 call this meeting to order. And it looks like we do have a quorum. I'm only missing you all. Moves us to agenda item 1.03, additions and modifications to the agenda. And I moved to amend the agenda to add a discussion on S-124. I'd like to have that discussion happen right after agenda item 5.05, update on the body worn camera release policy. And I opened the floor for discussions on the motion. Sorry, you're muted. And sorry, so now is there any discussions on the motion on the table? I'm not seeing any. All in favor for adding a discussion on S-124. All in favor say, aye. Raise your hand. Aye. That looks unanimous. That passes. Moving on to item 2.01, approval of the minutes from our last meeting, 9.29, 2020. Commissioner Hart, motion to approve the minutes. Do we have a discussion on the table? Sorry, who was the second? I didn't catch the answer. So I think Shreen was the first. I'll second that. Is there a discussion on the floor for approving the minutes? I'm not seeing any. All in favor of approving last meeting's minutes, say, aye. Raise your hand. Aye. Aye. I'm just going to abstain because I wasn't at that meeting. Fair enough. So that passes. So that passes five yeas and one abstaining because they were not part of the part of the team last time around. And I guess with that being said, I guess I should officially introduce Stephanie Ziguino, our newest police commissioner. And I believe we've met most everybody here. But if anyone who doesn't know Stephanie, please say hello and introduce yourselves. I think I know everybody except Mr. Sullivan. We met in person actually many years ago, Stephanie, when you began the data analysis I think in the initial meeting in the Detective Services Bureau, right, discussing the data collection and analysis. So it was a little while ago now I want to say what probably at least eight years ago. Okay, nice to see you again. Thanks. Yes. But on the administrative deputy chief down. Awesome. Moving on then we'll go to agenda item 3.01, the public forum. And this I'll let Shannon take it away. So I didn't have any requests except I do see Lee Morgan is on and she I maybe I was mistaken and she wanted to speak tonight instead of last night. So there you go, Lee. Hi, can you remind me please how long I have to speak? You're the only person so I'll give you five minutes. Awesome. Thank you so much. I guess it was a little confused because on front porch says that the commission was tonight. So if I got that wrong, I apologize, which one I was supposed to speak at. But no. All right, here we go. Hello commissioners. Miss Tremel apologies if I'm saying that wrong and Chief Mirad. My name is Lee Morgan. I am a resident of Ward seven. I'm going to speak about two recent incidences that have disturbed me greatly. Both incidents involve Vermont police officers, one being a Burlington officer. On October 12th in Berrytown officer Jeffrey Strock of the uh Berlin police department murdered Julie Fandino. Julie was Officer Strock's ex-girlfriend. Officer Strock wanted to get back together and when Julie said no, Officer Strock shot her several times while her 23 year 23 year old daughter was sleeping. On October 16th Corporal William Drinkwine of the Burlington police department was charged with unlawful trespass at his ex-girlfriend's house, a felony charge. As a domestic violence survivor, these events are far too relatable. My abuser very nearly strangled me to death seven years ago. My abuser has managed to track me down after every time I move. I must be hyper vigilant of my surroundings for the next time I am tracked down. I think of Julie Fandino and I wonder when the moment was when she knew she was about to die. Did she have time to think about her daughter? While I was being strangled and began to pass out, I remember the feeling of realization that I was about to die in the presence of my higher power. I hope Julie felt her higher power in the moment before she was murdered. I am so very proud of the woman who called the police on Corporal Drinkwine. It is a statistical anomaly that she did. I also appreciate the actions of the Burlington police department to suspend the corporal and take his badge and gun. I encourage the BPD to consider methods and systems to screen for current and potential risks and incidences of domestic violence. I will be following the case of Corporal Drinkwine closely. I hope you will too. Thank you. Thank you for appreciating that. And I believe you said there was no other public comments for today? There wasn't unless anybody raised their hand. All right. I'll give another 30 or so seconds to see if anyone wants to raise their hand and comment on anything. Commissioner Durfee. I just wanted to thank the caller and show her some compassion and let her know that she is never alone and that I too have been impressed by the work with the Burlington police department in this matter. And I too see the distinctions between the two and the timing. And so I want her to know that we are, I am aware and the chief and I did talk about that. So thanks for being brave enough to call caller. Absolutely. Thank you for that. I'm not seeing any more hands for people that want to speak during public comment. So we're going to move on to agenda item number four, the chief's report. And with that I'll let Chief Mara take it away. Sorry chief, you are muted. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you too, Ms. Morgan. You and I have had a number of conversations on other issues. But thank you for speaking. The month in review and the chief's report. In the past 27 days since our last meeting on Tuesday, September 29th, that is from 929 through 1026, there have been 1,821 calls for service, 21 assaults, four of which were felonious, four sex assaults, one robbery, 169 suspicious events, 73 noise complaints, 83 vehicle crashes, of which five incurred injury and 36 were leaving the scene of the accident, 63 disturbances, 70 traffic incidents, 40 foot patrols conducted by officers, 50 incidents of threats or harassment, 45 domestic incidents, 42 of which were domestic disturbances and two of which were domestic violence felonies, two incidents of calling for fireworks, seven overdoses and five untimely deaths, including one in which officers worked for some time on the individual performing CPR until relieved by BFD and then fortunately still having a BFD call that person at the scene. I will distribute these numbers to everyone and they will be in the report as they were in the minutes that we just approved. I apologize again for not getting them to you beforehand. I try each week, each time I really do. Anyway, some other incidents, some other issues I'd like to share, staffing. Since the new budget was passed, we've had several resignations and we are now at 87 official as our as our headcount. One of those is a long-term sick and one of those is a suspended officer. That drops us to 85 effective. Additionally, one of our best officers just turned in his resignation and will serve his last day in uniform on November 9th. That's a 10-year related resignation. He has reached his 20, but real, real asset to the department and that drops us to 84 before our next meeting. We will be at 84. Another officer is in the process with the Vermont State Police, which will put us to 83 by mid-September, excuse me, mid-December, assuming no other losses and on top of those departures, again, assuming no other losses, we have an injured officer who's currently assigned to clerical duties and is anticipating potential surgery and several other officers who we may lose to a potential long-term Vermont National Guard military deployment. Back in July, on July 31st, the Burlington Free Press reported that nearly 1,000 Vermont Army National Guard soldiers are expected to begin one-year deployments the first half of 2021 to various locations as part of the quote, unquote, largest Army mission set in over 10 years. And that was according to a press release from the National Guard and again in the reported in the Burlington Free Press. I believe that our largest potential loss to that deployment would be six officers and that could potentially put us at 77 sometime in the first quarter of 2021, again, assuming no other kinds of departures. And amidst that is the workload that we've been incurring. One sort of issue that I'd like to point out. We keep track on a weekly basis of the people with whom we've had the most incidents in that time period, the weekly time period. We have one individual currently in jail right now after an aggravated assault committed last week who had incurred 84 incidents with the Burlington Police since August 1st. 84 incidents in under, what, two and a half months. 84 incidents that were increasing in violence until they culminated with this aggravated assault that was sufficient to have him held by a judge in a correctional facility. During that time period, the individual was twice given emergency evaluations and yet released and continued to have that kind of pace. That's an extreme outlier for us and a person who has all sorts of challenges that we as a community need to meet better. Challenges that surround mental health, challenges that surround substance abuse disorder, challenges that surround a propensity for violence and disorder. But that individual isn't alone. During that time period, we've had one individual who on one, again, that's one, two, three, four, five, five weekly reports tracking individuals. One individual who had 10 encounters during one weekly report and another and then had three during a following weekly report. One individual with three during one weekly report, three during another weekly report. One individual with six during a weekly report, four during another weekly report, seven during another weekly report. And those are really high resource intensive individuals that the men and women here deal with on a regular basis. I am really looking forward to us being able to get the ball rolling on this assessment, this full operational and functional assessment of the Burlington Police Department and how it polices so that we can take a look at these kinds of volume loads and determine what it is that we're able to do better in order to serve these people better. It shouldn't take 84 incidents for us to get to an individual being held in a way that keeps everyone else safe, but not him, frankly. And that isn't necessarily the solution for this individual being held in that way. We have to have and find others and other ways of helping these folks who are members of our community and the recurring connections with these people are indicative of that we deal with these folks again and again and again as police officers. We're not alone. The fire department does as well. Howard does as well. The court system does as well. And I'm looking forward to really being able to assess how it is that we can do that better and do that in a way that is less about the police alone being the responsive agency, if that's a possibility for us. And I believe that it is. So that is, I guess that that's actually my report. I guess the other things we have to deal with are other items on the agenda later on. So thank you. Sorry, I thank you for that. Anybody have any questions for the Chief in regards to this report? I'll start with the commissioners that we know fall by Commissioner Hart. Chief Mirad, can you explain the foot patrols you mentioned? I forgot how many foot patrols there were. Was that a call for service? And they responded on foot? No, foot patrols are self-initiated by officers, generally in our downtown area, but they occur in other parts of town as well. I quoted 40. There were 40 foot patrols during the period. And again, I will put all these, I will include the data specific for you that goes from police commission meeting to police commission meeting into an email that Shannon will distribute and include it in the minutes. But we also, on our Twitter page, do it on a month-to-month basis. And these same sort of calls for service that have just emerged as reasonable proxies of kinds of calls that people are interested in. There are 133 calls for service categories. But these are ones in which people are generally interested. Fireworks, frankly, probably can fall off at this point. It was of interest during the beginning of the summer, unless so now. But foot patrols are self-initiated. An officer pulls up at the parking space that's reserved for officers there on College Street near where RERAS used to be and says, I'm going out on foot and I'm 10-8 for calls. So they're still available to take calls for service while they're there, but they've put themselves on this. And if they encounter some other kind of call for service, that doesn't, the foot patrol doesn't turn into that. The foot patrol just sort of ends and the new call for service 10-10 because they observe a fight or something where somebody says, you know, needs assistance in some other way, that will just take over the officer. And so that's what foot patrols are. Just one other quick question. Do you notice any trends with the numbers that you just gave us? Are they an increase over last year? Do you have any sense of the call volume and the types of calls relative to the past? So we are, we definitely this year are going to see a massive downswing from the period of March through May and into June. It ticked up, but it is down from last year. However, that trend has been over the past several years. The trend has been one of a really sharp decrease driven almost entirely by self-initiated calls, not foot patrols, thankfully. I don't think that we've seen an egregious decrease in those. Those are important and certainly we want officers to do those. Officers, frankly, want to do them, especially those who seek the de-area assignment. But we've seen drastic reductions in traffic stops and traffic stops are also examples of self-initiated calls for the most part. And the drastic reduction in that alone comprises about 60 to 70% of the overall decrease that we've seen in type one calls for service, which calls for service can be a misnomer because it sounds like it's people calling for service and it isn't in all cases. But that overall trend, which is mostly located in our type one calls for service and not located very much in our type three calls, which are the most serious, those have remained steady over the past several years. We will see a decrease in them for 2020 owing to COVID-19. And then our type two calls, which are in between, we saw those driven down a little bit owing to I think some part of officer initiation, but driven up at the end of 20 during 2019 owing to increases in disorder, especially in the church street area. We'll see that decrease as well once we crunch the totality of the 2020 numbers. Right now we've dropped from previous times where I've read off these numbers to the police commission, because it's October and it's colder and everything drops off a little bit. And we'll continue to see that until the weather turns once again in, I don't know, when when does the weather turn again mid August and we get two great weeks or something, I think, right? So in seriousness, it comes and goes. I think this is probably a little down, but it's, I don't believe this is