 I'm going to go ahead and call to order this meeting of the civilian police accountability board study committee. I have that right. Um, and, uh, Sanjay, do you want to take attendance? Yes, one. Actually, can you do it while I get my minutes here? Sure. Uh, Carlos. I'm sorry. Do you want me to do the introduction? Yes. Thank you. Sorry. Yeah. So, uh, This meeting of the, uh, The police civilian advisory study board committee is being convened by, uh, by zoom. Uh, folks can join by video, uh, chat, or they can join by telephone. Just a reminder to folks that because this meeting is being conducted remotely under the, uh, suspended rules of the open meeting law. Uh, members should try to take care to identify themselves or to be identified before speaking that all vote should be conducted by roll call. Folks should be mindful that there may be some folks who are joining by telephone who don't have to identify themselves. So, uh, If you are joining us by zoom are encouraged to use a, um, their full name. Uh, so that they can be identified appropriately for the record. Instead of an name or a screening. And with that, um, uh, we should take a, uh, our attendance roll call. If you'd like me to do it, Laura, I'm happy to do it. I'm ready now. I'm ready now. Actually. Karen Bishop. Here. Um, and brown is not here. Michael Brownstein. Uh, Elliott Elkin is not here. Carrie Fallon is not here. Chief Flaherty. Here. Thank you. Laura Giddelson. Here. Jillian Harvey. Here. Doug Hyme. Carlos Morales. Here. Um, Mona is not here. I am here. Sanjay Newton here. Um, Bob Redosha is not here. Kathy Rogers is not here. Clarissa Rowe. Yes. Here. And Susan Ryan. Here. Thank you. Um, Susan, I'm going to turn it over to you since you were the person who managed to get our great guest speaker and let you introduce him. Sure. Um, I'm just going to read from Brian's extensive bio bio. I'm going to read from Brian's extensive bio bio. Because if nothing else, I want you all to know, yes, he's a neighbor from Cambridge, but it's a big deal to have Brian here with us. He's a nationally recognized expert in civilian oversight. So Brian, he's worked for the city of Cambridge for the past 13 years. He leads the city's police review and advisory board and it's peace commission. He also works for the national association for civilian oversight of law enforcement known by its acronym, the NACOL is the organization that provided much of the information that Sanjay relied upon for his presentation on investigatory civilian oversight boards at our last meeting. Um, Brian has served on NACOL's board of directors since 2012. He's also served three terms as president of the organization between 2016 and 2019. He's the immediate past president of the organization. Um, through all of this work, Brian's become as I noted a nationally recognized expert in the evolution and growth of civilian oversight commissions and agencies. He routinely presents on police civilian relations and police civilian oversight issues to municipalities around the country. Uh, last week he presented to the San Jose, California charter review commission. Um, and he's recently presented. On these issues, um, to organizations in Arlington, Virginia and Bennington, Vermont. This is all I think in the last week. We don't know when Brian sleeps. Um, but, uh, I'm going to stop now because we need to hear from Brian. So, Brian, please go ahead. Well, um, thank you, Susan's very kind. And, um, I will just say that I'm very glad to be able to do this. I am actually extra tired today. I think it's just because I've had most of my day on zoom in Microsoft teams, which I, I'd finally gotten away from. So, um, sometimes I'm tired. I talk a little bit more. So I apologize in advance. And, um, I will also say that I'm very glad to be able to speak with you. I've been tracking, uh, the, you know, conversation around civilian oversight in Arlington for a couple, maybe three years now. And I'm very glad that the town is moving forward in this organized, um, methodical way to examine the possibility of civilian oversight for your community. Um, and then the last thing I'll say is, you know, I'm right in Cambridge. So, um, I am a neighbor. Um, I'd, you know, be happy to do things in person once you're doing things in person. I did my first in-person presentation since the pandemic started in Bennington, Vermont a few weeks ago because Bennington, Vermont with 15,000 people and, uh, I think 24 officers is considering civilian oversight. So this is really something happening all over the country, um, in places you might not expect. So, um, I get, you heard a wonderful, generous introduction of me from Susan. Uh, so I won't say a whole lot about myself other than I always want to let people know just kind of like who I am in the world. So, um, raised really, you know, in Detroit, Michigan and the, really in the 1970s born in the mid 60s and did lots of different work, mostly in different nonprofit organizations or political, um, campaigns, referenda that sort of thing. And came to the city of Cambridge, started with the peace commission, but with my work previously at the ACLU, I, I think the same manager thought I would be a good person to do the oversight work as well. So that's what I spent my time doing. And, um, you know, again, I volunteer my time with Naples. And so in that capacity, I've done this a lot. So enough about me and I do have a PowerPoint presentation. So my challenge is that I, depending on how the zoom is set up, I may not be able to see other people, but, um, let me start my presentation and see if I can make the slide show work and share my screen all at the same time, which is not always easy. So please bear with me. Okay. So I think I can start it and then I will put in the presentation mode. Okay. So hopefully everybody can see that nice graphic. Um, I hopefully got the name of your study committee. Correct. It's a long name, but it reflects the complicated task that I think you have. And, um, I, I will make these slides available. So I'm not going to, I, it's a classic thing. If I had more time, I would have made it shorter, but, um, there will be some slides. I probably skipped through fairly quickly. So, but again, I'm Brian core. I work and live in Cambridge with Nicole. And here's what I plan to talk about. Um, very briefly have some background about policing and civilian oversight to kind of set the stage for how I, and we had Nicole think about this work. Um, some various information about oversight, it's structure, how we got there. And then also some information about the state of the field. Um, they called just released last month, uh, report that was funded by the department of justice. And, uh, we're very excited about it because for years, people have wanted to know what makes oversight effective, not effective. And now we can say some things are actually based on a research study that we spent more than two years on. So that's what I'm going to talk about. And first, let's talk a little bit about history. Um, when we think about policing, there are a number of narratives. And I would say this is the, what you say on your screen is the standard narrative. I won't read the PowerPoint slide because I, I don't like when people do that to me. So, but basically this is this idea of policing as, you know, a, a watchman or a constable, um, in a small village, kind of the night watch, you know, Hark who goes there and really someone in the community who's had some responsibility for making sure that nothing untoward is happening. And that is kind of the classic origin story, you know, the county sheriff, the night watchman, and it turned into, um, the English colonies and the policing we have in the United States. And you'll see on the bottom that these are, these are all taken from the law enforcement museum, the next, the slide, the next couple of slides. So one thing we have heard a lot about in the last few years is that what policing is, is just a modern day slate catchers that it's a direct descendant and the whole purpose of policing was to control, um, black people and some people say also immigrants and labor, but that that's really the origin. And so again, I will actually won't read this either. But so this is from just under 200 years ago in 1828. What you see as a slave patrol is oath where this person in the community in North Carolina was taking an oath that they would search for weapons among slaves and, um, do that to the best of their powers will help them God. And that's not the only part of the narrative that is an important part of the history of policing in the United States. But what you will also hear about a lot is the history of Sir Robert Peele, the formation of the metropolitan police in London. And this is from 1829, just one year after that slave patrol is oath. And again, I won't read the whole phrase, but there were a number of principles that Sir Robert Peele promulgated. I will say he's not personally responsible for all of these. He later became prime minister, but he was the government minister in the United Kingdom responsible for creating the metropolitan, the London metropolitan police. And this idea that the police are the public and the public are police is very foundational to many narratives of policing. And I think the way most police departments think about their work that really the things that police officers do for the most part are what all members of society should do to keep people safe to look out for things that are not proper. And that this is something that is uniquely asked of police, but it's really something that is part of the community. The police are the public and the public are the police. And the reason I go through all this is because if someone says to you in my personal opinion that policing comes directly from slavery and slave catching, or if someone tells you that policing in the United States comes directly from London and Sir Robert Peele, it's true, but it's not the whole truth. So it's important that we have this complicated perspective. And so in line with this idea of the police or the public and the public are the police, that's I think where you can see civilian oversight. Some form of civilian oversight against the slide says is important to strengthen trust with the community. There are a lot of different ways to talk about civilian oversight. Some people will say that elected officials are the civilian oversight, the mayor or the town manager. And that's a form of oversight. I'll say a little bit more about what we mean by oversight, but there has to be some form of civilian oversight. Every community has to figure out what works in your context. I will say more about that. And civilian oversight is not sufficient to gain legitimacy, but without it, it can be difficult, if not impossible, for the police to maintain the public's trust. So that's the foundation. And another thing that I think is important, which I will also come back to is let's say you're looking at an incident, investigation has happened in the end that defines that the officers followed policy and procedure and training, but the outcome was not something that the community wants. It's not either the way the community wants things done or the harm that may have been done was not what people want. And so, you know, commonly people will talk about