to do that. Is anybody else interested in participating on the task force that was approved by city council? Can you say more about what the task force is? What's purposes? Who might not be? Sure, I will, except I did send it to every, the resolution to everybody. So I don't wanna, yeah, I don't wanna sort of repeat it. Is anybody interested in participating on that? I am personally. I don't know what the time commitment would be for September. I am not around for much of September between weddings, vacations and things like that. But if I, yeah, if I understand time commitment a bit more, then I'd be more than happy to do it. We do have, Adam, can you speak to the time commitment? It would not be available in September, make a difference? Thank you. I can't speak, I'm not able to speak to what the time commitment would be in September itself. I can't speak to where the process is currently with the selection and establishing of the special community if that would be of interest to the, the applications have closed. They are being processed and word has gone out to the applicants, the committee, the selection committee of boards and commissions, the subcommittee of the city council will meet the resolution calls for a slate to be brought forward if that's possible to the city council no later than its next meeting, which is on the 15th of this month. Sooner after that, a schedule would be set for the committee's work. And that's the slate for citizens that wanna participate? That's correct. Additional members that are appointed not through a selection process but through an appointment process and that's the administration as well as the council has seats to appoint. Yep, yep, and the commission appoints. To the commission appoints as well, excuse me. Okay. Okay. As soon as information around the scheduling of the meetings and the twerk and the scope of work become pulled together, I'll share it out with the commission. It's possible that I could attend in September if there are meetings you can't attend, I could step in in your place just for those, I just have a lot of unknowns right now but I would be happy to fill in for you if I could. Great. And I don't know how other commissioners feel but I was thinking that what may be helpful is even once the task force gets meeting regularly that we might put it as an agenda item on each of our meetings so that you as task force members can kind of let us know what's going on, see if you need our input on anything and keep us informed on the progress of the task force. Okay, great. Thank you, Jabu. Thank you. Sheree? Sure. Okay, the next on the agenda is social media. This was, and just to give the new commissioners some context, we've been talking about do we need a separate social media policy for the Burlington Police Department? Right now the city council is, I don't know actually where it is with city council but city council is going to hopefully sometime in the near future be approving a social media policy for the entire city. So we had decided to wait and see what that, what is this? Sorry, we'll get to that. To see what the city council approves and to look at that and to look at our existing media policy and to see if in fact we need to do anything once that's been approved. But in the meantime Commissioner Harp and I did share all this information with the new commissioners. Wanted to have a discussion around social media and what was happening in Philadelphia and this specific organization. And that's a page five to draw your attention to something. I don't know if you want to addition to Harp or other stuff. Sure, I'll just start. So I think there are three different areas in which there have been concerns recently in various departments across the country various law enforcement agencies across the country which relate to social media use by various employees. So of course most recently today or yesterday ProPublica released a report about this was Customs Port Patrol Agents kind of members of a Facebook group, IM1015 which kind of, and so a lot of memes and jokes and things like that were shared among the group. But some of those had the character of being offensive to some or would raise in among many community members some concerns that the agents who are posting these things might not be capable of exercising their jobs fairly with proper discretion. There are kind of other relating a similar social media incident. So the Plainview Project is tracking kind of social media posts by officers in several cities, Philadelphia and St. Louis police departments were most prevalent in those. But you can posts by officers that you can and this is all kind of sensitive to first amendment issues. So these are things where these are posts which officers make on their free time presumably not using department resources but they're posts which again raise some concerns among community members that displays the kind of judgment that they don't want to see in their officers, police in their communities. And the third kind of area was just this is I think the reveal project. This was officers that participated in groups that had white supremacist leanings. So kind of just membership in those sorts of groups raise some concerns about the fitness of officers to serve in police departments. So these are all kind of cases where the social media activity