any further down than the trend was already demonstrating over the past several years. Thank you. Thanks. I believe Commissioner Hart, you're next. Thank you. Chief, are you about to trigger something under the BPO way with your staffing levels? Is it called emergency? I can't remember the term. I was just trying to read quickly in the contract and I wasn't finding it, but isn't there something in the 80s? It's called emergency staffing and it happens at 80, at eight zero. It is, it is not an, my wife says it is snowing. I guess it's snowing at least in the New North end. So that's something worth noting. The emergency staffing is not an automatic. It's not, it's not something that happens the instant that that, that 80 number is triggered, but it is something that we would take into consideration. There's some other models that we would take into consideration as well. Once we reach that number, but there's a reason that that exists in the contract. At that point, you really do lose the flexibility necessary to be able to perform the tasks that we're currently performing with regard to 24 hour service, with regard to full compliments of officers on, on both day shifts and both evening shifts and both overnight shifts, as well as the necessary number of officers to be assigned to the detective bureau. So that, that does happen at 80 is 80 is our moment of truth to really start considering which ones we're going to, to adopt what new plan we're going to adopt. Has it been triggered before? During the late 1990s, there was a brief period in which emergency staffing pertained owing to a series of buyouts of older officers. I want to say sometime in 98 or 99, it lasted eight to nine months, as I understand it. And was a, was very hard on the officers. It's not a kind schedule. It has, it has an unusual rotation. It removes officers from the regular assignments that they prefer. As I mentioned before, there are officers who love downtown D area because they want to be out on foot and to be interacting with people and have that kind of pace. And that gets removed from officers in an emergency staffing configuration. It's hard on decision making about plan vacations and things. And although the world is different right now, we anticipate going back at some point to a world where we get to go to, you know, go on trips again and things. But that, once upon a time was the regular schedule. It's, it's something that unions have bargained for not to have for quite some time now. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions or comments for the chief? I am not seeing any moves us on to agenda item 5.01 as a parking update from the department of public works. And I'm assuming that would be Mr. Padgett and I'll let you take it away, sir. Excuse me. I'm not sure if you are muted or not. If you are trying to speak, if you are, we cannot hear you. There we go. Thank you. It's hidden up in the corner just out of my view. All right. So let's start again. So my name is Jeff Padgett. I am the assistant director for parking and traffic over at DPW. And as you are probably aware, there we go. Thank you. As you're aware, the FY 21 budget as passed, was passed back in July or whatever. One of the conditions of that was looking at creative ways to take services that are within the police department and put them in other departments where maybe they're not necessarily where they're more appropriate, but their services can be done by other departments. It's not necessarily a policing activity. So what that manifests itself was is moving the parking enforcement group into DPW. So since August or so, I've been meeting with AC Sullivan, John King, and Director Spencer to formulate a plan to ensure that this department, the parking enforcement group that John King leads, is effectively migrated into DPW. They do a good job. We don't want to mess it up. So we put together a plan. I've got four or five slides here that I can share with you to give you a flavor. I've got actually about 15 slides. I got three or four or five slides that I could show you to sort of give you the idea of where we're headed, how we're thinking about this, and some of the progress that we've made over the past couple of months. So fundamentally, what we are trying to do is define a roadmap to improve and refine the parking experience in Burlington with an integrated approach to sales, service, and compliance. Basically, what's happening now is I sell parking and John King enforces parking. So if somebody buys parking from me and they have a problem with their parking experience, they get a ticket, which is just a crazy situation. So what we're trying to do is say, okay, let's integrate this into a unified approach. So let me flip to the next slide here. So basically, what we're trying to do, let me go down to this actually. So what this document does is this lays out what the purpose of this project is, why we're doing it, what our vision and mission is, what our values are, to guide this process, who we think the stakeholders and the players are, and then what the project phases and timeline are. So I got a slide of all these things, but I think what you guys for now really care about, and I'm happy to answer questions afterwards, is what does this look like? So what we've done is we've broken this integration. So we started out calling it a migration, but we realized that it's not a migration, it's an integration. It's taking parking services from one department and integrating them with parking services. So phase one is administrative integration and reorganization. So we're actually, I've got a draft memo set right now that's going to go to city council on November 9th, that will administratively move the budget and the human resources into my control, so to speak, move them to DPW. So it's literally the mechanical moving of budget and the mechanical moving of boxes on the org chart. So once everybody's in the same room, so to speak, and we're all in the same department, and I have quote unquote the authority over all of it, then we start looking at operational integration. How can we take, so basically, John King's group sells resident parking. We sell parking passes in the garages. How do we integrate that so that we have a single point of contact, a single source for all parking permit needs? And what does that mean for integration of staff? What can we use John King's group to do that some of my group does? What can some of my group do that John King's group does? And that will allow us to start talking about this consolidation of sales and compliance. Now what this will do is it will blow open the door to a conversation about ordinance change and charter change. Not to get too deep in the weeds, but the parking garages are in a sequestered budget. Money is not allowed to flow out of the garages. So we may, in order to be as optimal and creative as possible, we may need to approach charter change to change that budget. So anyway, there's a lot of interesting stuff in phase two on reorganization, optimization, and then we get to phase three, which is what everybody jumps to right when I first started talking about that. They want to know what John's going to move out of the police department or where his office is going to be. Well, we don't know yet. And it's going to really depend on how we integrate the services. Where does it make the most sense to house this parking service? Does it make sense as a storefront and shirt street? Don't know yet. And there's also technology that has to integrate. He has a whole citation program platform. It's actually the same vendor that we have for our parking garages. So there's a possibility we could lay those platforms together. So there's a lot of possibly expensive and data complicated systems that need to get integrated. But that's all, I mean, that's all not till way down the line. We got to get through phase one and phase two first. So roughly speaking, the timeline for this is we spent a couple of months building this integration plan that I'm talking about right now. And now we're in phase one. Like I said, we're going to city council on the ninth. Oh, and I skipped one step. So DC, Sullivan, John King and Chapin and I we've met for a number of months in this integration plan development. And now I'm meeting weekly with a group that includes John King, some of my staff, some of PPD staff as a working group to sort of hash through some of the technical aspects of integration. So we're looking to get through this phase one of getting the mechanics done and working on this reorganization by the end of the year. We'd like to have a reorganized department by the end of the year. And then start thinking about how we get into these next two phases, phase two or phase three, not probably not till February timeline. So this is we're moving deliberately, slowly, we don't want to screw up John's group, we want to make it make the transition smooth. So anyway, I could go on and on. But I think that's the core of what most people want to know is what's your plan and when are these things going to happen. So happy to answer questions or if I blew past something that I don't see because I'm in the weeds on it. Any questions for Mr. Padger in regards to this? I'm raising my hand. Oh, I'm sorry. Let's see. Commissioner Derfee. Thank you. So this plan, I'm going to go ahead and throw it out there. It looks like it's going to create some efficiencies and really like draw people together. I think that's the purpose of this plan. So is there a cost reduction? That's what taxpayers are thinking about. Is there going to be a cost reduction with this implementation? Well, we will see when we get into phase two. I'm really, I'm really hesitating because right now we have, we have a staffing plan for the garages and we have a staff, we have a staffing, an org chart for the garages and we have an org chart for John's group. And I really want those org charts to come together in that phase two. And if there are ways that we can optimize staffing, then yes, we will look at that. But the goal, one of the goals of this is not to eliminate positions. That's not a goal. I'm sorry. I'm not talking about eliminating positions. Oh, okay. I'm talking about creating efficiencies and that's not always somebody losing their job. Right. Okay. Yes. Making the work that they do more efficient. So because you're talking about two departments together and to me, in my experience, that means that people will be working more efficiently. Yes. Don't, I don't want anybody to think I'm talking about people losing their job. That's not what I'm talking about. Saving money on something that's more efficient for tech. Okay. Sorry, I misunderstood. Yes, absolutely. I was actually having a conversation today with our operations foremen garages. He does a lot of customer service, but he's also in charge of managing 13 people. He's in charge of an incredible amount of stuff. And on top of that has to do face-to-face personal interaction with customers. And John's got two folks on his team that do customer service. So I've actually been emailing with John just today about what's his perspective on moving some of this customer service into his staff. And then, you know, first thing he said, little baby, we went third customer service people. So this is what I'm saying is we need to get into this phase two. I need to get through phase one, start to understand where all the boxes are on the art chart and then get into phase two. It's okay. Where are the real operational efficiencies? So the answer is yes. We're looking at that. And just one more follow-up on that. So it looks like the first thing in the timeline is the city council is going to approve a budget on expectation of moving the parking enforcement from BPD to DPW. So there is a budget. So there is. Okay. Yes. Well, it's the current but what were basically what happened was he the BPD budget was streamlined and organized so that it's so that the enforcement budget is sort of in a box and it's clean. There's no sort of tangential tentacles sticking into it from BPD. The enforcement budget is put in a box. At least a great, please bear in mind that a great job of that. So what I'm going to the city council with is that box and that box right now has a code and it is 17 and I want to change that code to 19. And that's it. No up, no down, no changes at all. Just move the spreadsheets on this page. Okay. Thank you. That was very helpful. Yeah. And same with HR same with personnel. I'm updating the job descriptions to remove reference to BPD and doing a little bit of housekeeping and cleaning but no changes beyond just the mentioning of possibly the customer service folks doing some of the customer service work for the permitting. Thank you very much. Any further questions or comments? I am not seeing any. Mr. Padgett, thank you very much for this. Yeah. Good to know what it's going to look like moving forward and good luck to you in the future work. Great. Thanks. Awesome. Take care. Yeah. All right. Moving on to agenda item 5.02, which is update of department directed DD 0.02 grooming standards uniforms equipment inspections and use of tobacco products. I will flip this back over to John Mira to she's there to explain this for us. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to say with regard to John King, John King was hired by this police department by the city of Burlington in 1965. John King has 55 years of service at the moment and is an amazing repository of knowledge about about the city about the PD where he did I don't know 35 I think 32 years and then and about parking. And certainly one of the single most important parts of this transition is is making certain that we download as much of John as we can as we move as we take this entity and share it from one part to another part of the city. But you know just worthy of note I think that that level of service in that tenure to directive DD 0.02. So DD 0.02 is grooming standards uniforms equipment inspections and use of tobacco products. It was a split directive it was a single directive until the end of last year at which point we worked for a long time internally in the BPD to have a discussion about these kinds of issues uniform standards for the most part, but also some other parts and we gave it to the police commission last year for them to review and approve and the police commission did thank you. What we found at least with regard to so no problems with DD 0.01 have seen nothing there but with regard to DD 0.02 we found a little sort of a lack of clarity that was initially corrected by a memo back in in January so not too long after that was initially approved. A memo was sent out to the body to clarify that one discussion of class B basically it's a small matter it's the fact that class B uniforms which are similar to what I'm wearing right now technically this is a class A because it has certain amounts of it has these these shiny things on the epaulets the little bit more formal class B looks similar we don't see a lot of officers in class B anymore unfortunately in my opinion but the officers were able very convincingly to demonstrate why the the load carrying vest is so much healthier for them but we wanted to make certain that officers could wear this class B uniform under an external vest carrier and that hadn't been really stated in the directive so we clarified it recently we had an issue with some officers who were interpreting a and or phrase that should have been and to say that they had to they could wear their name or their shield number and that really has to be shield and name number and so by that time I said okay we've got two things now that are small corrections but since they're two of them I might as well just ask the commission for permission to republish the directive in all respects the same as you approved last December except for these two changes and those two changes were sent out in red and shown to the commission and I hope you will agree are pretty small pro forma changes one of which is truly an enhancement with regard to making certain that we have officers with names and numbers at all times when they are in uniform and with that I'll open the floor to discussion on on updating this on this department policy I'm happy to bring a motion to approve if that's where we are if there's no discussion I'm not seeing any discussion or any need for discussion so if you want to make a motion that we adopted as amended and I saw commissioner Durfee's hand right before commissioner heart part sorry so she seconds it all in favor of approving the updated department directive please say I erase your hand all right fine and I think that is unanimous so that passes unanimously thank you all for that yeah thank you very much and moving on to get to item 5.03 um continue our discussion from last meeting on the city council's reasons and ask specifically that we um begin it begin a review and analysis of impediments to stronger disciplinary measures involving brutal or excessive force and um I know shireen has been working on a draft for this I know it's still a little bit more work on it so I don't think there's really much to discuss on this unless uh commissioner heart wants to add anything to that I would just add that my hope is that we would approve it in the November meeting I would not circulate it that day but give it to folks in advance and if they had feedback then we could talk about it at that meeting but the hope would be to vote on it at the November meeting so it could be presented it's supposed to be delivered to the city council by the end of November and uh anybody have any further discussion on this I'm not sorry uh commissioner heart just a quick question I assume uh commissioner heart you don't mind people contacting you before you circulate something just to check and see about where you are in the drafting process I would welcome anyone who wants to see it and no I would be thrilled um I've gone through I have a draft and that the reason I'm not doing much with it at this point is because I'm not satisfied with it so um I would love to have some input on it and other thoughts it's not meant to be from me it's meant to be from the whole commission so thank you awesome uh thank you for that update uh moving on to hi I'm sorry could you send out what you already have I can send it with a little more work but I yes you know things have gotten so complicated Milo with open meeting law I um there was a lot of discussion what my concern is just yesterday on our joint committee meeting I got the sense from hearing the city counselors who just had training that when we my concern suddenly and I'm just I'm saying this because I'm still trying to digest this is that there are some limitations on our ability now to even um circulate a document what I was reading is what we're supposed to do is send it out and then at the but because we always want to reflect what we're doing to the public they they should always know the process that what we're supposed to do is send it out and then at the next meeting like you would send me your changes and then at the next meeting we would talk about what was sent and the changes I'm happy to send it out I'm just I'm trying to digest all of this open meeting um make sure that what we're what I'm doing is in keeping so I will send it and it's I need to get this off my desk and get it to other people to weigh in on so thank you all right um chair do you mind if if joy is on the if our city one of the city attorneys is on the phone if she can speak to what that process could be if she I'm putting her on the spot completely sorry joy but it came up last night yeah we did discuss this a little bit last night um I think it's totally fine if you want to send it around for people to look at it just can't have any discussion over email about proposed changes and things so if people have proposed changes that you want to just ask that you don't email those back but that you bring them to the next meeting for discussion commissioner sorry just to clarify that one point those even suggestions for revisions can't even be made one-on-one so if a draft is circulated to a group for for for consideration a future meeting then does that foreclose one-on-one email conversations about potential revisions or no not necessarily um I just want to there's there's a fine line between two people having a discussion about something and then getting to the point where everyone is having that one-on-one conversation to do it separately um so I mean if there's a phone call saying like hey let's talk about this I think that's okay but I do just want to urge refraining from having group discussions in the in the creation of the draft even though we're taking serial discussions yeah thank you all right um there's no further discussions on that we'll move on to I think I'm sorry commissioner green on how to hand I'm sorry miss that it's okay joy just trying to thread this needle uh would it not be feasible to uh at the next meeting provide the first draft that shireen is going to send us and then the amended draft based on individual feedback that we give for revisions I mean in that way all of that information then becomes public uh there's no subterfuge there but it does give it does give the opportunity to make these revisions um before the meeting so that they can actually be discussed at the meeting so I think what we want to do there which is something that happens at city council too is to post the original draft and then also post people's proposed changes yeah with that and then if someone beforehand wants to combine those all into one as long as we have each individual proposed changes I think that's okay great all right um any further questions or comments um so just to confirm I believe it was said that the city council expects this back at their November meeting uh that is my understanding yes so then we would definitely want to do it the way that it was just discussed or we will we wouldn't have it done if we didn't do it the way it's just discussed realistically right they said the report is due November 31st so yes I think that is the goal is to have it voted on for at our November meeting if possible which would be Thanksgiving week I believe I was gonna well I was gonna get to that uh at the very end of the meeting but it was either gonna be 1117 or 1124 depending on scheduling due to Thanksgiving thank you very well any other further questions or comments all right moving on then to agenda item 5.04 which is uh continuing discussion the mayor's press conference asked from a month ago and basically he has tasked us with coming up with a policy to um release information to the public pertaining to investigations involving police misconduct and I have reached out to a couple people one being senior staff attorney Jay Diaz from the ACLU and I've reached out to a couple other people I know that attorneys in various um aspects of the law that I kind of deal with this kind of stuff and I'm awaiting feedback on that I hope to have a draft written next week and a half to then circulate and move on with this current new process of working on drafts in hopes that we have um a draft we can vote on by our next meeting that I can turn into for the 31st of November to the city council mayor and if anyone has any questions or comments on my process on that have you think your questions uh commissioner Saguina followed by commissioner Dorfee this is a question just because I'm new so you're working on drafting this policy yourself in consultation with various entities okay yes uh I'm not I'm not having them write it for me I'm just looking for input on questions that I have and how to best formulate that um that said um policy writing is not my strong point but due to meeting laws and this uh restrictions I don't really know a much better way to go about doing it um unless somebody um that is well first the writing policy would like to take it upon themselves but not I'm like I said I'm more than happy to do that um did you have a starting point for a policy did you look at some other cities that might have something similar no um I in my reaching out to people I'd asked if they had any documents pertaining to this that could help steer me in this and I like as I said I'm away in response from um some people on that thanks you're welcome next I believe those uh commissioner Dorfee uh yeah just one quick question about that um so we were looking at um suggested language from the city is that not being considered at all my understanding was that Jay or Jay Diaz or the ACLU was gonna take a look at that as a starting point but I'm not sure I understand you correctly we're gonna are we gonna try to are you gonna write something from scraps then and not use that document at all um so when I talked to uh mr Diaz um basically uh he hadn't sent me any information at all yet um he requested that um that we have a conversation like over the phone or in person just to kind of um see where I was at because he stated that um I asked him was far too complex to um put in just the email by itself so I was gonna meet him with him and then kind of lay out some of the things I think that needs to be included in that and then kind of go from there I hope that answers your question um yeah I mean that sounds like it my question I'm sorry sorry I can't see my mute button for some reason there's a warning over it yeah I guess that answers the question and the other questions or comments I'm not seeing any uh so I'll move us on to agenda item 5.05 which is I apologize can I go back to the previous of course just briefly uh have you have you so you have or have not consulted with the uh city attorney about the constraints that the contract in DPOA and the city imposes on releasing information um I reached out and I'm awaiting reply on that thank you moving on to agenda item 5.05 which is an update on the body worn camera release policy and I guess I'll um I guess I'll I mean I got the email you sent me and I guess uh you guys just want to update the full um council and I guess where we are at where we are at on that question or derpy okay so I must be confused because I thought we were talking about that before but so yes we um this was due actually to the city council by the end of this month they had um the mayor had requested that the police commission look at this policy um they're uh um in looking at the policy there's a number of things in play in terms of uh working continuing to work on the policy continuing to look at different things um there's there's things going on the legislature there are things going on in the city um that have a potential to impact um this work so um I just you know in in researching everything and look at everything I I looked at um what was presented from the city and um there's there's some significant issues with what was presented so I thought that's what you were talking about Jabu I'm sorry if I'm off I I thought that's what we're talking about in terms of like um talking to the ACLU because I know that we did have some concerns with some specific language in that policy so I was just going to address that quickly and then um talk about some of the body concerns yes and my my understanding is that there are kind of two issues on the table and one is whether or not material relating to investigations uh disciplinary investigations can be released to the public and the second question is whether you know the guidelines that might govern whether or not the BPD can proactively release uh body worn camera footage in in cases of interest to the public so the previous discussion was about uh investigatory materials uh this discussion is specifically about body worn cameras um and I I I did have some questions about right so the so the mayor has asked us the mayor was hopeful that a policy could be approved by the end of October I suspect we will not be able to meet that particular deadline because there are still some things to discuss but I wanted to have some questions about the memo that the that mayor Weinberger sent out with uh kind of guidelines what he would like to see in you know structure a body really a body camera footage release policy so the the memo that the mayor circulated uh I think there's a little bit of ambiguity I'd just like to ask um either chief mirad or since Kyle Dodson is on also uh Kyle just to kind of resolve some of those ambiguities that I have so the the memo kind of seems to make two distinctions one is with respect to body camera footage that governs incidents three categories right you know body camera footage that governs incidents involving police use of force resulting in serious body injury or death police force and involves use of aerosols connect electrical excuse me conduct electrical weapons etc the third is body worn footage that addresses an instance of significant public attention or concern so that's kind of one category and then there's a separate category which just governs how the department is releasing footage in response to public record act requests um and it seems to me as though right so there's a there's a kind of disclaimer that says that uh privacy and release timing goals could be achieved using one of both the following methods a fully blurring the video footage that individuals cannot be identified or be fully reacting audio data and I think it was unclear and I and I gather from uh some of the concerns that's uh jts the acu but also there was some confusion about whether or not that requirement of redacting fully were fully blurring video footage or fully redacting audio data when that applied to footage from both the categories category one and category three or just the material that was requested through a public records request my understanding from seeing the memo was that uh you know footage that the that the mayor or that the chief or that the police commission deemed to be of public interest or footage that governed um kind of serious uses of force I'm sorry uses of force involving serious bodily injury I should say that those were not subject to the qualification they might be fully blurred or the auto be fully redacted but it was like I said it was unclear to me so could I get some clarification on that point if the question wasn't clear I'm happy to rephrase it and also that's either like I said either chief mirad or Kyle it's about to weigh in also um I'm not actually entirely certain I don't know if director Dodson wants to weigh in I certainly also would open it up to deputy chief Sullivan