things as lawful, but awful. And it's really this idea if there's no violation of policy or procedure, what should happen? And so to me, this is where you get into this concept of back-end and front-end accountability. Back-end accountability is kind of, you know, a version of the criminal legal system, the criminal justice system. Someone has done something wrong. We investigate, we hold them accountable, and that will deter future misconduct. It sends a message, and that can help. But what if you can do things on the front-end that will lessen the conditions that lead to misconduct? Again, more to come about that. And then finally, procedural justice is more important than the lawful nature of police conduct. I will also explain that, but just keep this in mind that this idea of procedural justice and how people feel they've been treated can be often more important than whether everything was done according to the letter of the law in an encounter. So, now I'm going to pick things up a little bit. Front-end accountability, so there's a lot on this slide. Again, I won't read it all, but thinking about this idea of how do we determine how our police department should function, what kind of policies we should have. Obviously, you need experts from law enforcement to do a lot of that work, but you also need community input. And so, I don't know that this applies to Arlington, but many of the communities where I speak to people, there are lots of people who feel both over-policed and under-policed. When they need the police, they can't get them. They aren't able to show up, they don't have the resources, and they also have an experience either individually or collectively of people being stopped on the street, people being questioned. Motor vehicle stops for minor infractions that can be seen as fishing expeditions. Often those things go together. And again, I'm not talking about Arlington or Cambridge for the most part, I think, but these are common themes. So, there are lots of efforts to look more at front-end accountability. And that also leads me to the President's Task Force in 21st century policing. I hope everyone has at least glanced at it. If you haven't read it cover to cover, I understand it's rather long. There's an executive summary, but it was quite an amazing effort in the space of about three months, a group that had been pulled together that included people from law enforcement, from Black Lives Matter, advocates, attorneys, people from a variety of backgrounds came together, did listening sessions around the country, and came up with these six pillars around which the recommendations were focused. It's a really great report. I really recommend that everyone read it. Many, many police departments are using this and the implementation guide that came out with it as a blueprint for changing, for reform, for rethinking different aspects of policing. And a couple of important pillars were building trust and legitimacy, which really comes out of, in this particular version, comes out of work that was done by Professor Tracy Mears and Professor Tom Tyler at Yale Law School. Tracy Mears was on the President's Task Force, and in fact, that the work that she did on that Task Force had actually been preceded by work in Cambridge after the apparently world-famous arrest of Professor Henry Lewis Gates, just about half a mile from where I sit. The city of Cambridge didn't so much investigate what happened in that arrest, but what were the underlying issues. And one of the big things that came out of that was working with the Cambridge Police on procedural justice. So it's really something that is important to how we think about policing and also how we think about oversight. I'll say more about that later. I'm going to kind of blow through this, but just we were very excited that the Task Force report talked about civilian oversight in various ways. But this is an important slide, only in that it talks about law enforcement agencies collaborating with community members to develop policies and strategies and all of the other things that police do. And so that's an important part of the work of civilian oversight in many different ways. And also they gave a shout out to NACOL. So you got NACOL, so good for you. No, in all seriousness though, it was very exciting for us to see this national recognition. And so I'm moving kind of quickly, even though I'm talking a lot, on the procedural justice. So procedural justice is this idea that how people are treated is often more important than the specific outcome. And this is not my personal experience, but I've heard this from many, many people in policing. The kind of classic example would be, let's say someone gets pulled over for a traffic stop. The officer is like, license and registration. Do you know why I pulled you over? And kind of lectures a person, perhaps with the idea that a stern lecture is going to make an impression, and that driver won't do that again. But if you compare that interaction to one where the officer approaches a vehicle and says, good afternoon, my name is Officer Core, the reason I stopped you was because it looked to me as though you did not stop at that red traffic light. So that sort of thing. And what people have told me for years, and it makes perfect sense to me, is that an individual is more likely to feel better about that second encounter, even if they have to pay a fine, even if they get a ticket, versus someone in that first encounter who gets yelled at, but only gets a warning. The conventional wisdom would be that, well, you know, you got a warning. You didn't have to pay a ticket. It's all good. But that's not how human beings react. So these four pillars of procedural justice are at play in all interactions, I would say, involve government and power structures, but very specifically with policing. And people want to have voice to be heard, to feel like they can participate in the conversation, the decision making, to get their side of the story out, that the people who are making decisions and interacting with them are neutral, they're unbiased, they're trustworthy, that they are being respected and treated in a way that confers dignity and respect on them, and that they trust that the people who are doing whatever they're doing, the police officer or whatever person, is doing what they're doing for the right reasons. They're doing it because they're concerned about the community. They're concerned about individuals. They're concerned about safety, not because they can or they can exercise power over someone. So all important concepts, and this idea of procedural justice will flow through a decent chunk of my presentation here. So pair with procedural justice is this idea of legitimacy. And one thing that's very important in this framework, and again this was in the Task Force Report on 21st Century Policing, is that what makes police seem legitimate to people, and really, again, any institution, is that they are treated in a way that is procedurally just. So again, these same concepts, how are decisions made, how are people treated, and it's something that you need to work on. It's not simply, okay, we've got a couple check boxes, but it's a constant way of how you interact with people. And I will say that officer safety, which comes up a lot in these conversations, especially when you talk about traffic stops, is very important. And you can both keep officers safe, do the work that they need to do, and also do it in a way that treats people in a procedurally just way. So in policing, again, I won't read through this whole slide. I mean, sort of reiterating the same things I've said. The one thing I'll note is that with a legitimacy approach or this idea that people accept the legitimacy of policing and law enforcement, people will voluntarily accept decisions and follow directions. They think they should comply with the law because there's a legitimate purpose. And it also applies to civilian oversight. This is where I finally start talking more about civilian oversight, because in our work, we also have to treat people in a way that's procedurally just, and we have to have legitimacy. And I often say that it can be more challenging for us because we have such a complicated set of stakeholders. We have individuals who may be making a complaint, community members who may have seen an incident, community members at large, law enforcement officers in general, someone, an officer who may have been accused of something, a complaint has been made about, the town government, city government, elected officials, appointed officials, advocates. There are a lot of different people who are looking at civilian oversight to see how we're doing things. Are we trustworthy? Are we treating people with dignity and respect? Do we treat people with complaints with dignity and respect? Do we treat police officers with dignity and respect and everybody else? So for us to do our work effectively in oversight, we also need to have people want to cooperate. We need people want to accept our decisions and recommendations. So it's a very important concept for oversight as well. And okay, again, I would have made this shorter if I had a little more time to prepare. So I apologize, but you'll have this after the presentation. But procedural justice is also important. Oh, and I just noticed a typo. I'm so sorry. Oh my gosh. Excuse me for pointing that out, but I'm a transparent person. Procedural justice is also important inside police departments. One of the main things that I've heard officers complain about is, you know, there's the criminals and sometimes you oversight people, but oh geez, you know, the leadership, the way they treat us or the union doesn't care about us or only the union cares about us. And there's so many issues around legitimacy within policing as well. So it's an important concept at every level for those of us who are involved in any kind of work around public safety or really around government. Last thing on this is just to these two different frameworks about authority. It's kind of been embedded in what I'm saying, but again, I won't read through them all, but it's really this idea of statutory authority is necessary and important and real and legal. And for most of us to be effective, we also want to have legitimacy based authority. And if we can operate from a place of legitimacy based authority, it can be much easier to do our work. People have much better interactions. People tend to feel that they're being treated fairly and cared for, you know, not always possible, not applicable in every situation, but very important to understand these two different frameworks. And again, sometimes we have to be reactive and driven by authority and hold people accountable and punish them. But a lot of times we have to do things in a way that is really about creating space for people to feel heard, for people to be open to change and to transform the reasons that problems have occurred in the first place. So now I'm going to say a little bit more about civilian oversight and its history. And to start that off, I want to say briefly, there are these three pillars that we see for oversight, independence. And again, that varies quite a bit depending on the city, the state, the political culture, but to the extent possible, oversight should be able to