seems like it's kind of protected social media activity but it raises concerns among their departments or among the agencies about kind of how suitable the officers are or the agents are for serving those communities. So the question was just kind of how Berlton Police Department would intend to deal with any case which might arise in BPD with officers that are kind of designed to post things in social media but which if those came to light in the community would raise some concerns among community members that those are not officers they would want to have policing them. Yeah, sorry. No, so I was just gonna say, I mean for anyone here that's the plain view project if you wanna look it up I thought thank you for sending that in the New York Times article but so is your question Randall, is this something that we wanna make to see if we wanna specifically address as we're looking at the social media? Well right, the current question is how the department would intend to deal with such things right now and whether the resources deal with such things right now and if there aren't the resources to deal with them right now then it might be that those need to be introduced. All right, so what we have right now, I'll give you page five or five is paragraph four. It says, employees are strongly cautioned that expressing any opinions about work-related matters and I take that as broadly construed by social networking, et cetera, global blockage, the door to personal liability and the creation, it says additionally impeach their credibility, et cetera. Additionally, such proposed things could be the violation of the department rules and under some circumstances. So that's not strongly worded, it doesn't deal with like supremacy, racism, violence, et cetera, threats, but it does give us the ability and at this point, I think that the conflict of becoming clause and the good order and efficiency clause of the general regulations of our police department provide, in my mind, provide me with a clear latitude. If you are posting in a way that impeach the good order and efficiency of the department or it's conflict of becoming because you're advocating violence or mocking people's situation and talking about supremacy, I feel we have enough to act. We've also let officers know twice now with the Plain View Project that they should not expect privacy as to what they post. We have no cause to believe, nor has anyone come forward to give us cause to believe that any of what you saw there exists in the Broads and Police Department. We have 140 employees. Is it possible in American police? Yes, it's always possible, right? The people are posting things. I know we had some spirited Second Amendment debates when the gun laws were being passed in Vermont that fell on the side of the First Amendment. No one was being threatening. They were just saying, it's all public at this point. Like I don't like these laws. I'd be low to support them. What the heck is going on? But we let officers know, like what you post on social media is not like behind some wall that's impenetrable. Like people will see it, it will be held accountable for it. So, did you send out one of those notices as well, Chief Mirad? I can't go to yours. We sent out reports of consequences that occurred in Philadelphia after revelations there of officer conduct online and just reiterated what the Chief had sent out in regard to requesting that the officer for being clear on the nature of its obligation. Its obligation both to be fair and impartial, to ensure that we can't be perceived as operating based on personal biases and also to be cognizant that once you let it out into the internet while it is out there, what's going on? So, making certain that officers think about that. Yeah, I mean, as you may, as I'm sure Randall knows, the Commissioner Hart, but everybody may know if they've been following it, 75 Philadelphia police officers were suspended by their police commissioner for their postings and sending that out to our officers without we didn't make any allegations because we have no cause to believe anything to foot. But we said, this is what's happening in Philadelphia, social media, postage, and appropriate consequences. I mean, that's where we are with that. I believe that our current language gives us the authority to discipline. I'm certain of it, in fact. One of the things it might be worth looking into, I think it would be an easy matter, is certain departments have very specific language about hate groups, association with hate groups and white supremacist groups, or any extremist groups as being prohibited. And I would have no problem with making that a rule here as well. Usually within their general orders, like one paragraph about being prohibited to be a part of any group that espouses like bias, racial hatred, violence, towards protected classes, et cetera. I think that would be an important issue. I think so, yeah. So with the kind of unbecoming clause, have there been any issues? So I'm essentially wondering how much this is, how much the scope of disciplinary powers have been agreed upon between you and the union. So have there been any issues of discipline for officers that kind of have made, let's say just kind of public comments in the past that have been, punishment has been agreed upon? No, but the thing is that, no. I mean, there's