or deputy chief lebrac about some of these issues um you know there are let's just went out um the the the fact is that were it not for um redaction requirements under the law uh I think that we we'd almost want to release all of it um it's the it is the redaction and the the the costs of that the very prohibitive costs of that didn't make it difficult for us and so we're going to trend towards trying to minimize those costs in whatever way we can while maintaining the the real need for for transparency right so if I could just jump in really quickly before um you know us wants to follow up um right so my my understanding would be that the items again I'm I'm saying following our category one so uh instance of involving police is forced to open serious bodily injury instance using neuroscience et cetera instance that the police commission determines our significant public attention and concern that there are not so many of those cases every month or every year that would make a more selective redacting of that footage in order to meet the requirements uh impractical or impossible that that the only concern is that with respect to public records requests that those might be so numerous as to make it impossible to kind of more selectively redact that footage that was my understanding was that not what you were thinking of I think Matt please I was just going to add I know we've had this discussion previously but we lack capacity to do this so currently we have one person who has any experience redacting video and she has a lot of other job responsibilities she is our ID technician she's responsible for cataloging and maintaining all of our evidence and that is her primary responsibility as well as crime scene processing so the this is an additional responsibility that she has taken on with this technology um and and she is the only one as I said who has this experience so although you're correct commissioner harp that there are less incidents of this nature it would still be a burden on our capacity currently uh is the so it's the burden the number of people that are trained or the the the way they would get to track from an officer's currently assigned duty so I'm I'm essentially wondering the difficulty of training extra officers to be able to just do that particular kind of redaction I honestly it's it's it's both we just don't we've lost we our capacity is so diminished at this point that the officers that we do have currently I believe we have five general detectives in the detective services bureau currently who have a caseload that is essentially maxed out and then we have our uniform officers where we're barely able to staff shifts at this point so being able to take some of those people and attempting to cross train them um it would be very difficult to to answer requests in a timely way as far as any sort of redaction again going frame by frame 30 frames per second depending on the length of the video which is why my personal opinion is I would prefer to release everything unredacted I don't I don't know that I that we necessarily disagree obviously we want to respect people's privacy or that's a concern but I believe the statute actually says that it gives you justifications to redact I don't know that it's a requirement to redact there are certain statutes that do require information to be kept private outside of the public records act so there is an exemption in the public records act for information that is by law confidential so that that information it would be far less than the exemptions in the public records act but there is still some information that is required by law to be um redacted and not just allowable to be redacted I think I saw Commissioner Durfee with a per hand race for comment question so uh I just opened what some notes that you had written Randall about your comments um so I just want to be clear on the purpose of reviewing uh the mayor's memorandum and his encouragement um that was the same day that you know Kyle came on board you know his encouragement to try and get you know a fully formed policy and I think the reason and I'm just you know I was appointed on 629 so I wasn't around for any previous conversations but when you look at that actual document um you know folks have asked for this this is part of a resolution that's being worked on and so there was a sort of a general feeling in the public that you know we we we want to know what the policy is we want to know why we can't see something and one of the things I thought was important and missed in this memorandum was that and you know in speaking with other big more experienced commissioners um we see unredacted footage as a as a citizen body we police commissioners have um can see that unredacted footage and so I think the the main concern was that citizens were feeling like okay you know this is some you know this is something that we're being kept out of kept away you know how can we have access um more access and so that's not in the memorandum it does not say that the police department can view uh police commission can view the unredacted um footage and I think you know from a citizen's perspective um that makes me feel better knowing that someone can look at that um that was the concern that's why we were asked to do this work is because people in the community were saying you know what we really want to know what under what conditions this can be released so that's missing from the memorandum and the other thing that's missing is you know when you look at it and I think this is I'm not even going to try to you know paraphrase the question that Randall um was posing but um if you look at item three and I wish I was sharing my screen because that I think that would be more appropriate um I want to talk about the staffing levels I I want to talk about that I want to bring that up because if I'm wrong about this somebody can jump in and tell me that I'm wrong about this but this is a this is a memo that is really meant to satisfy the public's need to know their rights and so every time this topic comes up there's you know a lot of discussion about what we cannot do what we don't have the technology to do we can't do it we're understaffed we don't have enough people and I totally get that I totally understand that because I've been to the police department and I've seen what it takes to redact so I get that but on three on number three it says you know we're we're number two no given the current staffing of the Burlington Police Department the department does not have the capacity to fully redact videos consistent with the Vermont Public Records Act however there are reasons and that goes on to Randall's question but honestly if we're going to if we're being asked I get confused because there's there's all kinds of things going on and we're going to talk about S-124 and we're going to talk about S-119 all active in the legislature and sooner or later laws are going to be passed on this right now looking at this document I think we really it's not about staffing it's about technological advances that have not you know been made if you even had a hundred more people to do this my understanding is that the process is so cumbersome that it really isn't going to help the what people want to know is can somebody see it unredacted who can see it unredacted and when can they see it unredacted who is looking out and protecting this footage it's pretty simple to me so I just I really want to say those things because those are the issues that I have with the memorandum and you know when you're looking at three and you're saying okay well if we can't we're not able to keep up with the Vermont the law but in these other ways we can that's something to me that you know I guess the city attorney Eileen worked on this everybody else worked on it those are the questions I have it's like okay our is that is that a is that a full policy then if you if you can't adhere to the Vermont Public Records Records Act but you can do these other things just the language really tripped me up on that so if anybody has any you know feedback or thoughts on that that'd be great commissioner heart thanks so this is not actually a direct follow-up commissioner fee to your your question this is one of these questions for joy um and I'll actually just start with that question um you had you had mentioned that the Vermont Public Records Act makes some claims about things that kind of so some protective categories that that would allow for certain um for certain data to be hold back but doesn't require that it be held back any suggestions there were other statuses that do require that certain information be kept from public or held back uh and I'm someone at first does that do those taxes you're thinking of do those govern only kind of city entities or those also govern uh private entities such as newspapers right because I'm thinking of footage which kind of you know gets acquired by the media through discovery and civil and in civil criminal cases that gets released eventually though that material usually is not redacted so I'm essentially wondering because how extensive are the statutory restrictions on information that can be released um and do those just govern the city would be the same restrictions for other entities and that's an interesting question I think it kind of give you the lawyer answer it depends on the statute and the information involved so for example a lot of for example one is like information related to juveniles who are within court jurisdiction that is directed at the the custodians of the information so the court the police department the state's attorneys etc and then there's others I'm not sure if I can think of an example off the top of my head where it would be directed at like maybe an employer that had specific information like social security numbers and things like that so it really is kind of a case specific inquiry there yes but but then it seems to me as though those categories are somewhat limited and so so I'm hearing both Chief Murad and V. C. Sullivan saying look you know if it if they're up to them they just release you know kind of everything at least what they have without redactions and I'm hearing you say that the the number of cases in which material needs to be redacted are pretty minimal in reviewing public records requests which I do quite a bit um that is not an exemption that we use too frequently but it definitely does does come up with some regularity but it certainly is not the bulk of the the redactions that we've made in a in a document right I do think that it certainly should be part of the consideration I understand that you're trying to do this to find a way to efficiently share this information with the public but um there is information that we generally do redact on the records act like victim information and things like that that I just I want people to keep as part of the consideration in this that that there might be sensitive information about individuals who are not necessarily directly involved in the incident and question in there no yeah that's absolutely right right so look I I would prefer that um because that especially with videos that are judged to be of kind of particular importance or sensitivity that those videos be kind of released in a way which can address public concerns so that material gets released more broadly I understand that kind of with you know kind of with general public records requests uh it makes sense to me that that might be um would have you know potentially more redactions to it just because again like if it is a labor intensive process to determine of you know if someone for example wants to submit a public record because of every single video that the department has um you know that would be then a kind of time-consuming process to go through all of that and determine whether any of the um you know any of these categories are whether any kind of violations in any of those videos but for material that is judged of particular interest or importance or sensitivity that the commission or the chief or the mayor determines needs to be released it seems as though we ought to kind of air on a way of making that material available even if it's not um maximally protecting uh public privacy even though I think that there should be like I think that is a very high concern that we ought to have about information which needn't be released but you know which might be included in videos that are of concern so ideally I would like material to be kind of screened with with an eye towards um since the mature mature that is um you know kind of legitimate privacy interests um but I'm anticipating that like I said of that category of videos that are deemed to be particularly sensitive that there will not be that many of those videos uh that was not a question sorry that was just a statement but um I would certainly welcome anyone's feedback about whether or not they think that's well either one that there would be more videos than I'm that I'm suggesting in that first category or two whether that kind of balance of releasing videos without you know with with fewer redactions in order to not overly tax the department's capacities would be a good idea um I guess I have one question for chief mirad in regards to this um the hiring freeze for hiring officers would that um prohibit you guys from hiring somebody to do like this kind of evidence-based work video redactions type work no would not although uh our id tech is a solo at the moment is solo at the moment because her uh we had two id techs um one left in january it took us a long time to identify a um uh a partner and hire another that individual had stayed only a very short time owing to family considerations she was not from uh burlington it was a big move for her and it became uh difficult uh left quickly we only just hired another so hiring can take time but we are not prohibited because of the resolution for racial justice um from hiring those kinds of positions and in fact could if if authorize and if if necessary based on a change in this kind of release policy thank you uh christa harp followed by christia saguino uh I'll make this quick then uh so do you anticipate then the department having the capacity to do more selective redactions of video in the near future do you mean owing to the fact that we do have another person in id unit now or um as soon as that individual gets spun up on the technology sure that will absolutely increase the bandwidth uh on this will also just make a what should have been a two-person job all along a two-person job again for amy's sake thank you uh and i think dc sullivan's got a point too which maybe i propoded this um go ahead i can wait i was just going to say we're in the process of transferring over to a barcoded evidence documentation system and we periodically have to go through and audit the evidence that we have so my understanding from talking to our current id tech is that it would probably take one person fully dedicated five years to go through all of the evidence that we have and re-document it into the new system so just as far as we have this one other id tech that we have a lot of other background issues that we're having to deal with in addition to this topic also um for chief mirad it does the time