operate independently within the framework of government. And I always want to be queer because there are people who feel that civilian oversight should be something completely external to government. And my position and Naples position is that you have to be inside the government to have a direct influence and impact on things like public safety and policing. But within that framework, you need to be as independent as possible. You also need to make sure that you are as transparent as possible. And when you're talking about civilian oversight law enforcement, it can be a shared responsibility. As we know, there are complicated rules and laws about what can be shared. There are some things in the recent police reform bill that changed some of that, but there's a lot of information that cannot be shared. And then there's a lot of information that can be shared and may or may not get shared. And so it's important for the oversight agency for the police department and in general, the municipal government to really work together to promote as much transparency as possible. These are just some examples. They don't apply to every community, but just to give you a sense of the kinds of transparency. And again, that it's a shared responsibility. The oversight agency can't just, you know, literally decide to share all sorts of things that it doesn't have the right to share. And then accountability. Finally, with accountability, it has to be, as it says, demonstrated by all applicable shareholders. It can support, you know, important goals as it says in the slide community oriented policing can hold law enforcement accountable for individual or collective actions. And it can actually have many benefits for the law enforcement agency to have accountability through with civilian oversight as part of the accountability mix in the community. And I will just say this, the last thing on the slide says that it can also really help officers to feel good when they know that people who are not inside the agency who are not law enforcement actually looked at the situation, looked at reports, looked at investigations and decided that the officer did not do anything against policy or procedure. And that can be a very important thing. It's just a different type of validation. And of course, for complainants, they can be validated, even just the fact that they can make a complaint to someone who's not in the police department, talk about their experience. But in the end, especially if your complaint is found to be sustained, which is often not the case for lots of different reasons, but there's a complicated mix around accountability, but it is very important for there to be clear accountability and for people to understand what the accountability mechanisms are. Key points to consider the summary of this is that people in oversight have to be competent. They have to be trustworthy. They have to be well trained. They have to be focused on the public good and they have to ensure that they're always learning and trying to get better. So again, you can read that all later. So now is where I talk a little bit about the history of oversight and how we got to where we are. So again, I apologize for the rapid fire speech here. Maybe it's because I'm a midwesterner and I think I'm talking faster than I am, but those are really fast for me. So facts about the field. Many of you may know this, but there are approximately 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the United States. No two are exactly alike. They vary in size. They have different types of responsibilities and most large cities do have civilian oversight. Of the 10 largest cities, Phoenix is the last one that doesn't and they're in the process of developing it and most communities do not have civilian oversight. I'll talk a little bit more about the balance between law enforcement and civilian oversight the next slide, but police departments, law enforcement agencies vary dramatically. There are ones like New York and Los Angeles that have more police in those cities than many states have and every community, every state has different laws and rules or different collective bargaining agreements. So it's a very diverse field. And as we look at civilian oversight, there's some parallels. There are about 200 civilian oversight agencies across the United States. No two are exactly alike. So again, many of the bigger cities have them. Most places don't. You've got 200 out of about 18,000. So you can imagine most police departments are relatively small, small towns, small cities, small sheriff's departments and don't have civilian oversight. One thing to know and I'll say a little bit more about this is that most oversight began traditionally in reaction to some bad incident, but that has been changing. It's become more and more proactive and communities like yours. Not to say that there have never been negative incidents, but we're not talking about a nationally broadcast story like we see in the news that has led to oversight or even discussions about oversight. Increasingly, it's communities like Arlington who are saying, you know, there have been some incidents. We want to look into this. We think we can make things better. We think we can improve public safety and improve trust. So that's been happening more and more. And just to give you a sense of where we are, the history of oversight goes back almost 100 years in terms of the kinds of things we talk about at Lake Hall. So I won't go through this in great detail, but 1928 in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Bar Association created a committee on constitutional rights. The idea was that they could take complaints from people about police misconduct and do something with them since they were lawyers. It wasn't terribly effective and it really didn't last very long. Soon after that, there was a National Commission, the Wickersham Commission, which was really formed to look at the lawlessness and violence in the wake of prohibition and everything that happened around that. And they recommended there be some form of disinterested agency to combat what they called lawlessness and law enforcement. Moving on to 1948, the first official civilian oversight board was formed in Washington, D.C. It lasted from 1948 to 1964. And in those years, it only looked at about 30 cases. So it really, they weren't clearly able to do much that was very effective. And it went by the wayside. In the 50s, you have New York City, Philadelphia. Again, both of those were early attempts to form civilian oversight boards. To this day, New York has a civilian complaint review board, but it has been reformed multiple times. And Philadelphia has a completely different oversight agency. But again, early beginnings. And so by the time you get to 1970, you have the first agency that still exists today in that same basic form, Kansas City, Missouri office of citizen complaints. 73, the police review committee was established in Berkeley. It was on the ballot. And that stayed the same until just, I think, last month, they have, again, another ballot referendum. A new agency that has been given sort of more authority and a wider focus has been established in Berkeley. But that 1973 police review committee continued up until this year. So again, without going too much detail, by 1980, 13 agencies by 2100. And today we see more than about, about 200 with more on the way. So it's really grown dramatically. And there are multiple waves of oversight. So I tend to say we're having the fourth wave now. And it's that wave that is more proactive. So again, just to emphasize quickly, civilian oversight traditionally has been reactive. It has this kind of a judicatory adversarial approach, kind of like a little courtroom with their hearings. And as I said before, it recommends sanctions for officers and relies on deterrence. And it's, it's seen as reactive. And again, it would generally look at individual complaints where oversight is moving to is being more proactive, looking at programs proactively, figuring out what are the underlying issues that lead to problems, whether they're misconduct or not. And works to build partnerships with law enforcement and to help law enforcement build bridges with the wider community. It's not simply, you know, how do we hold people accountable and punish them and deter misconduct? How do we create the kind of public safety that we want in our community? So that's increasingly where it's moving. Common goals of oversight. I'll go through this again quickly. You want the complaint process to be accessible. And, you know, there are certainly people that will file a complaint anywhere. They'll walk March into the police station, go right to the front desk. There are other people who might not. Civilian oversight often wants to ensure that investigations are fair and thorough. Findings are appropriate and reasonable. And the discipline is appropriate and reasonable. And that can be done in many different ways to improve public confidence, to enhance transparency. All very common goals, as well as slightly less common, but very common, improving law enforcement agencies by actually doing this external analysis of patterns. This is mostly true in larger communities where, you know, say New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, deter officer misconduct is still part of it. If it's not the only goal, it can help towns, cities, municipalities, reduce legal liability from officer misconduct. And that can be an important goal for a community, for a government. And it can really be a great way to help the public understand police policy, training, practices, procedures. You know, a lot of people watch cop shows on TV and we think that we know how policing works and we have not a clue if that's really our foundation. So oversight can play a role in doing that as well. And so is civilian oversight the answer? Not at all. But again, it makes creating a sense of legitimacy much easier. And it can be very hard to have that legitimacy in many communities if there's no form of civilian oversight that people can recognize. So I'm going to try to go through some of this a little bit quicker because I know you've already had some presentations from one of your members, Sanjay Newton, on civilian oversight models. But keep going. So civilian oversight in the United States, how we define it at NACOL, it investigates audits or reviews, internal law enforcement investigations or processes, including civilian complaints, citizen complaints, and use of force incidents. It can conduct ongoing monitoring of law enforcement agencies, policies, procedures, training, management, and supervision practices. And from our point of view includes any agency or procedure that involves active participation in those above topics by persons who are not sworn officers. And that can take many, many different forms. So again, the common models that we tend to talk about are review, investigation, and monitor or auditor and specter general, hybrid models are clearly some combination of all three. So with the review focus model, which is what you see most commonly in smaller communities, and in Cambridge, if you look at our ordinance, we do have an investigative model. And the reality is because of the number of complaints, the size of everything in Cambridge, we in