one thing that we could discuss. It's a small matter. We can discuss in the executive session to give it some context. But the union's job in some ways is to protect its members from discipline. So to say, is there an accord? One, we're fortunate to not have had to test this. But number two, I think it's designed for there not to be in accord, right? That, you know, I'm always administering too much discipline and I think they're always fighting too hard to, but that's the average sort of relationship of the disciplinary process. So I guess the question is, how confident are you that you have the tools you have right now give you the- I defy the union to publicly fight my attempt to discipline an officer for posting like racial, supremacist language or language espousing violence against, you know, the public and the way we've seen, like, with the project. I mean, because those, I mean, those cases have not been resolved, yes. I mean, so they're also suspended, but they're not, no discipline has been actually- But nonetheless, I don't hear like the union saying, like, this is, we're going to go to bat for our members, this is an important part. I mean, there are First Amendment arguments that have been made, right? And I'm sure God forbid this ever happens, but the police commission will have an opportunity to call these deaths if it were worth it to happen. So would it be, so is there a need for there to be stronger language then? Sorry, as you noted, you know, the language in four is pretty broad, right? But you think that it doesn't need to be stronger. I think what could be stronger is language about associations with like, or statements that would lead to believe you have an association with like a hate group or a racial supremacist group or an extremist group or a group that affiliates with like, that advocates for violence, right? I want that to be in it, to be, because I think that would cover not only the postings, but I think it would cover activities as well. I actually think four. I would be in favor of rewarding it because I think you're capturing protected rights here. So their labor rights about having the right to talk about pay and things like that. So I would be in favor of revisiting this and running it by legal, because I do worry about one, specifying some of what you've talked about, but also maybe not having it as broad, saying work-related, there is language that better gets at that, without capturing protected speech. One of the things I think would be interesting to do, I just asked the Corporate Crown Bill is to find out what Philly has on its books that empower them to suspend 75 people, because that's, you have a lot, a lot of you to do that as a cop, but you'll, as a supervisor, but you'll lose if you don't have something to point to. And in one way, it would be reassuring to say they pointed to a good order of efficiency or content that would come in. But I also, like I said, I have no reservations about a clause in our general rags about the prohibits, like, again, I'm saying, association with hate groups, extremist groups, et cetera. So Chief Del Poser, how easy is it to change that? Is that? That's not a subject of bargaining, because it doesn't talk about, in my mind anyway, I mean, maybe the union would disagree, but it doesn't, I don't think it would be that hard to change, is it's not changing the type of penalty or the circumstances under which somebody would be disciplined. It's, it's, it's, I'm just trying to be careful about saying this, because I don't want to make a promise I can't cash, but I don't think it would be that hard. I don't understand, I would like to see, I have a good relationship with my union, and I don't see them saying like, we want to make sure that our members cannot be subject to discipline for these types of associations, right? Madam Chair, if I could, I would say that, hopefully at some point, there would be a synchronization of the categories of discipline with the title 20, 24, one for unprofessional conduct, which applies to all agencies, but just scrolling through all three of those categories, I don't see anything that would catch this. In the state law, you're saying? Correct, which is, because it is the criminal justice training council who decertifies. All right. So. Chair, could you pull that paragraph out of New York City's patrol guide and give me a chance? It's like right in front, yes? So I think we've heard, you're recommending that number four on this be looked at, language change. Yeah, I have, I just think it might need to make some carve outs for protected speech. So set aside putting specifics, I'm worried that we're, even though it says that they are cautioned, it doesn't say you will be. I think that there is strong protection for folks being able to talk about their work conditions, whether it's pay or things like that. And so that's one concern I have with that language. Right, because what we don't wanna do is stop officers from using their speech rights to, in fact, ACLU is very adamant that officers be able to complain about the government, complain about the judiciary, complain about, and well, they don't actually say that, but they do say that government workers are the most important whistleblowers of our government working conditions. You have to protect their right to do that. So I'm just agreeing