it takes to redact is that similar to the time it takes to do facial blurring those both uh time time intensive yes so so essentially it takes three times as long as the video that is being uh that is being contemplated for review or release to be redacted um you have to watch it you then want to go through it and and redact faces as necessary blurring and then you go through it again and do audio uh and that's the current process and it is laborious in time state times it takes time there are some technologies out there that claim to be able to do it better uh commissioner nipper has mentioned some um i shared with uh commissioner grant some documents that come from the uh they come from the vendor axon for for a lot of money they offer packages that claim to do some of this using artificial intelligence in better ways um the other by the way processes that i neglected to mention is that the work has to be checked by someone else so there's another viewing to ensure that the the proper redactions were made prior to its release um but those things do cost they're not they're not really perfect yet by any means um and for the time being it's it's not this isn't CGI nobody goes through frame by frame and repaints the you put a box on somebody's face and for the most part the box can then follow that face around unless the face moves a certain way or goes off screen a certain way and then the box loses it you have to start you have to re-initiate that at that point um so it takes time thanks called off for title apologies um i'm wondering if for the sake of moving things along notwithstanding what sound like legitimate challenges uh and impediments that there be a proposal move forward that takes those things into consideration i have not heard per going back to randall that it's absolutely um impossible or illegal to send out unredacted footage if and maybe i missed that but that could be one proposal um and then another proposal could be inclusive of the costs that it would take to have someone do the redacting that we think is necessary so you know moving forward it's always going to be the case that um we'll make we have to make decisions so there's a strong interest in the public in having this um and uh we can present to the you know to the mayor a way that it can happen where we release a lot more footage particularly perhaps the ones randall uh is speaking of that are of particular interest and then we put uh in in the proposal what things would be necessary to make that happen and then there's a decision about how important it is do we make it happen but rather than you know this is similar to a conversation we had before so rather than doing that let's just put it forward and say this is what's requested here's what it would take to meet that request and then we could decide whether that's something we want to do i imagine chief are there sorry uh jabu there there must be exemplars people we talk to uh you know forces that do the redacting at this level and how many people did they use how many uh you know man and woman hours does it take i imagine that um there's someone out there doing more releasing of body cam footage than we are and figuring out what they had to do to make that happen or maybe that's not true i don't know maybe that's a false assumption on my part believe that you can that it would be who i don't know the full story i i do know that i i seattle for a while was releasing almost everything and then it found out that it couldn't release everything and then it realized that it couldn't release anything and actually i think stopped its program and a couple of other entities have have done have found themselves in similar straits um i'd want to drill into that better because i'm i'm not giving a full picture of that story and it's certainly more nuanced and complicated than i am relaying uh but there have been situations like that and and certainly it would be worth looking into to determine that question hard thanks to clarifying question then so at absent right now a policy that that determines that that governs every such instance right now chief mirad do you see any kind of obstacles right now to uh your making a decision to release some footage that would kind of meet one of those initial categories that you deemed to be of interest to the public no i i do not and we we have done so on an ad hoc basis i think the question has been all along removing that ad hocness uh if if such is a term um so that it doesn't appear to be only done in instances that are to the benefit of the department for example um but we have done it in the past i am firmly in favor of doing it more often and and uh you know i think that the issue is is a uniform policy that that then sweeps up a lot of things that aren't as necessary and and eat resources mr thank you i'm mr dotson hope this doesn't fall into the category of um perhaps cavalier or irresponsible but we're in this moment and there's lots of things um being asked for and uh in my short time of research and conversations um it appears to be the case that on many of these reforms there aren't terribly many communities that are way down the road right there doesn't seem to be places that are 15 20 years in they worked out the kinks they know exactly how it works that there's just not a lot of that so um you know there's a certain amount i think of ready to aim um and uh that we kind of get out in front of things right and that um if we're feeling fairly confident there won't be a lawsuit or a massive federal fine or something that we just do things because um otherwise um bringing up what can be um uh legitimate uh concerns because the devil's in the details on all this stuff um appears to the public to be obstruction um uh it makes it um uh look like the chief always wants to bring up some impediment and rather than that let's just put the stuff out there and then we'll have maybe the same experience other places have where we do something and then we got to pull it back because we learned after we did it but at least we can learn in our community and there'll be a dialogue and we'll say hey the people ask for we put resources to it and we put the thing out there and then we learned and then we you know have to change but at least the experience will serve as the thing that causes an adjustment not the chief of police saying well there's all these things in the way so we shouldn't even do it and not that john's saying that i'm i'm really saying that i don't think it doesn't sound like this proposal is something that uh the chief would necessarily disagree with so let's give the people what they want and then you know move forward my suggestion question heart yeah thanks no i yeah and to be clear like i i am entirely in favor of um having a policy that that says that when uh particular footage is of concern to the mayor the chief of police the city council i'm sorry the police commission that that footage should be released kind of prioritized for release i'm having with a policy that says that i'm also happy with obviously a policy that indicates that the department is complying with the law of respect for the records requests right that is also important um i i do not i i think that there is danger in having a policy that essentially says that the department is releasing every amount of footage that it has because of just the concerns about surveillance right so that becomes a large amount of footage which is covering people in a lot of different aspects of their lives and and when you say well you know like we can we can work out the kinks on the line and the problem of course with the current age of uh data processing is that once that information is released that information doesn't go back into the bottle right so i i do think that kind of making sure that uh that any policy which is kind of initially formulated is tailored as narrowly as possible to the primary concern about the incidents that are of particular importance um and that that is not something which is kind of purely determined by chief of police or by the mayor but that there is some oversight of that by kind of you know the the police commissioner or the representatives of the population of Burlington i think that is important but i i'm certainly concerned about the surveillance aspect of just saying you know put things out there because people want it to be out there and then we'll figure it out down the line i think that would be um too hasty of a policy to adopt and i guess and the the memo with me i put out was i think a little bit vague about how that would happen so that's my major concern if i may the the one time that i during my two stances acting chief have put out video was because a uh because inquiries were made indicative of a pending suit and that was what was determined that that level of public interest and and a desire for therefore public clarity and transparency was what uh what required it um in other instances you know i think that we could discuss and i believe i discussed that matter with the police commission and and and discuss the intention to do that um but i think that with with other instances i mean you know that that might be a threshold it may be a threshold that public inquiry has been made i have shared on in other instances video with various members of the commission not in the entirety um because of specific questions raised by members of the community via social media the uh you know direct contact by members of the community to members of the police commission and you know in those instances had police commissioners decided as a body let's release this um i would have been happy to do so uh similarly if if the police commission itself is is uh something that can on behalf of the community view things and say not needed to be released or or we've seen it then then that too is is a potential policy i'm not proposing that i'm suggesting you know i don't know if the police commission feels uh that it can sort of carve out for itself that role although frankly i think that is a portion of its role um but uh but nevertheless those are the situations and instances in which we have shared these kinds of footages absent them being requested by someone else taken by someone else and then released by someone else mr johnson i wonder if we step back a little bit and anyone please uh wane if you think i might be a bit off here but um so in place as i understand it um as it relates to what happens in terms of officer interaction is where i've been in conversations with um uh the command about um a new system that captures that where this data will be put so already um officers need to record what they do and then there's a process through command through leadership through uh up through like sergeants of tenants writing up to the dcs that reviews things so there is a process but the problem is we have a trust issue right so there's oversight but part of the body cam is a trust issue and one of the things that you can do to uh and this is once again if we're looking at this as a trust issue and a transparency issue rather than putting out all the footage we could find some thoughtful way of putting out footage on some kind of cycle that would effectively serve as a spot check we'd still have Randall's piece this would be in addition to the specific ones that raised to a level maybe the standard is not quite what the chief talked about with two suits but there's something pretty controversial pretty significantly looked at and those are specific beyond that there could be a spot check right the officers always have this footage but we would only release it on some interval and we release some significant amount of it on some interval so people could see this is what it looks like when Burlington officers interact with the public and it could perhaps serve as part of this trust piece because people could say well I saw that and the person was courteous and they have a procedure and they followed it and uh it seemed kosher um and maybe that could help to serve some of the purpose of having the body cam footage available if indeed I'm capturing um you know I imagine that's my sense of why people want to see the body cam footage and maybe we just create a policy that seems to address what the the public's concerns are for greater transparency and accountability and it would be random so people would just be behaving the way they behave they wouldn't even know which when we're you know when it's going to be shown because there's so much of it but we just you know released it on some intervals as a way to say hey here's what we've been up to lately yeah thanks pal yeah so I mean my my concern about that would again be if if the identity of the person is interacting with that police officer in that ordinary uh encounter whatever that might whatever my occasion that if that person's identity is not redacted at all and I'd be concerned about just kind of releasing a percentage of of footage um and I mean and I think there'd also be concerns if you say well this is a kind of random sampling they'd be concerned about whether or not that's actually random or it's just kind of selecting certain videos which you know satisfy certain requirements so um so I I I mean I understand that the idea behind that but I would be certainly concerned like I said about about having right because again people who I you know it there are exemptions that allow people to request that they not be filmed during encounters with officers that people can request officers to turn off their their body cam they can stop recording and that can be complied with under certain circumstances but most people don't know that mostly we don't understand whether or not you know they ask an officer to stop recording what what the consequences of that would be uh so you know so essentially that's saying well people have not actually given their consent for those images in themselves and it's an in this encounter to be made available and yet it's going to be anyways against their against their wish their consent I would be concerned with that in general so that's the kind of that's the kind of general concern that I have like so that's that's less of a concern for me for what I'm going to say are um incidents of of particular concern but just for kind of ordinary encounters again I I would worry about that the same I worry about just kind of you know CCTV from stores or like on church street like that were kind of made available to anyone to look at at any time that's that's problematic and again that also makes it kind of a basis for training data for for algorithms and AI and things like that as well so I'd be concerned about that as well DC Sullivan um I like the idea and um one of the issues is and I think Joy touched on this earlier is there are some areas right where there's this expectation of privacy and so even if we were to take say a segment of video we would still have to go through all that video and make sure we weren't violating one whether the person had a subjective expectation of privacy and then the second problem that is is society willing to recognize that expectation is reasonable so certainly I mean we're all here on zoom in our homes but the home has the highest expectation of privacy legally right so that's why