almost all cases have the police department do it. But so we operate primarily as a review focus model, even though we have the ability to investigate and we have had to do investigations. So it's a way to ensure community's input. It can increase public trust. And it can, in most cases, agree or disagree with findings. There are different ways that communities handle that. An increasingly common way is that if the oversight board disagrees, then there's some response from the police chief to explain what that disagreement is about and why. And that can be very valuable for everyone involved. I won't get into that now, but it can be a very positive thing. The investigation focus model, kind of what it says, it can reduce bias. It's not to say that all investigations by police, of police are bias. I would never say that. There can be bias. I mean, there can certainly be bias against police as well. So, but it can reduce bias into investigations and says and complaints. When you have full-time civilian investigators, they have highly specialized training, some of which NACOL provides and there are lots of other people that provide that training. It can be short. It should be also part of training from the law enforcement agency and it can increase community trust. And I'm talking about this more than I intended to. So I'm going to try to keep moving. The auditor or monitor or even inspector general model has also been promoted more. There are certain people out there. There's friend of mine, academic Sam Walker, who he often gets quoted about oversight and he believes that the auditor model is the best. We will tell you, I'm going to tell you some more later that there is no one best model. It's really about the best fit for a given community. So having said that, this model is often more focused on patterns, looking at long-term systemic change. They're usually not doing investigations, but they're really looking at broader issues. They're auditing. They're monitoring. And they still may be directly involved in steps in the complaint process, even if they're not actually doing investigations. And then finally, hybrid models. And again, increasingly, this is what different communities are doing, but it varies. A lot of larger communities are looking at these different basic models and saying, well, we really want to do independent investigations, but we also want this function that's looking at broader patterns. Sometimes that's done with a single agency. Sometimes it's done with multiple agency. New York City has the civilian complaint review board and it has an inspector general for the police department that is under the city's Department of Investigations. It's totally separate from the police department. They have those two different functions. They complement each other, but that's a different way to create a hybrid model. But again, these are increasingly common. And so just a quick summary slide. You know, again, as you put these kind of side by side, they all have pluses. They all have maybe not minuses, but things that they're less good at. And really it is about figuring out what is the best fit for a given community. And a couple of things, no matter what model you choose, and this is kind of, again, repeating myself. You want to make sure that people involved into an oversight have training, that they're impartial objective, they're familiar with the work they're doing, they're willing, and this means both staff and board members or commission members is appropriate, willing to meet with and communicate with the police organization and staff, evidentiary laws and standards, and most importantly in many ways to consider all sides of the situation and to rethink your position. I mean, most of us, we're just human beings. You hear a story, you hear a complaint, you start to come to conclusions. And in this work, it's vitally important to just, you know, that happens, and you just kind of put that on the side and you continue to get more information and you have to be willing to reexamine those initial ideas, thoughts, or conclusions. That's a very important part of oversight. And it's an important part of our having credibility with everyone that we work with. The training for board or commission members and staff, again, policies, procedures of the local agency, you don't need to be an expert, but you need to have a basic understanding of the typical things and how they, how the officers are trained, what policies and procedures they're using for stops and the more common interactions, the essentials of civilian oversight, sort of a lot more detail about a lot of things I'm talking about tonight. And they have to be queer about what their authorities and responsibilities are. Because often I've heard people say, well, you know, this community had oversight, but it failed. And often it's failed to meet expectations because people weren't clear about what it actually could and couldn't do, what it was responsible for, what it had the authority to do. So it's very important that people involved in civilian oversight have a good grasp of all of those things. Again, same thing for training and professional development is essential for credibility. I can't emphasize this enough. It is so important because if you don't know what you're doing, people will figure it out. So it's just violently important for fairness, for credibility, for just decision making and for being a responsible part of the government. You want to make sure you know what you're doing and you get continual training and continual education. Key points to consider, again, I think I feel like I've shown this before and I may have, but the point is ultimately that people involved in civilian oversight have a unique type of trust that they're given and it's really important that they take that seriously and that through that trust and adherence to standards, to learning, they can create a situation to, again, help improve public safety, policing, interactions in their community in a positive, forward-looking way. And then, again, I won't go through all this, but just know that at NACOL, we have a professional code of ethics that we promulgate. I won't read through all these things, but hopefully they seem pretty obvious. You'll have these available on the slides later. So I was, I did want to say a little bit, just I've kind of thrown this in here to my standard presentation about what we have here in Massachusetts. So right now, we have Cambridge, the police advisory advisory board, we go back to 1984. And as I said, we, our ordinance sets us up as an investigative agency. We primarily function as a review agency, but we also do have that advisory function. And from time to time, the board has made recommendations to the police department about policies and procedures, not just looking at individual complaints. Springfield, Massachusetts has the community police hearing board. And all again, all of these are different. Their model is quite unusual in that they have the members of the police hearing board act as hearing officers for disciplinary hearings. And so they've had to go through all the complicated work to create a disciplinary matrix that the police commissioner and the community police hearing board members both use. But they also, they do accept complaints and they do community outreach, just as our board, I should have said that. In Boston, you have this brand new office of police accountability and transparency. It is still getting going. They are looking for board members for there's a number of boards within the office. They replaced a previous thing called the community ombudsman oversight panel, which basically reviewed appeals of investigations into complaints. And we'll see how it goes, but they really are looking to do a range of things, both about accountability and transparency. And then the, actually they're not, they're older than Boston in the sense that they're not brand new, but it's the newest agency formed in Pittsfield, the police advisory and review board. I'm sure they looked at our name when they came up with that, but they've only been around for two years and they've actually been staffed primarily by the police chief in Pittsfield. So it's a really interesting model and they've definitely, and I think this is true in all new oversight boards. They've had some growing pains, trying to figure out what their authority is, what should they be doing, how much can they do, what should they be asking for, and that's a normal part of the process. And then if you have a complaint, it's a Massachusetts state police, you can go to the office of the inspector general, which is within the, oh geez, I always want to say it's the, I think it's the office, I should know this, I think it's the office of the attorney general. I have this sense that maybe it's the office of the auditor, but I think it's the office of the attorney general. And I've referred a couple of people to them. I have no idea what's ever happened. However, with the new police reform law, there are a lot of different things have come up and I'm not going to try to capture them all here. I will just say that Senator Will Brownsburger has, on his personal website, a really great page that has encapsulated, you know, from his point of view, a lot of the specifics in the law, the changes, but we, so we now have a police officer standards and training commission. Massachusetts was one of, I think six states that did not have this. It's basically a way to license police officers, certify and decertify. And there are a lot of elements to that, which you guys won't go into, but they involve things like a statewide registry, certification requirements. And it's going to be a very robust system that will, I think really help police leaders around the state also ensure that they're getting, you know, the best quality officers and that their officers from other departments that may have had issues. And it's less of an issue in bigger communities, often very small departments. It's great for them if they can hire someone who's already been trained, because they don't have a big budget. They don't have to train that person. But this will really provide both more standards about that, but also a registry. The municipal police training commission, also part of that it's existed, but there's some changes to that as well. And between those two agencies, they also will have some responsibility for receiving all complaints that go into, police departments and cities and towns around the Commonwealth. And they will track those and actually have some ability to investigate, if necessary, through this division of police certification and the division of police standards. As I said, there's a lot more information on Senator Brownsburger's website. So there are some options. My sense, and I would say I'm not an expert on the law. Every time I tell myself I'm going to read through the whole thing from beginning to end, I get distracted and something else comes up. But we still have to see how this will play out. How will this be a good avenue for people who have complaints about an officer in their own community to do something about it? Or will it be a bit too distant? But I think this is, there are a lot of important changes in this law. There are a lot of commissions that are going to look at issues