with you. Well, I can help offline with language. I'm happy to work with you on that if you want. One final question is, is there a standing process for updates of these, would you call this a policy? It's a directive. It's a directive. Is there a standing process in place for the updating of all policies? Well, we identify a need to update them and I task it to the people that have come with an expertise and then go through the new drafts and bring it to the commission. But typically in the creation of any policy, there's not a, there's not a, like some kind of paragraph towards the end that says this will be revisited in a certain timers. Okay. And the only time that we would revisit a policy at such time as we thought it was necessary. Yeah, I mean, sometimes, right, it depends sometimes like use programmatic changes and it's how policy changes. And sometimes there's problems that involve policy changes. And then other times there's things like Commissioner Harp saying, I, you know, we're breaking your great point. Like, are we prepared to deal with this at home? Let's talk about changing the policies. I would add that this policy being written three years ago and us living at internet speed, that we should probably revisit the entire policy. That we should just take a look at the whole policy. Yeah. I was gonna say, if you're ashamed to only address paragraph four without, I mean, we would want to look at the rest of it. I think if we start looking at the other people in here or something, probably we visit those two. But I'm certainly not prepared to sign off on this whole thing without taking a little closer look at it, you know, given the nature of this subject that we're talking about. Okay. So I just wrote that down. We'll make sure we follow up on that. Okay. Any commendations? I do have some. I've been trying to like juggle them. And actually, Eric, let me just interrupt for a second. Just for the new commissioners, one of the things that we do is we hear between meetings, we hear about any letters, emails, whatever that citizens have unsolicited given, given basically kudos to police officers for doing a great job. So we as a commission want to hear those. And so there you go. So we have about 10 for the past month. It was a couple of related to one incident on one of our members of our community was in crisis and had a couple of police interactions. One actually hit the news where that person was kind of a standoff situation at North Beach. And so one of our sergeants wrote to just note the good work of our officers and being able to peacefully resolve those situations. So I'm just going to read. Yep. We responded to the Howard Center on Southern Newsy Avenue for a panic alarm. The subject who came up to that. I'm in here. From the North Beach standoff on Wednesday evening was there again. And I was threatening suicide and I had taken an unknown amount of prescription medication. Due to his involvement on Wednesday night he was very agitated, aggressive and hostile towards officers. He was posturing and stating that he would fight with police if he tried to force him to go up to the hospital. Officer O'Leary had already been speaking with him and I watched her negotiate with him who was holed up in a meeting room. I observed that Officer O'Leary did an excellent job calming this person and gaining his trust. Officer O'Leary was able to negotiate that person to going up to the hospital without us having to use any force. Because of her report with that person, Officer O'Leary wrote with that person in the ambulance with BFT personnel and it remained calm and cooperative the entire time. Thanks to Officer O'Leary's negotiating skill with this person who was able to avoid any use of force and prevented any harm or injury to come to that person, BFT personnel, Howard staff and DVD officers. So that was one supervisor's note of Officer O'Leary's calming interactions with this person at this point already had a couple of crisis situations that required police intervention. That person's mother actually reached out to the police department to thank us for our efforts and dealing with her son over this time. So this is a voicemail that was left. I'm leaving that person's name out. This is blank, I'm calling for the Chief. I just wanted to commend your team for their patience and skills in dealing with my son over the past three days. He is severely mentally ill and has intellectual disabilities. Sadly, recently he's been off his medication and clearly now you've had to deal with him twice or maybe even more. I just wanted to thank you for your patience and willingness to work with him in a compassionate manner. Thank you, thanks for all you do. So the officer is that had been involved with this person crisis over the course of several interactions were obviously Officer O'Leary, Officer Kirby, Officer Gay, Officer Ellerman, and then also Sergeant Nguyen and Sergeant Handler. Great, thank you. So that was one incident that I had a couple. There were also a couple of people that posted about Corporal Navarre. The officer that stopped us while shopping at Market 32. I want to thank you. I'm sorry I didn't ask you your name. With all the bad that we are hearing in the news about police officers, I wanted to highlight the good. You stopped and gave our son an opportunity to see an officer for who