officers need to get search warrants to go into somebody's home um so that that's something of concern I mean we'd have to if we were taking you know blocks of video we would have to look at that now in public places though there is no expectation of privacy so regardless even if somebody had this subject that subject of expectation of I don't want my my image on video legally I don't think that holds water so and to your point Commissioner Harp there are you can log on to the city camera system that's filming church street at any time and watch it live and it is picking everybody up and it's just out there in the public um but as far as releasing this this you know if we were to take samples of a video we would still have to go through all that video to make sure you know it wasn't an officer engaging because there are certain exceptions for officers right they're responding to an emergency call for service they enter somebody's home they have the camera system on I wouldn't necessarily want that released to the public because the public may not have that same um exception as far as the expectation of privacy goes but to be clear you mentioned at one point Randall the idea of a person not wanting to be filmed absent that person's participation in an investigation or being a witness to something that is that that may actually have uh some sort of privacy issues in for a court case down the road absent the subject matter being such for example domestic violence or sex assaults uh we don't turn off a camera merely because someone says I really don't want that um it's it's it's not a direct provision in the directive uh and if an officer were to do so he or she would have to to make a case for it to a supervisor at a later point so I mean I my understanding was that actually that was not um again I'd have to look at it again I I thought that that was uh in the that that was stated in the the lead model body cam policy which were now required to adopt by s124 so I thought that that was in there but I'll check again about that I that may be I was referring to our current directive yeah understood um and then right and then just really quickly with in response to DC saw me so yeah I was not speaking about what is legally permissible but just kind of what we ought to be guided by so I think that there are right so again like based on how we based on how we understand public spaces right there's no legal expectation privacy in public spaces um that does not I think entail that the department should act in such a way as to make any footage that it shoots in a public space as you know as recorded and archived and available to the public I think that would be not a good thing even if it were legally permissible right now okay then so um sorry uh mr dotson so that this is somewhat of a um I guess a question and a statement and with all due respect for a thoughtful conversation as I move along uh I my brain just moves to a how do we get to yes right because as you can imagine in my job I'm in multiple conversations and some number of them go like this uh so this meeting is going to end and one of us I've got confused now it's just on your plate Jebu I can't remember who's the the person who's who's running with this one and trying to pull it together but they'll be left once again on their own to work through a lot of difficulty so maybe I go back to the idea after the these uh piece that brought up is that it seems like uh for any number of reasons we want someone to be able to do some redacting right that there needs to be someone who's looking at them and uh taking the raw footage and getting it into a form that we feel more comfortable with so maybe once again the answer is to just um cost out that uh you know kind of uh find out the labor uh get an estimate of the labor implications and the costs of that and just include that say that here's uh you know policy with boundaries and I think Randall and others have talked about some boundaries seems like DC Sullivan has a lot of input so we um craft a policy that has these um boundaries that makes sense there won't be everything um but we do that and we do it in the context of um having a resource that is able to handle requests and handle redacting and handle the labor component that it seems to come up again and again that will be required for us to do this uh in a way that protects privacy and uh takes care of a number of other issues Christian Hart I think Christian Durfee had her hand up first on my apologies Christian Durfee yeah I want to get to yes I want to get to yes um you uh there's been an awful lot of work done on this and it is a very um we can talk about it a lot um I think we if you I think we I'm not the chair and I'm not going to tell people what to do but um I think everyone has had a chance to read the mayor's memorandum the framework that he suggests that we work on to deliver a full policy here um if I don't know if everyone has read that um but there's there's been a significant amount of work done on that and so um we should as part of this conversation you know make a plan for yes if we're going to whether we're moving it on to you know for review to the ACLU whether we're we're you know we really kind of for me I would like to a plan so that we can move forward this has been asked for by the people and so um you know I get all the constraints I don't I don't really think that you know further discussion on you know how long it takes to redirect redirect it's I don't think the policy the memorandum says anything about um you know anything that that's actually not it's a great starting point I think there's some concerns with it so just wanting this group to sort of get to a place where there can be some direction so that we can finish up on this I agree with that Krishna harp yeah thanks so some of this discussion will be moved by January of 2022 which is when um there's a requirement that there be a new body cam policy which is adopted by every department in the state um and that I assume will have more guidance about um a release policy footage release policy as well though I suspect that might just speak more directly to public records requests but if some of this will be moved by 2022 I think it sounds to me as though there's general agreements um about the importance of being able to release footage as um as you know as informative as possible with as few reductions as possible for matters of particular importance I think there's also agreement that's again that the public records act needs to be complied with since that is the law and some question I think of how is that done but that's um that's kind of a separate side of separate question uh thinking of what to do about you know yeah so both case can I think can be handled studies you know separately and I think that there's general agreement that there should be right so it should not seem to the public as though the only decisions about when footage is released is are being made by the chief of police or by the mayor because the expectation would be that that would only would only be released when it's advantageous to the department so it's useful to have a policy that that makes it good that is not the only consideration so if there's more confidence what footage gets released um and I and so I think that some of that can be done by kind of clearly indicating that that the police commission has kind of not only the responsibility of being certain certain footage but also has the capability of requesting footage gets released so that all seems like we're pretty much on yeses on that already and that can be written up I'm not sure what kind of what areas still need some liberation I mean some of that's going to you know involve kind of the technical capacity that a footage right now can be written that says something like you know footage will be kind of you know redacted in accordance with the technical passes of the department but um one that that police commission will always be able to see unredacted footage and two that footage would kind of be released in a way which kind of maximized information flow to the public um subject to those constraints that seems also useful which is the way now yeah I think uh thank you commissioner harp I would just have one exception to what you said and that is that um um I just heard this buzzing and I just totally lost my train of thought so let me see if it comes back to me sorry Randall do you mind just saying the last thing that you you were talking about uh uh it's about go ahead now it's just going to be about footage being kind of released as you know with the maximum amount of information flow to the public possible subject to certain constraints you know possibly technical constraints oh that okay that was thank you now I remember so I I I think um you know I really appreciate director Dodson's comment on this I don't think we I don't think we want to have a policy that says it's that release of videos is restricted by uh redacting capacity I think we want to meet that we want to if if it requires additional resources that should be part of the policy um because that is the demand right and it is the public's demand to have greater transparency and so there's a cost associated with that we we should think about meeting that as well and not not use the limited resources that currently exist as a reason not to release videos yeah thanks I no I I agree with all of that I think I was I was just thinking a policy needs to be in place regardless of what the capacities are so I don't think we should kind of yeah conditionalize a policy on you know this policy if we get this capacity and that policy we get that capacity that that would be a bad but otherwise I agree with everything you said so it seems like we're in agreement in agreement with that um moving forward then I I believe we should be able to then make this policy regardless regardless of cost constraints maybe include that with you know if we need that include that part of it so I guess moving forward um seeing how Karen Milo and Randall were working on this um I mean Karen do you want to take a lead on this writing up this policy based on the memorandum and the things we've talked about here um I I would entertain that I guess once that's written up um have maybe a special meeting to to pass that and to get get it done with before next meeting uh Commissioner Durfee yeah so I think you were asking me a question that's great thank you um so in order to because I feel like we've talked through a number of things several times and you know there's people who are saying yep I agree with that and then someone else says it and I don't agree so let's let's do this if I'm going to continue to work on it um based on this discussion um if everyone has the memorandum at you know we we have to um because of open meeting laws you know do everything sort of consensus so if anybody has any any feedback I believe you are allowed to send me that feedback and I can incorporate it and then bring it to the group so it would just be one on one someone send me um Randall I have um some things from you but if you want to clarify tonight's discussion that's great because um and then I can just put it together and and the next meeting is as a while out but um Director Dodson if you're okay with that we could just present something the next meeting sure I mean uh I'm I'm once again uh I'm still trying to figure out I'm not so sure I own the process I'm a facilitator catalyst influencer of the process but I do think that um anything to expedite uh things and um within the realm of responsibility to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good enough yeah and I'll just speak directly to that um the I've I've heard quite a bit of agreement here and if we wanted to spend an extra five minutes on it and say um yes I've read the memorandum these are the things to be included I think it might be worth it because if we wait it's it's another it's it's another month and my understanding is that I can um make uh uh as long as we're not discussing it via email if I make um some edits and then present the draft um you know folks can go ahead and see it um so I I'm hearing Randall you know I I've got your comments um we're also stating that the police commission um we feel that in this memorandum it should say that the police commission is able to see unredacted footage and can do that on the behalf of citizens and then we were talking about um putting a putting um something in there about costing that that I need some clarification on so if people have um if people want to say now Djibu are you would you want to hear that now or do you want to move on and and and we can try to do this um one on one uh I'd love to hear what uh Chris we know has to say it but then I'm happy to move on I think the costing is a separate issue I think the policy is what it is and then institutionally the institutions have to find the resources to implement the policies so I think it's a separate issue thank you uh DC Sullivan was that your hand raised I couldn't tell sorry no I apologize I have some some things going on in the background okay not a problem um all right then I think we are in agreement uh moving forward with how to do how to come up with this I would also like to say that once the policy once you do have a policy written um I I'm I'm happy to schedule uh like a special special meeting just to just to review it stamp it and get it out before the next meeting as well too so um I think I'm sorry can you repeat that that would be my preference okay awesome the corner awesome so I think we're in agreement with that are there any other further questions or comments on 5.05 I am not seeing any um moving on to now the amended agenda which is 5.06 a discussion on s124 which recently passed the boron state legislature and uh and so there were some questions um about kind of how this pertains to the work that we're doing and if and I kind of I guess there's also questions about how the bpd is um adapting to s uh s124 so chief mirad do you have anything to say to this thank you um so uh we had been much more in tune with s119 uh and and we're not looking at s124 uh as much yet um there are are certainly you know things that we do I think that we uh and and I encourage deputy chief Sullivan to elaborate on this too but with regard to for example section nine um and the uh existing requirements for roadside data uh where I confirm that we are working to to be in full compliance with that have been um there's some issues with how to distinguish between evidence found for example um do you have to specify the type uh if those kinds of questions are some of those have to do with the documentation tools um and some of those have to do with the the the actual instrument that you use to to mark um there are some valcor issues but we think that those are going to be resolved because we actually believe that valcor may end up being more widely adopted um which would benefit everyone simply because it would give powers of scale for making necessary changes to the data ends of valcor uh and then um some things you know we we note that that there are some changes to for example disciplinary reporting measures um and we're prepared for those uh things that don't you don't have to