and make recommendations to the state, but it has put in place some structures that I think have been needed in Massachusetts and I think, well, again, support police leaders and advocates in increasing transparency and ensuring that departments around the Commonwealth reach really high standards. Many already do, but not all are able to for various reasons, good and bad. So the last section of my long presentation is our report, the NACO report. So as part of the Task Force in 21st century policing, NACO and a number of people from NACO from civilian oversight testified and one of the recommendations of the Task Force report was that there should be research into what makes civilian oversight effective. And so the Department of Justice through its COPS office, Community Oriented Policing Services office gave a grant to NACO in 2016 and yes, we just released a report last month. It took us a while, it was over two years of research and then with everything going on over the last few years, just say it that way, things moved slowly within the Department of Justice, but we got it out. And so this report included and the research include nine case studies of civilian oversight agencies, different sizes, different models. This report on the state of the field that you see the cover image here, a decision making guidebook on establishing oversight or strengthening models, various models of strengthening existing oversight models. There's an interactive online toolkit and all of this is available at naco.org slash recent reports just to give you a little bit of a taste. So these, again, won't read through all this data, but just to give you a sense, the nine cities ranged in size from Cambridge with now we're probably about 120,000 people to Los Angeles with almost 4 million people. So various, various size departments, different types of oversight agencies, different models. And through those case studies, other research that Nicole had done previously, a survey that we put out to all existing oversight agencies, we were able to come up with these key principles and practices for effectiveness and sustainability. But before I say what those principles are, some of these key findings which I've kind of talked about, there's more and more agencies being formed around the country. Data-driven policy analysis is growing. Access to records is all over the map. Some agencies have almost no access, most have significant access. Some have unfettered access to all records. Accountability and evaluation requirements have been increasing for oversight as part of this questioning of what makes oversight effective. As I've said, like five times there's more of a focus, an increasing focus on front-end accountability and on procedural justice and legitimacy. And so what did we find? We had distilled out these 13 principles for effective civilian oversight. And the first thing I want to say is this is not a checklist that if you don't have these 13 things, you are ineffective. These are 13 principles, and I don't know if there's a single oversight agency in the country that all 13 really apply to. Some, I mean, some of them I think do apply, that you want full cooperation, but not everybody has it. Full cooperation in multiple dimensions. You want unfettered access to records, and especially if you're involved in correctional oversight of jails and prisons of facilities. It varies quite a bit. You want to ensure that you're doing community outreach, that you're really not just doing something in the office and getting complaints and issuing findings, but that you're really out talking to people, hearing from them about their concerns, but also explaining what you do. Because I have yet, in my however many years in this work, talked to an oversight agency that felt that, oh yeah, everybody in town knows we exist. Every single oversight agency has to deal with the fact that people are always saying, I didn't know you were here. I didn't know this was an option. I didn't know we could make a complaint to you. So know that these principles are important, but again, they're not checklists. And if you don't have all 13 of these, your oversight is terrible. And as you are looking at those sorts of principles, you really want to think about, is this practice an appropriate fit for your local context? And that's everything from the size of your community, the size of your department, the kinds of issues you're facing, the history of your community, the diversity, the different dimensions of diversity you have, your governmental structure. I mean, there's a ton of different things to think about. But you also want to think about how this practice will strengthen whatever oversight you create in relation to the entire set of 13 principles. And then you want to think about unintended consequences. An example I often give is, maybe about three years ago, New York City was doing a charter review and I got asked to come down, testify before the Charter Review Commission for their session on civilian oversight. And there was a group that was working to create an elected civilian oversight board. And their position was that the only way to have this be truly impartial is to have them elected by the people and responsible to the people, not to the mayor or not to the city council. And my, what I said in my continuing belief is that the challenge with that idea is it sounds great, especially to activists and organizers. However, if you turn it into an elected position, it becomes political. And in New York City in particular, where you have very powerful police unions, lots of money, a pretty diverse city in terms of politics and political beliefs, let alone all the other dimensions of diversity. What would happen if you have an election and the people who are anti reform, let's say for lack of a better term, work to get anti reformers on the civilian oversight board and do it successfully. So in any event, long, long-winded way of saying, you want to think about unintended consequences. There's the abstract that my former colleagues at the ACLU will tell you, this is what you have to have. And you also have to think about what's the reality in terms of your local context and your government. And as you, when you think about that, you want to think strategically and, you know, again, well, I will just read these briefly because these are kind of general thoughts as well, probably for all of your work. How do you build on opportunities while addressing and understanding the challenges that you face in Arlington? How will you build legitimacy with all stakeholders in your town and goodwill for the future? And again, this is thinking ahead, assuming you find that you want to create oversight and the town does it. When that happens, what are priorities and what can go on the back burner? What needs to happen the first three months, the first six months? For example, I would say you need to get training for people. And what can wait? What can you work on over time? And then how do you adapt to conditions in order to achieve your mission? You know, you do all this work. You have a commission, a committee, a study group. You prepare things. It goes to town meeting. It's on the warrant. People vote. You create something. And two or three or four years down the road, you realize that, you know, this is what we thought was going to happen. And now that we're doing it, here's what's really happened. So you have to be able to adapt to conditions. In some places that has meant going back and looking at ordinances. In some places it's meant budgetary changes. A number of communities have started to peg the size of the budget of the oversight agency to the size of the police department budget to ensure that they have adequate funding. There are a lot of different things that may come up over time. And finally, as I kind of close out, I love to close out with this slide. It's a little complicated. So there's these two sides on the left side. There's an image. The artist, Ricardo Levins Morales, actually in Minnesota, although he has connections to Massachusetts. His father was right here in Cambridge for many years, Dick Levins. And nothing about us without us is for us. And the slogan, as you might be able to read, is based on a slogan popularized by youth activists and disability rights activists in South Africa. And to me, it really speaks to every aspect of this, right? Because everyone needs to be part of this if it's going to be for them. If it's going to be for people who might have complaints, if it's going to be for visible minorities in your community, if it's going to be for law enforcement, everyone has to have a seat at the table and be part of the creation. And then on the right side of the slide, again, I will read this, if you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together. Now, before I say, well, I think it's so powerful, I will note that you may have seen this before. It's often attributed to someone named Willow Watson, who was an Aboriginal activist in Queensland, Australia. She would tell you that this was not her personal thought. This was what the community of activists, this is how they talked about their work. But the reason I think it's important is because in any transaction, interaction, involvement between two people that has a negative dehumanizing aspect that's oppressive, that could involve violence, it's not that those experiences are the same. Someone who is a victim of violence is not the same as the perpetrator. And at the same time, in that interaction, each person loses a bit of their humanity. And so for me, the work of civilian oversight, of improving public safety and policing and law enforcement, of helping communities to feel heard, to feel safe, to feel trust in their law enforcement agency, that's a way that we all need to be liberated. And so we can't come here to help those people that need help. We have to come together because we all need to be free, just that bit more free, that bit more liberated, that bit more human. So with that, I guess I'll put this on the screen for a moment so people can see it because so far I have not yet gotten floods of calls from people. You know, hopefully that won't happen, but I give people my cell phone number, so there you go. And with that, I think that is the end of my presentation. So I'm going to stop sharing my screen and I so appreciate you all listening to my Brian Corey lecture series. So I'd be happy to answer questions, discuss, or if you're like Cambridge, you know, you'll do some statement answer where you'll make a statement and ask me if I agree or not. But again, really, thank you. Thank you so much. This was such so helpful. I almost wish we'd asked you to come at the beginning of this process, but I think now it helps helpful that we've learned a lot and we have some background and context. So it's not all brand new and it was super useful. I think the best thing to do is to see if anybody has any, are you available for some questions? I am. Okay. That would be fantastic. And I'll see if I can answer them. Okay. Does anybody have any questions? Sanjay, I knew I could count on you. Yeah. So the main question that I sort of have, you know that I've really enjoyed reading the NACL report and, and all that sort of a lot of it. Or a lot of all the information is about larger