you are. A citizen called to uphold the law but also a caring individual. A person who's trying to make an impact in the lives of our youngest citizens. So with deepest appreciation, we thank you for taking the time out of your lunch break to make the day of this little guy better. Be safe. So it sounds like he was on his lunch break at the grocery store and had a positive interaction with the youth. Another person wrote in about Corporal Navarre. Today I was out for a ride along with the Wellington Police Department. Wayne, who is Sergeant Navarre, met me and showed me around the department building. I was in partnered with a fantastic police officer named Brent. He was amazing with the public and myself. Very chilled and a real asset to the force. I am a police officer from Scotland. I wanted to experience policing in the US. I really enjoyed it. And I want to say thank you to Sarah Tree for organizing it and my partner for the day as well as the Sergeant. Everyone I met today was interested in my experiences and extremely friendly. Well done, Wellington Police. So we'll pass on Navarre's back there. So here Sergeant Franco, who's a community service police officer, wrote to come in two of our officers. I'm writing to commend Officer Leary and Palmatier and how they handled a particular person. That person confronted them with a two inch pocket knife in a skinny stairwell. Palmatier was able to talk her into throwing it outside. It came to a point that that person tried to run back to the department. I believe she folded the knife back up and Palmatier and O'Leary were able to stop her before she got to the department. They secured her hands with verbal commands. And ultimately she dropped the knife and were able to secure her and get her to BFT who transported her in a crisis. So it takes home with a weapon, not use force. And I think I'll just read one more. Sure. Recently stopped by Officer Marvin because of an expired registration that was due in August of 2018. The officer was not only professional but also polite and thorough. I received a warning and promptly rectified our oversight via the commission at the end of the website, which I can say actually. Nailed it. But we were fortunate that people are willing to do such a hard job with dedication and integrity. Some of them, yeah. So for the new commissioners, one of the things that we had talked about before was as commissioners to write letters to the folks that are getting, you know, accommodations from the public. I've written some. I think that Bob Simpson, I'm not sure. I think he wrote some and then he also went to roll call once or twice. I don't know if this is something I don't know how you guys feel. I feel strongly that we should continue but I'm interested to hear from the rest of you. What's the process right now by which officers get notified when they receive accommodations? So oftentimes it'll either be forwarded to them on the form of an email and it might go into their folder until they're notified of that as well. So it might get an email off from more. Help me understand the program. So there's, I'm an old soldier. So, you know, awards and accommodations I like soup sandwich on my chest already. You know, I can't get a cup of coffee with all of it but I think it was Alexander the Great said if I had enough ribbon, I could conquer the world. And I think I'm just curious about what that looks like in a police department. You know, what is the commendation? What is, in the course of a person's career, this is a long conversation so I don't really get too deep into it but I just want to understand is there something that we can refer to to look at how are officers, you know, is there a good commendation medal? Is there a meritorious service medal? Is there a, so all of those things, is there a process whereby on a quarterly basis, folks are, you know, provided commendations and so on and so forth, are we recreating a will? So Lieutenant Lawson actually deals with our medal committee. So we do have an annual awards ceremony where we give out certain types of awards and medals stuff like this may culminate in a larger award if you're getting them constantly. A lot of times what Corporal Crotty will just read we'll go into a personnel file so when we're looking at promotion, where even if somebody's up for discipline because they messed up but they have a stack of, hey, this person's really done well, they made a mistake, it mitigates, right? But as far as formal awards go, I want to talk about that for a second. Sure, so currently what we have is a chief's award which is our department's highest to a civilian, civilian, or a specific of acknowledgement. During the process of this we, throughout the year, chairperson of the awards committee, I solicit nominations from not only supervisors at the agency but also their peers as well as our civilian employees. I also task our supervisors to keep track of day-to-day and actually support our process of reviewing what our day's activities were, or highlight activities, or actions that officers or civilian employees were part of it. So Corporal Crotty will mention that we've escalated the situation where we had a derogated subject. The team did a great approach on doing an investigation that led to solving a major crime. All those things are gathered throughout the year about