wait for an investigation to have been completed we there are reporting needs now that will be done as soon as a complaint or knowledge of a situation comes in um I'll discuss that a little bit more in executive session uh and I think that there are uh some some very interesting notes that it has with regard to training um and uh how it you know incorporates different groups into the creation of training etc but frankly we did not focus a lot on 124 we were very focused on 119 and the ways in which it comports with the use of force policy that we just promulgated um I think that for the in almost every respect our use of force policy is as strong as or superior to the requirements of 119 with the one exception of its uh absolute ban on choke holds I think that that is going to fail the first time an officer on her back being stabbed by a larger opponent reaches up and strangles the man because she can't get to her firearm as he's strangling her excuse me as he's stabbing her I don't believe that that will pass legal muster to prevent that unilaterally I think that the idea of having a prohibition on one kind of deadly force versus another kind when deadly force is is lawful is not one that will ultimately withstand legal scrutiny but no officer wants to be in that position at all much less be in the test case position so we will be amending our use of force directive accordingly um as that goes into full effect but um our our use of force policy currently says it not it's prohibited unless instances of other lethal force will be allowed where we'll make note of uh s119 and the laws that it's changed but um s124 you know I'm looking forward through it more I mean it was 43 something pages as far as the variety of different laws that it amends in effects thank you for that and I guess too sorry you're muted but I guess not to jump ahead too far but I was going to um ask for an agenda item for next meeting to hear about what uh complacency with um s119 so thank you for that um DC Sullivan I was just going to add that one of the one of the pieces of this legislation I want to say section 15 um is just a slight modification on what was pre-existing and this is probably of the most important operational impact as far as reporting goes so that already is existing in statute and current it's just a slight modification thank you um I have a quick question this might be for joy but I'll direct it to both you chief mirad and um DC Sullivan when uh when uh January 1st 2022 comes comes about will this will this uh make our our use force policy like um no longer valid and we'll have to make a new one or will this one be like the letter of the law of the land and invalidate our uh oh sorry Randall's hand up first followed by DC Sullivan no I was just gonna say I mean it is in effect now it already uh supersedes the we're talking about uh 119 or 124 I mean in either case in both of them supersede what we have for uh you know if we have a policy it those stipulate what the policy has to be so the use of force policy that 119 states is in effect now for bpd likewise for the body cam policy that 124 lays out it's it says it's conditional until 2022 but still it's it's they're in effect now that's my understanding anyways DC Sullivan yeah at the very bottom of the statue you can see the effective dates it sometimes varies depending on section some of it comes into effect right away and some of it is slightly delayed uh as to your initial question I believe that our policy is very sound then I believe you will see the state um probably create a policy that is very similar to ours um it may again have some subtle differences but I think we are on very sound ground with our current policy um but if if and when the state uh adopts a policy so for example we are taser policies a good example we spent a lot of time creating our taser policy or conducted electrical weapon policy and the state used it largely as the basis for the statewide conducted electrical weapon policy when that was created so I feel like you will see the same thing happen in this case so in that case does will the state statue always supersede like the municipal statue then yeah so I should have added that when when the state created that conducted electrical weapon policy we were advised by the city attorney's office that we should adopt it verbatim and that's what we did okay and are we allowed to hypothetically build on whatever the state statue is and make ours a little bit stronger just without I guess omitting certain parts of the state statue I'm sure we could always add to some extent but that that would be also a legal question uh for the city attorney's office um but I don't see why we couldn't if if there was something that we felt was missed in the state statute we would still have to abide by state statute regardless but I'm sure we could add additional pieces to add to that I haven't had enough time to dig into this to say specifically but what I've seen with a lot of these statutes is that the state statute is a floor and we can build on on them unless there's something that says otherwise so you can look into that that's correct and and just to clarify that the justifiable homicide uh part that does include that for example uh ban on chokehold um that takes place that takes effect on july 1st 2021 2021 so so there is time for us to adapt our use of force policy to that as I stated before I believe that to be the only place where this policy is more stringent or restrictive I believe that in all other ways our existing use of force policy that that all of you many of you were part of of creating during the uh the committee to review policing practices and all of you well not all of you uh professor saguino commissioner saguino uh as a new ad um we're part of approving uh you know after a relatively robust back and forth on that it's a 35 page document it is I feel confident saying the strongest in the state and it is is very thorough and I don't believe there's anything in this with that exception that is that is not already in ours and more pronounced in ours thank you any uh questions or comments from the commissioners in regards to s124 right now I am not seeing any which moves us on to agenda item number six which is commendations that have been received and for this I'll shift back to mr mill I actually um don't have any to share with you this month all right thank you for that and moves us on to agenda item number seven which is commissioner updates or comments and so I'm just going to say one quick thing before I let you take over randall um uh christian saguino this is uh the part of the meeting where anything that's on your mind any commissioner comments or updates that you have you want to bring out to us or anyone zooming in this is where you are you can take the floor so with that I'll give it back to christian heart thank you chair um just a quick question to um chief mirad or dc saltman or whomever uh this is just a question about so given that you know between now and the next police commission meeting there will have been an election um I was wondering whether any instructions have been given out about either kind of um uh officer so two questions one is kind of officer behavior with respect to um political messaging uh in our honor uniform prior to the election and second with respect to uh you know kind of any either calls for servers or behavior at polling places so I was just wondering kind of whether any instructions have been given to officers yes um I reminded officers of our obligations for impartiality as outlined in ddo one and prohibitions on political activity uh it's a few weeks ago um and we have been having so so that's one answer to your question um we will be uh having officers around the city will be paying attention to polling locations we will not be posted at polling locations that is a policy of this agency but also a recommendation by the secretary of state and the secretary of the department of uh of public safety um and we have been in conversations even today uh deputy chief lebrecht and I were in a very long conversation with members uh with federal partners at the u.s marshals office at the court federal courthouse um we've had numerous meetings with members of the romant state police uh the chitlin county law enforcement executives will meet on thursday and we'll be discussing this and state's attorney george will be convening a meeting on friday to discuss this uh with regard to the the issue of both polling location safety which is uh you know I think the most pronounced concern there is the potential for militia type groups to appear and and practice some kind of voter intimidation I do not have we have no intelligence that that is going to occur I don't have any real concerns about that occurring in burlington but it is the responsibility of polling locations to quickly make it known and the secretary of state has sent out very clear instructions on how that gets communicated to law enforcement and what law enforcement will do and we're aware of that and are planning for anything like that were it to occur frankly I am more concerned as our you know I think some of our other law enforcement partners of the possibility of an election that is not settled by wednesday morning and may have people in the streets to express their concerns and displeasure about that by wednesday night um bush v gore was not settled until december 12 of 2000 that is a very long time now that is separate from the notion that the I think improper legal interpretation that results have to be settled the night of they don't and they oftentimes are not but we do want a quick settlement and I don't believe anyone wants anything other than a clear and certain outcome that is lawful and agreed upon uh that night that is the best case scenario for the american republic um but uh for the event that that's not the case we're talking about that with law enforcement partners we're talking about mutual aid should we need it we're talking about you know making certain that we observe people's first amendment rights and that free speech and first amendment events are are as safe as they possibly can be so these are all discussions that are being had by law enforcement here in the region I have an FBI meeting about it tomorrow as well so that's another meeting I mean I don't know how many I just named off five six thank you thank you commissioner hart did any of uh you folks who couldn't make last night's meeting did you all get an update on the next meeting date for the joint committee and how we left things or do you want a two minute update um I was not there um yeah so we have a November 5th well that must whatever day that is the fifth is Thursday right I don't Thursday so we have a November 5th meeting at 5 30 and the two things that uh are scheduled the RFP that we already that went out and we um selected uh commissioner derpy is waiting on some of the references so we pushed that out to the fifth so we can hear back from commissioner derpy on whatever references she hears back from and then on the second RFP which was the assessment of the department we um it went out yesterday and so folks wanted more time to look at it so that will be taken up as well with um counselor high tower and I will be trying to take some of the comments from last night and doing another draft so that's that's where we left last night I just wanted to make sure we were all on the same page I'm sorry when you said went out you mean it was attributed to the joint committee I'm sorry I didn't can you say that again Randall I'm sorry you said that the second RFP went out uh oh yeah did you get it yes um it was distributed to the committee yesterday so to me yes that's what I meant okay gotcha gotcha yeah so if you didn't get it let us know because you should have gotten that draft yesterday so that's it thanks commissioner saguino um commissioner heart with a t uh is it possible for us to get the revised draft of that RFP maybe two days in advance of the meeting it's really hard to provide feedback in the moment uh so if we could have two days that would really be great yeah I will circle back with um counselor high tower and try to um have us meet this week so we can get that out I'll it um as you can imagine that as as a city counselor she is extremely busy but I will see if we can get our meeting in and do that thank you all right any other uh commissioner updates or comments I just had a couple um so as you know I've um I've had a specific concern about communication and information being dispersed in the community and just with the chief reviewing the numbers again earlier um I kind of refer to it it's like the ABCs one two three's of basic info in terms of what the department does uh when anybody have a problem if I just started working on that I mean we've talked about it before but I we don't need a quote unquote policy for it it's more or less doing outreach and using community resources to disperse more information to educate as many people as possible in the community with what the police department actually does commissioner harp yeah thanks uh you know if you just did some more about what you mean by work on that well we've talked about it but we haven't done anything so when we talk about the numbers that the chief presents and he presents them to us and he presents them to people that might listen to the meeting live or they might watch it um on community tv in the future but there's a lot of other media community and commercial where this information can be dispersed and it's not being dispersed okay guys so so by work I just mean kind of disseminate the information more widely yeah right right and I have some ideas about um and kyle I have to finish my email to you but I have some ideas to that what I would like to see is I would like to see um between the tv stations community and public between the radio stations commercial and public more information about what the department does and then engagement with the department and the community and I don't think it it's something that has to wait until an rfp that rfp is completed I think it's just something that needs to be occurring on a regular basis and isn't and then perhaps part of kyle's job is how do we get the department some additional resources because the department doesn't have a dedicated communications person I have no problem whatsoever with uh I believe all the information we get during this meeting is is public so I mean uh in terms of disseminating like that report um yeah I have absolutely no problem with that I don't think anybody else would have a problem with that um I don't think I quite understand what you're asking but but I have no problem with you working on that work sorry I guess I just didn't want to be out there in the community commissioner grants doing this and talking to this and arranging this and and and then people start to feel some kind of way because I mean like going down to the media factory putting a camera on my shoulder and talking to police officers right and then talking to the public and then editing that together I mean I have a lot of ideas of things that I feel like well my dream is if I get the ball rolling then more people will want to be involved in doing um some production so