communities than Arlington. And so, you know, getting down, you know, talking about the specific context of the place, right? You know, if you have any specific suggestions for us as a smaller community or other smaller communities for us to look at. Because, you know, sometimes I feel like when I look at those, you know, smaller means like Cambridge, right, which is still, you know, four times bigger than us. Right. Okay. That is, that is a great question. And I feel like I should, I should have a list off the top of my head. I don't have a list off the top of my head, but two things I would say is, you know, there are some communities that are medium size to smaller that have had oversight for a number of years now. Most of them, I don't know a lot of the details say Columbia, Missouri. I mean, it's a, you know, not that big of a place. I know, you know, Pittsfield is probably about your size, but it's a different kind of community because it really is the urban hub of the Berkshires. You know, and again, their, their model is it, well, they're all unique. I'm saying their model is unique, but everyone's model is unique. Yeah. You know, I know there are some, but you know, I should, I could probably could do this myself, but I won't want to impose this on you. But if you go to that link that I mentioned, the nake hole recent reports, there's a link to what we call the co-add. I wouldn't have called it that, but it's the civilian oversight something database. That's terrible. I'm tired. It's been a long day. And, but with, with that, you can actually go in and search by a number of different things. You can search by size of community. I think you can search by model, by authority. And I, I would recommend that. And then I know I'm asking you to do the work. But that, I mean, I would say, feel free to then, you know, reach back out to me and say, you know, what do I know about these five or six communities? Okay. But I think that's part of the reason we're so excited about the online toolkit, because now people can actually, as opposed to trying to go through a list and click on a link. And oh, I think that city might be about our size. You can actually kind of do a more robust search. Yeah, I'd been through it once and I don't remember the names off the top of my head either, but I will definitely follow up with some questions about specific ones. Did you have any sort of like general advice for us as a smaller community? Yeah. Well, thank you. I forgot that part. Um, well, you know, I think this is not the only measure, but one thing to do is to look at the number of complaints you're receiving a year. Um, you know, it's, it's one of the things where it's not an absolute. There's not a, you know, it's, it varies from year to year. I'm sure. But in Cambridge, we have a, for a city our size, um, we get about about a hundred thousand calls for service and we generally get about six to 12 complaints a year at my agency. And then the police department also can receive complaints. They get about the same number. So, you know, like 15 to 25 complaints a year, which is very small. I have to say when I first started in my role, I was kind of concerned. I was wondering why and, and over time I've realized that it's because people generally don't find cause to make complaints about the Cambridge police. And so looking at that number and the number of complaints that you're already getting, you know, recognizing you would probably get more, um, I think can help to think about what kind of model you need. I mean, if you're getting 250 complaints a year, well, maybe the town needs to invest in an investigative model where you're really investigating complaints. If you're getting five complaints a year, maybe you can review the investigations done by the police department and create a model that is maybe a little bit more of a hybrid where you, you're, you're reviewing completed investigations and the complaints and, you know, other relevant information. And maybe you also have some role in making policy suggestions or maybe you, you know, review policies and procedures over time or when new policies are being promulgated, the chief could review those with you present. I mean, these are just different ideas about how you might do it. But I would say that, you know, it probably is a town the size of Arlington, you're not looking at a, you know, a big agency with five full-time investigators and all of that. Thank you. Um, Michael, I saw your hand up and then after you, Chief Flaherty. Yeah, um, I have a question that could you help unpack the word legitimacy because we have different stakeholders. I think that could be a squishy term. And, you know, one of the things that you talked about was, you know, how important it is to create legitimacy for civilian oversight. You know, are there effective strata, you know, unpack that a little bit if a little bit more and are there, have you seen potential strategies that have helped people move in a direction to try to have an understanding, a shared understanding of that? Yeah, no, that's a great question. I'd say two things. One, I mean, two big things. One is really about processes. You know, I mean, you've got Chief Flaherty here on your, your meeting. You know, I don't know what other kind of work or community meetings you're doing, but I would say doing your best to ensure that you've got all those stakeholders at those meetings that, you know, it's one thing to kind of do a public meeting and you invite everybody and perhaps many of the people we all know come and speak and you get a few extra people, but really creating processes on the front end that are deliberate in including various stakeholders, whether it's focus groups, listening sessions, but really making sure that all those stakeholders are included in this process as you go along, finding ways to do that. I think once, once you have something up and running, there, again, it depends a bit on the situation you're in. Part of legitimacy for oversight is just being visible. And I, and I'll tell you in Cambridge, that's one of my biggest challenges because we have such an active community. We have so many things going on. You know, I'm like a little blip over in the oversight world, even within city government. So making sure that people know that you're there and the main way we do that in Cambridge is by having our board members go to public events, community meetings, neighborhood associations, you know, and talking to tenant associations, public housing developments, and not that those are the only people who might ever have a complaint or concern or even want to make a commendation about the police. But making sure that we're going out to people who are active, people who are community minded, people who may be more likely to have concerns about policing because of the, where they grew up, their nation of origin, their experience, their class, their racial status, their racial identity. So, and then I'm just, I'm trying not to do too general. I guess the last thing about this whole piece of legitimacy is, I would say, you know, as I can talk about all day, but I'm really not the expert. I think when you look at, again, the task force report, or even really if you go to Yale, or actually a thing called the justice collaboratory, which is out of Yale Law School, Professor Tracy Mears, who I mentioned a couple of times, is one of the leaders of that. And they've done some really interesting work on these issues as well. So not, not to kind of duck out of the answer, Michael, but just to say that I think a lot of it is really about your approach and that you have to constantly be engaged with people, listening to people. And it doesn't mean that, you know, everyone's always happy with you, but you have to be out there. You have to be willing to hear their voices and then, and report to them what you're doing. Thank you, Brian. I know it's not an easy thing, but thank you. Thank you very much, Brian, for that presentation. That was very helpful to me as well. And I wasn't aware that recently had something in place. And I know the Pittsfield Chief. So I'll make it a point to reach out to him to see him. And I think it's a great opportunity. I think it's something in place. And I know the Pittsfield Chief. So I'll make it a point to reach out to him to see how things are going and possibly talk to the co-chairs about bringing him here. But we can talk about that later. You answered the first question about the number of cases that you're investigating or that you're involved in in Cambridge. So my other question really, and you kind of touched upon that too, was what effects do you think police reform will have on your commission or just kind of a waiting game way to see? And my second question is, what discipline authority that the commission has and what your barriers are with collective bargaining and civil service? Okay. All great questions. And, you know, and Chief Nguyen would be a good person to talk to about some of that stuff as well. You can hear from him from his perspective. So let's see the first question was about, and you moved, you put your hand down. I'm sorry. I just threw a bunch of questions at you. So really the effects with police reform and what does it already have and the barriers with collective bargaining and civil service? Right. So let me start with the discipline piece because yeah, our board has no power over discipline. The discipline resides with our police commissioner. And depending on the level of discipline, if it's beyond a certain length or up to termination, it actually has to be done by the city manager. So now our board has never been in the practice of recommending specific discipline. Some boards absolutely do. And to my knowledge, Cambridge does not have a disciplinary matrix. I mean, it's something that's much more common in large police departments. But I think that from my point of view, if you want to, if the civilian review board or civilian oversight board commission is going to have some role in discipline, you want them to be working off the same information that the chief or the police commissioner is working off of. So in our case, it doesn't come up because we don't recommend specific discipline. And even if we did in our model, it would be a recommendation to the police commissioner. Now again, there could in some future state with all sorts of things changing. We might end up with a different ordinance in Cambridge and maybe the police commissioner would have to report in writing or respond in writing about discipline. But right now, we don't have anything like that. In terms of collective bargaining, I mean, our police advisory advisory board goes back to 1984. So, you know, whatever issues there may have been about that, mostly are long, long ago. I think the main time where it would come up is not directly with civilian oversight, but when we're looking at findings, because as I said, with very, very few exceptions, we asked the professional standards unit, our internal affairs unit, police department to do the investigation on behalf of the board. So it's still our investigation. I still, I go in. Well, we used to go in and I'll be starting soon to meet with the investigator and the head of the professional standard unit regularly in between the means of the board just to