November, October, Mish, I'll form a committee that's representative of all of our levels of employment here from our dispatch centers, records department, sworn patrol members of the union and PPOA representatives, as well as representatives of our leadership. And we all review nominations that have come in and that committee determines what kind of level of recognition they receive. And in certain cases, some of the nominations don't reach the level of an annual award. One of the things that we've discussed is how do we recognize officers more frequently from the things they're doing because every day they're doing things that can be recognized. So we're talking about the creation of certain merit awards and those could be done based on the way our tours or mutations are done. Every four months or so. And those things can be done by a sergeant, it's a drill and roll call, but they can consist of what we have to be able to decide what the tangible significance will be. They could incorporate a good name that we turn officer to wear in their class uniform. And those merit awards can accumulate and it doesn't mean one, it could just be an added star to represent multiple groups. If he is, our leadership is trying to really recognize him. Great, thank you. If I could just be direct? Yes, please. So in the interest of time, I would just agree with the chair and say that I'm 100% behind working in whatever capacity to acknowledge the hard work of our troops. And I think that, I think there's more to it though. I think there's a lot more to it and it sounds like you're working on it. Slowly, yeah, but sort of piece me up on it. If you wanna put a timeframe on that alternate approach. Yeah, I don't wanna, currently we're trying to, we're actually incorporating some of the leadership into quarterly awards. I mean, quarterly awards would be great. It would be awesome to be able to acknowledge, to take and review the things that we hear on a monthly basis and roll up and pick out that one person that stands out and acknowledge them on a quarterly basis. There's nothing wrong with a certificate of appreciation or a certificate of achievement every now and then just to let somebody know, hey, we see you, we see that you're doing a good job. And I don't, in my first two hours of being a commissioner, I don't wanna speak to. It's a quick follow up to that. So on the one hand, I do think there's some value in the commission as a whole, kind of recognizing and appreciating what we think of as good, particularly exemplary or good instances of policing. I'm concerned about the thought about just kind of, any time a commendation letter comes in, having commission simply kind of parrot that letter back and write essentially a kind of duplicate letter based on an interaction we haven't really seen saying, so and so said this, we're also gonna write this to just say congratulations on this. I think that there's probably a more effective way to do that in part because also I just think that, I mean, the office has interaction with that particular person. It coming from me doesn't gonna mean as much that officer, I mean, I'm not, I wasn't there. So I think there's some value to the commission as a whole recognizing and appreciating the kinds of policing that we particularly, that kind of goes above and beyond that we want to see. I don't think that would need to take the form of essentially kind of writing letters at every commendation which comes in. So let me ask the officers here, what do you, how do you think that the cops would like to hear from us on a regular basis as far as good job? I think it's very valuable that they're placing a challenging position here. The commission has an important role here and your opinion and your support will go a lot right. I think it's part of us as an agency in our general body more aware of the commission as well and I think that might be included in the Supreme Court to get a sense of that relationship. But I think it would have value if it's done right and develop it on the American board. We want to make sure it's done correctly and really has the value of it so it does have, but yours, Eric, I think my opinion is it's something from in that point. We spoke about, the chair and I spoke privately about this very issue here. And I think what I walked away understanding is is we just don't have enough access to y'all. We don't, I don't, who are these people? Who are these 97 folks? Where are they at? You know, who's, what's their names? You know, what do they look like? You know, so I think part of this conversation is probably a larger conversation. Not, it goes beyond, we're talking about discipline, we're talking about awards, we're talking about wealth, wellness rather. We're talking about a lot of things to do with a lot of people that we don't even see. And it doesn't sound like the previous commissions haven't seen much either. So I would solicit, at least from a personal perspective, is, you know, not just, you know, talking about them, but you know, to interact with them. You know, where is, you know, how come the roll call? Where is it? You know, you want to, you want me to, you want to introduce me to some police? Where are they? Let's, let's develop some relationships, okay? Because we are the police department, right? So the commission, I know we move on in the interest of