I want to start out by keeping things very simple with starting out with basic information but kind of gather steam to just really extend the different types of outreach and just trying work towards some outreach too that would be the ultimate ultimate goal start up by communication education and then really put it together with some outreach uh I saw Chief Mira's hand first followed by um pressure derpy followed by mr. Dawson so um this is what what commissioner grant is talking about is far wider in scope than this but we do put the number just the numbers themselves that are given to you all are given to are put out on social media on twitter on the month on the first of the month they're different because for you I'm doing meeting the meeting on twitter I'm doing the first of the month but that is the tiniest portion of what commissioner grant's talking about and I think what you're what she is talking about is is a full-fledged communications plan that talks about you know how we start thinking about the agency how we start communicating about the agency how we share uh what the agency does in ways that are helpful and how we start building up what director dodson routinely talks about this issue of trust and and that trust can't occur without community excuse me without communications um so yeah so it was not christia derpy followed by Dodson so I um I um thank you commissioner grant um maybe it would be helpful um for us all to support uh that initiative by maybe having something on the agenda um for you know that talks about community I know that we've received some calls like a woman called in and said yeah you know wouldn't it be nice if the police department had pictures of the police officers and bios on their website um you know there's been some some some you know feedback given from the public that suggests that there should be more communication and more you know transparency so maybe that's an agenda item um so that you know the work that you're doing doesn't feel disconnected and still that you can get some support with that commissioner grant um so we're maybe it's a more of a you know yeah it's great you know that commissioner grant's saying that she wants to do it but you know it's really you know an opportunity and a duty you know for all of us so um and I'd be absolutely 100% interested in hearing you know a report back on that work too so um I think it's a good idea yeah and I would definitely report back on it I just feel like we've discussed it in a few other meetings but I haven't really felt like I've gotten to the point where um if I take this time that I have to volunteer and I can start to roll with it you know there's as we all know there is just so much going on and that's another piece of it too there's a lot of moving pieces and I consider myself to be quote-unquote engaged and I can't always keep up with everything that's going on I mean you definitely talk to people who really care about the issues yet they are are not uh I don't want to say some people are misinformed there are a lot of people that are not fully informed so they're making assumptions that are not uh I think things are very uh sensitive and volatile without people making incorrect assumptions based on incomplete information or because they missed a piece of information or because they missed a particular discussion or they missed a particular update um being done by a particular committee and how can we um have like one resource as well that's that's kind of a larger project that's just kind of keeping track of everything and making it easy for people to find like sometimes they go to the city's website and it's not easy to find and the chief and I have had a discussion about the data dashboard it's there and you can go to it and you can kind of spend some time with it but it's not it's not user-friendly it's not it's not something that's practical to expect people to do we want to present information um in a way that it's it's just it's easily absorbed we don't want people to hunt and pack I guess is my overall concern so those are just some some ideas that I have I appreciate those because I do feel that um uh not being fully informed is something that um that's that's very prevalent out there I mean all the emails we were getting in month September was a lot of people was being not fully informed in what you know is going on what we can do and can't do so I I fully support um what you're trying to do I don't know how I can help you but if there's anything I can do to help you with this please let me know thank you any other commissioner up uh Mr. Dotson yes so uh just a couple quick comments one is um commissioner grant and I did have a very nice conversation and I just think it's important up front to acknowledge and appreciate her interest in doing this very important work of communication and offering herself up to support in ways that make sense and fit as chief mirad alluded to I think a more comprehensive plan I'm sort of working on pulling together what has up to this point been a lot a lot a lot a lot of meetings and interactions and consultation to put something a little more concrete together in terms of of my plan um and I think uh what I've gleaned and and I would be interested to hear someone with a different take um is one of our biggest challenges now as chief mirad spoke of is trust and that question which I'm trying I was a many conversation in bpd about um is I would argue uh um related to but not based solely upon um what trust bpd has is what trust police um as a function our nation have because um the the it is uh very challenging and and um somewhat um I think illegitimate in the eyes of many onlookers um to just suggest that bpd are a group apart um and exist uh in a vacuum uh I think everything exists in context in this moment and we could have another conversation about whether that's fair or just it just is right you put on the uniform your cops and you are in the same fraternity and of the same ilk as Derek Chauvin as unfair as that might be given the training you've had the professionalism you bring to it the integrity you bring to your work from the standpoint of a wounded uh individual who's uh had bad experience the hands of the cops that's what you have so I think that there needs to be a healing if we were to go forward and do the comprehensive uh communication awareness campaign that I am certain is a critical part of police reform and community police trust building if we just did that now and put together I think we put together something pretty thoughtful I think there's people on the sidelines who want to help out and if we went out with was said that was the thing but we led with that I think it would worsen trust I think people would say we're in this moment George Floyd got killed you're supposed to be reforming cops and all you're doing is telling us about all the great stuff they do uh I don't think that is what the community is ready for although the fact that that's not out there that I will tell you from being inside the um the police building uh the function I would argue is very much a black box people have no idea literally no idea um what the daily challenges are I spent all day today eight nine hours of training and I will say that uh the lay person who was in these scenarios would have at a very high percentage would have ended up in scenarios where I could not in a thoughtful progressive way of thinking about how we handle these situations seeing how you could not have found oneself in the position we found ourselves in the scenario if you did your job responding to the public and trying to provide public safety either the person you were responding to as the issue would have been hurt you would have been hurt or both uh because I went in and it is there's a whole lot going on and that is just to say I'm only saying that to say it's not to excuse any poor behaviors not to change or take away some of our national conversation but to say there's a lot going on and the public is is is very uh ill aware of it and changing that is has got to be part of what we do um but I do think that something uh robust uh and hopefully seen as authentic in the way of some sort of healing in our community we can't help the nation but I like to think we can do some healing locally um I think it has to proceed uh any effort to increase communication and awareness um and uh expose more the difficult work that police officers do and expose more the good work uh that is done I think that's part of a comprehensive plan but from my perspective it's the first things first situation um and I do think some healing uh is appropriate and uh something that needs to occur first so that's so um I say yes we need to get to the point um where um uh commissioner Grant's talking about and I hope that I can be helpful in providing some support to the to the chief and the department and to the mayor um about uh how we might do that and I did have a very you know being in the building it was only 10 but like chief said there's 87 minus 285 and uh 10 uh 10 folks today uh nine uh officers and myself I felt had a very very uh productive conversation a common conversation that's not happening across the community yet um but we got down to hard spots and and where the rub is and use of force issues and a bunch of things that um I think if we could expand that conversation with the kind of trust uh and good faith in that room then we'd be a lot better off if I could embed the community and the police department the way director Dodson has been embedded we would all be better off not only because he's learning things but we're learning things from him and we would learn things from members of the community and be able to understand better what the community wants and what it needs and its own positions and that's that's at least as important as sharing the things that we do um and and is is really the key to to being able to move forward with the community and for the community these things would be part of my concept I mean I have a lot of concepts like some of it can be me going to the various news organizations public and commercial and saying we would like you to put out the basic numbers um we want to and and also kind of cleaning up the city's website is not user friendly I have a lot of issues with that and that's another discussion and very long email for another day um but even to think about what's going on in each ward and I've brought this up before I'm a citizen of ward three a lot of things happen in ward three more than I was aware of before I started looking at the numbers um when I took this position but no outreach to me saying how I as a resident of ward three can assist the department in keeping my neighborhood safe so that's part of it too but I also envision talking to people so it's going to be I don't want to do a quote unquote um because I know some people are going to worry about what people call propaganda you know propaganda but it's propaganda I am I'm not interested in that I am interested in because we're all human I'm interested in the good the bad and the ugly and I'm interested in showing opinions and hopefully with some brave into individuals some interactions that the community can learn from police officers about what their feelings are and vice versa because you know we've had these conversations before where people feel that um certain opinions and certain things and certain demands some of the demands that we've heard from the community came out of quote unquote nowhere they they what are people talking about why are people they people shouldn't be making these demands you know that there's no um there's nothing behind them it's like well they don't come out of nowhere they there's very specific reasons that specific demands were being made so how do we educate police officers why these demands are coming from the community so that they see and understand the points of view um and then how do we go to the community and say these are the things that the officers are actually doing on a day-to-day basis because when you have part of the community that doesn't really at all respect what the officers are doing because they don't feel that officers are there for them but there are people like nope I'm not going to call the police no matter what happens because they're not going to help me they might hurt me and my family and so we've got to break through that and people have to understand why there are people in that community that feel that way and then even people who are on the complete other side of the spectrum who support officers no matter what they don't even have a full understanding of what goes on so it's um a lot of ideas and I just would kind of like to start to chip away at them because we with everything else that we've talked about and going on I just feel like community engagement can be happening now and it's something that has to start out and then you add to it then you add to it then you add to it and keep nurturing it so that it becomes a natural it becomes natural in the community it just there's there's a rhythm there's a schedule and hopefully more people when they see certain interactions will want to get involved I completely agree I saw Commissioner Durfee's hand raised no I was just going to suggest that this become an agenda item I don't want I want it to get the attention that it deserves um so um and I've sent an email to Commissioner Grant but you know maybe this is something that we can talk about because we're I know we got a link for executive session too I'm more than happy to add as to um next meeting agenda moving forward absolutely any other commissioner updates and or comments I'm not seeing any so that moves us on to agenda item number eight uh eight sorry 8.01 which is next meeting agenda items um looks like um this ask of communication and community engagement moving forward I plan on putting that on the agenda in addition to conversation on BBD compliance with S S119 um we also need to um vote on draft in regards to um today's agenda item 5.03 and 5.04 so I think uh that right there will be a pretty pretty good agenda to work through for next meeting which then moves us on to executive session um and uh it's a question for Chief do we have citizens and complaints to review in exact session today or tonight we have a very small number I'm hopeful to to get this very quickly through um I I I know it's it's late and everybody wants to be done with it um Shannon sent out the links uh and there's there's very little but there is there's always a few that we have to discuss sounds good commissioner harp I move that we enter executive session for the purpose of uh complaints and possible disciplinary disciplinary matters I second that motion all in favor of entering executive session say aye raise your hand please aye aye that is unanimous um we'll should move into executive session the time right now is 8 30 um reconvene at 8 35 and I also want to say that at the end of executive session that will be the end of the meeting and we'll mean we'll be adjourned at that time see that's how I do it um so yeah 8 30 um and I'll see you guys all in five minutes for executive session and for everyone that zoomed in from the public thank you very much and we'll see you soon