check it on progress and note things that I think the board will be concerned about. And then in the end, there's a finding that the board will vote on. And one of the issues, it's a very long-winded answer about collective bargaining. One of the issues that has come up a few times is that sometimes the fight, you know, because the findings have to be able to stand up to grievance and arbitration, they're not always what members of the board feel very good about. Sometimes they, well, why couldn't you do this? But, you know, there's precedent, there's lots of other issues. So I'd say for us, it's really indirect. It's that indirect effect of collective bargaining and arbitration. And then, was it the police reform law? Is that the other thing? Yes. You know, it is a little bit of a wait and see. I mean, I sort of mentioned that. I mean, one of the things, and this is just very specific, our police commissioner has just announced that he's leaving. So, you know, I don't know. We'll probably have someone, my guess, and I don't have any insight information. We'll probably have someone from, you know, one of the two superintendents who report directly to commissioner become the acting commissioner. And then they'll probably be a nationwide search. And our city manager is retiring in a little bit less than a year. So I don't, I think it could be a long drawn out process. So having said that, depending, and this is the reality, right? Because a lot of it is still about relationships. And I have very good working relationships with the people with the police commissioner and the two superintendents. So I'd say right now, I feel like we're in a good position to leverage some of those things just to increase the transparency in our own work to provide more information. You know, the city solicitor will probably have some opinions about providing more information and I understand why. And so I don't quite know what it's going to mean for us in Cambridge, at least on the oversight side. But I feel like it's going to open up some possibilities to be able to share additional information about complaints and provide more transparency for the community. Thank you so much. You're welcome. I'm going to call on you now. Thank you. And. May I call you, Brian? Oh, please. Brian, I just want to say that you referenced several times in a very. A modest way, how much you've been talking, but I have to say, for a lot of us who have been looking at these issues, I think it was an incredibly muscular presentation. And I just appreciate how much ground you covered. In the period of time on relatively short notice. So I was very impressed and grateful. And I know that Miss Roe and I used NACL and we cited NACL. I want to know as a source in a previous presentation that we had given about some of one of the different models oversight. And I believe Mr. Newton did it, although I didn't. I don't think the Clarissa and I had the benefit of your most recent report, which is just fantastic stuff and the. So I first of all, I'm very grateful to have your. Your insight and perspective. It's a relatively rare. Perspective to have. Because while oversight's expanding. It's not as if there's a lot of other folks out there who are the same level expertise. I have two questions that are that are sort of. Somewhat related. One is. We have a couple of other entities in town, including, and we have some representatives at this meeting tonight, a human rights commission. Who has the ability to receive certain kinds of complaints about bias or things like that. How do you, do you have any experience with how. Oversight body or a set of individuals sort of. Tends to interact with other committees and commissions. And I think it's important to have any, any advice on how to. Integrate some of our existing infrastructure. And, and, and, and organizations. Into that or whether you think it really should be a very separate and sort of compartmentalized. Type of type of branch of the government. And then I'll guess I'll put me a second question out there because I think it's important. I don't think it's. Too obnoxiously. Ingratuating, but I would guess that your role is extremely important. How much of the work is done by you. Versus the board. That you're working with. In other words, I would assume that the professional side of the staff is a pretty essential piece. And I think it's important to have that in mind. Just about any of these models and. Without, you know, Making you talk up yourself too much. I just would assume that that's pretty important. Could you provide any commentary on those, on those sort of two subjects. Okay. Well, first of all, thank you for the very kind words. I'll make sure the $49.99 check is in the mail. I'm sorry. That's an ethics law joke for those of you who haven't had your ethics law training. But no, seriously, so thank you. It's very kind. And let's see, I would say, let me start with the second question first. You know, it varies a bit, but generally, you know, the day to day work of most oversight agencies happens in the office, you know, board members and commission members. I mean, their roles can be sort of whatever a community defines, but in general, it's sort of like Cambridge with a, you know, it's maybe the matter of degree. So we have a monthly meeting at that meeting we, you know, I do some updates and reports, blah, blah, blah. We have some reports from the police department. Maybe there's a couple other things on the agenda. And then when there are complaints, we go into executive session and that might be, so that meeting itself might be two, maybe three hours. Because we usually don't, again, we don't get that made complaint. So it's rare to have more than a couple of complaints in a meeting. Sometimes we don't have any. And so there's the, in the meeting, there's the work to actually review the materials ahead of time. There's some work on outreach. Obviously we ask everyone to, we can't make anybody do it, but we really strongly encourage board members to do it. There's training, there's training from NACL, there's training from the police department, training from the city law department, which is more of a, you know, periodic, but regular training from in other ways. So, you know, that all is happening, but in terms of people coming into the office, people filing complaints, letting people know the status of their complaint, interacting with the police department. I mean, that's all me. And I do have, so I'm the head of two departments, and those departments are basically me and about half of another person. So I'm very lucky because the person who works with me and does kind of office manager programmatic stuff used to be an investigator in Washington DC, office of police complaints. So it just kind of happens to be, but she doesn't work as an investigator, but she kind of knows the work as well. And because we're not doing investigations, that's all happening at the police department. So it is, you know, really the work of oversight board members in most communities is much more, you know, reading, deliberating, training, planning, that sort of thing. And then just in terms of other boards, you're the person who's preparing all that for them. Right. Okay. I mean, the police department's coming up with a bunch of stuff, but yes, that's on us to get the materials from the police department, get them to the board members, you know, keep track of everything, keep track of the case files and all that. That is why it's good. I don't want to take too much time, but I would imagine that you're also providing some level of analysis. That's pretty important to priming the discussions by the board. Is that a fair? Well, you know, it's interesting because when the board's deliberating on a complaint, it's an executive session. So my role is not so much to frame it, but to allow the police department investigator, because of the way we do it, we have the police department investigator and have professional standards in the executive session to do an overview of the complaint and the investigation and the report, answer any questions, and then they're dismissed for the board to deliberate. So the staff stay in the room, but not the policing, you know, the staff of the board, stay in the room, but not the policing staff. And so I would say as, you know, it's an interesting place to be because no one ever asked me this question, but so I know a lot of things, but my role, I'm not a board member. So I try to kind of, you know, focus on guardrails and principles. Occasionally I will raise a point if I think that there are things that people are not considering, but it's not really my role to help guide them into a decision. There are oversight agencies where that's exactly the role of the director. So it, again, it varies a lot. And then to your other question. I don't want to get too much time. That was about integrating sort of other. Oh, yes, other city agencies, town departments. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. So I know you have a human rights commission. I, my sense is that it's kind of similar to Cambridge's, which mostly Cambridge has an agreement with MCA D and it works, they mostly do housing discrimination and employment discrimination. But the other things seep in now and again. But so I mean, it could be interesting. To have the human rights commission play a role. I don't know what the staffing is. Even if it were just sort of for a complaint intake. I guess the thing I would say is that. In from my personal point of view, you want a commission. Or board or however you would frame it. That has specific expertise. And this is what I often say about civilian oversight, right? I mean, so you've got the town manager's civilian oversight. And yet I think that it's important to have someone who's more focused on the civilian oversight of the law enforcement agency as a major responsibility. And can get that specialized training can network with other people who do that work and can really focus on it. I mean, and that's for everyone's benefit. And then so if. So you. They work with other boards and commissions in different ways. I mean, it may be the town doesn't want to set up a whole separate infrastructure, but I guess. In the abstract without doing more details about what's going on and all the different boards and commissions now things work in the town of Arlington. I would think you would want to have at least a board that was dedicated to this issue because that would be their focus as opposed to other types of discrimination bias. And there's lots of very specific things around policing. You know, so I could go on. Thank you very much. I know there's. You're welcome. Susan. Brian, thanks so much. I have a gazillion questions for you, but no one's going to let me ask a gazillion. So let me just start with one. And this is more like a case study situation. And I'm going to just present it to you and ask you based on all of your experience working with civilian oversight boards and studying this issue, how you would recommend a community move on. So hypothetically. Actually, I'm going to talk specifically about Lexington from the report that was just done and presented in Lexington in May 2021. So, so as you know, incidents can happen with police that seer community and you reference the Henry Lewis Gates