time, the commission's always been welcome to come to roll calls, or if you leave calls when there's a, you know, putative, some sort of nominal reason to say something or reflect on something, but that's always an invitation. Always invited to come to the award ceremony, always invited to come to the holiday party, also invited to go and ride along to the community academy, right? Also the barbecue. And then, you know, that covers a lot. Roll calls is three times a day every day. Beyond that, if you ever wanted to just come in, say hello, see how things are doing, and asked to talk to some officers, or just, you know, I have a few questions, just come and see us, but there's always a way to parlay that into interactions with other people. You're always welcome to do that. And I mentioned the community academy. You're also welcome to attend the community academy, which is, if you love this room, you could spend a lot more time in it. And also, I mean, but it's not just here, it's throughout the police department and in all offices and stuff. But it's not just this, you know, it is a programmatic thing, but you get to meet a lot of police officers when you do it, and you get to relate to them. And it sounds, it's the thing that I, I'm like, oh, that sounds hokey, but we get really positive feedback from it actually. And obviously we put our best foot forward there, but you do get to learn about, I'm sure commissioner Hughes will find where to ask questions at the community academy probing questions, but you would also, you would get to meet and learn about policing and meet our officers at a program like that. So this, we could give a whole list of ways, but there's a lot of ways to do it. No, we have to go into executive session. So let's, any other commissioner updates or comments? If anybody have any, I only have one. I just wanted to tell you, I went to get my takeout at Maya's kitchen, which by the way is really good, Asian fusion. And what did I see? But Burlington police poster, we are hiring in English and right next to it in Vietnamese. And I just thought, I took a picture. So I thought it was pretty cool. And also saying, these are for beach and parks patrol for this summer. And in the, in the part of the poster says, please, if you're interested in a career in policing, consider applying. And it was $14 an hour. It was a good wage for people for the summer. So I just wanted to share that because I was pretty excited to. Yeah, people had asked like very cynically, like if you can't read the English poster, why the hell are you gonna police the city? I said, I want somebody's, I mean, that's their skeptical view. And I said, number one, I want them to understand that people are welcome regardless of what their native language is. But number two, I want some Vietnamese Americans parent to read that in Vietnamese and come home and say, you need to join the beach and parks patrol this summer. Go get a job. So, so there was a rationale behind that. And I don't have any issue at all with multi-lingual. We just, we have Vietnamese speaking resources in our police department. So we had that, but I would put it into any language that is spoken in our county. Just a matter of finding a good translator. Great. No, I just, I wanted to share that because it was kind of fun. Okay, so we need to, any changes to the minutes from the previous meeting? And if not, we need a motion to accept the minutes. Motion to accept. Second, anybody? Yes, second. Second, all in favor? Aye. The meeting minutes from last month are approved. So next meeting, our next meeting, we are having two in July because we couldn't schedule one for June. So our next meeting is July 23rd. Is everybody good for that meeting? Yeah? I might not. No, I think I am. Okay. We just want to make sure that we have a quorum for each meeting. We don't need a 100% participation. We need to do a quorum. Okay. So just so the new commissioners know, we can talk about some agenda items now that are coming out of this meeting. But if there are some agenda items that come up between now and then, please let me know and we'll see if there's room in the agenda for that month or if we're gonna, we'd have to put it off. But I had written down some. I think, Chief Del Poso, you said that we should have the car stop data. Would we have that for that meeting? Okay, so we'll definitely have that. Will we have time or should we, to look at the directive DD 28 number four that Shireen had mentioned, or is that a bigger, we're gonna look at the entire directive. I think, and if we're looking at the entire directive, we can maybe move it to August. I think Commissioner Hughes made a good point and, you know, Eric, you. That's always like every time you go to update, like one thing is we're really gonna get the whole thing because we're signing off. Yeah. So maybe we look at August for that. Those were the two. Anybody else have any agenda items now? And if so, we can add them. And if not, we have time to still add them. Okay. We do need to go into executive session. So I need a motion to go into executive session. Will we go into executive session on the basis of after-action reports from several officers? For discussion on officer actions? Yeah, personal matters. Second. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Great. Thank you, everybody, for coming.