situation, which I mean, to the day we die, people will probably still be talking about that incident. It was so searing. So in this report done for the town of Lexington, which is very, very similar to the town of Arlington, and I just, I'm going to read from the report. And I know you're tired. So I'm going to try and be very organized and how I do this. I'm just going to present it to you and then ask you, how does the community move on from this storytelling? So the attorneys interviewed like 16 groups, stakeholders throughout Lexington. This included the association of black citizens, Brazilian Americans of Lexington, Chinese Americans, Indian Americans, Japanese support group, an array of people. Based on those interviews, I'm going to quote from the report, community members continue to report that Lexington police officers disproportionately pull over black motorists. Then it goes on. It investigated this whole issue. Again, I'm quoting from the report. We found it notable that of the people of color whom we talked to who had experienced or observed traffic stops, all noted that there had been a legitimate reason for the stop, that none of the internal affairs complaints about racial profiling were substantiated. And that none of the officers of color within the department believe racial profiling and traffic stops is a current or recent problem. And then the last piece I'll add. Is that a number in this is in the interviews, the stakeholder interviews, a number of officers of color did, however, report discrimination or negative race based interactions with residents of the town. So this is an, like a very interesting situation where you have a lot of, I'm going to just say progressive because that's what we're talking like progressive political movement to do better. And then the investigation, you know, then you have searing incidents and you have a story. A story is our white cops pull over black people. May not, and it was true in the 70s and 80s, which is noted in the report, but actually what you have is white people in town, behaving disrespectfully to black officers or other officers of color. How does a community move on? Not that there's that's something that you move on to. How does a community work together? And is a civilian oversight board a way to deal with these very complex emotional searing issues? That's a, that's a big question. Well, so this is, you know, I'm just hearing all this. I was not aware of this report. I have to track it down and read it. You know, and I mean, so you've read some excerpts of report I've seen, so lots of caveats about what I'm about to say. But I guess my, my thoughts are kind of twofold. On the one hand, you know, both of those things, which somewhat seem somewhat contradictory, speak to the United States of America, right? And Western society and the racialization of people and the African descent. I mean, you know, I can go on and on. We all know these things. And in that way, they're not contradictory, right? But I think also from what you read, Susan, it's, I mean, it's, you know, it's reporting on what people perceived. And those perceptions may or may not reflect reality. It's, it's hard to know, right? And in some sense, I guess that report is saying the point is not, can we quantify this and prove whether those people are right or wrong, but that this is, as people say, this is people's lived experience. This is how people who live in the town of Lexington who are, who identify as people of color, at least these people they spoke to, this is how they, they experienced their life in Lexington. And, you know, certainly for officers of color, that is a real thing. And I think, now, again, this is a little bit suppositional, but, you know, you have liberal progressive communities where you have a lot of, and so I, I don't mean any disrespect to anybody, but, you know, for the way people describe it, that's kind of like woke white people who are outraged because now they finally get the, what's going on in our country. And, you know, I think, you know, there's a lot going on in our country and they see, and then you've got officers of color who are in a primarily white environment, in a primarily white department, who have to deal with all sorts of things, especially if you're African-American, you know, there's this whole idea of are you black or are you blue? Are you a black person or are you a cop? And black people think you're a cop and cops think you're black, right? So, I mean, there are a lot of complicated issues, but I think it's not something that civilian oversight, per se, is going to fix. I mean, if what that report had found was that there were really serious disparities and that the training was lacking and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but if it's that, well, you know, this is people with perception, we're not really finding it, but there clearly needs to be some work on racial healing that's done. And there are probably other dimensions of discrimination and inequality that need work. Because, you know, civilian oversight, again, might not to rehash my presentation, if it's complaint-driven, well, you know, that's what happens. You file a complaint, I got pulled over. You got pulled over, you do a legitimate reason. There's not any particular evidence that this stop was based on any bias or protected category. And so then people don't feel vindicated because it's a really hard thing to demonstrate unless there's a really serious pattern. Now that's not to say I wouldn't say civilian oversight might not have some real benefits for Lexington, but I don't think it's going to address that sense of people feeling that they're being targeted, whether it's as people driving through Lexington Center or it's police officers, you know, showing up at the house and having someone say something obnoxious to them or walking down the street, you know, and it could be that they're hearing things because they're people of color. It could be they're hearing things because they're cops. It could be both. It's really hard to know. So I don't know if that's a very satisfactory answer, Susan. It's very satisfactory. I do have a follow-up question if I can ask that, and I know we're coming up, Laura, on our time. One thing to note is that in this report, it's very clear that this was a huge problem in the 70s and 80s in Lexington and officers themselves admitted that. What, like the whole word transparency that we throw around, like let's say Arlington, excuse me, Lexington were to do a civilian oversight-esque type of board. What kind of data or what kind of transparency would they use to begin to mitigate that story of, and I don't want to use the word story to denigrate the, just to begin to bring more facts to the discussion about what is and isn't happening in terms of traffic. Yeah, it's fine. So now something else comes to mind that, so three weeks ago I was up in Bennington, Vermont. I can't remember if I mentioned that to you or someone else earlier today, but, and so they, well, I won't quote the whole story, but basically a complicated story in which there is a state representative who is African American from Bennington. She was dealing with some hate crimes and felt that the response and other people in the Greek felt the response of the police department did not take it sufficiently seriously. And this individual, she ended up resigning from the state legislature and moving from Bennington up to Burlington, but it really led to lots of questioning in the community. And so they brought in, I was going to say Perth. I think it was, I can't remember if it was the International Association of Chiefs of Police or Police Executive Research Forum. I feel like it was IACP to do a study, no, I'm sorry, it was Perth to do a study and came up with a number of recommendations, but the reason this comes to mind, I mentioned all this is because a lot of their recommendations talked about how the impact of traffic stops, talked about the impact of traffic stops on trust and legitimacy within the community, especially for people of color, but also for a lot of working class and poor people. And the, you know, the Bennington Police Department, my sense is, and from talking to the chief and the captain, you know, progressive minded, it's a community that prides itself on being progressive and they really had seen this aggressive strategy around traffic stops as part of how they were making their community safer. They were dealing with guns, they were dealing with drugs, you know, alive. It was traffic through Bennington on the way up route seven and there's a lot of issues as you may know with drug distribution have coming up through the Connecticut River Valley. But anyway, this has become a long thing. So, but one of the things that they really found was that those interactions, those kinds of interactions really created negative feelings and that for the department to change that, it would need to change its philosophy around how aggressively to police around traffic and driving violations and to be thoughtful about what they're pulling people over for and what are the unintended consequences of that. So I think the department that with all good intentions was trying to make the community safer and enforce laws and outsiders coming through and deal with the guns and the drugs instead was undermining their own legitimacy within the community. And that's not directly related to this issue of hate crimes against the state representative and yet it's all part of how people were perceiving the Bangton Police Department. So anyway, so having said all that makes me think that really that kind of thing might be helpful and I don't know if they need that level of review but the other thing that comes to mind which is, I would say it's really hard to do, is some sort of truth and reconciliation process and not talking about the evil doers who were gonna put on the truth and reconciliation panel as opposed to putting them in jail but just for people to tell those stories. I think should I mention this, but my first job out of college I was a door-to-door canvasser and I moved here from Michigan, worked for committee for a same nuclear policy and every day we went canvassing and it's different in every state but the first thing we did every day was we would drive to the police department and drop off a list of everybody who was canvassing. In Michigan we didn't do that the same way but we did here and so we left the police station where we had just dropped off a list in Lexington Center, I should say this was in Lexington and I'm assuming all the police station is right on Mass Ave, we got in our old beat up car full of bumper stickers about peace and everything and I think we drove a block before we got pulled over by the police and we got pulled over and they got us out of the car and then they wanted to know who we all were and we said we just left the police department we just left our names, it's got our names and our driver's license numbers and they said oh well we just were concerned because when we see a number of people that look kind of disparate and some young women in the car were concerned about sex trafficking so we just wanted to make sure everybody was okay I was like okay, so anyway that's a long little story but that was probably in 1989 so I probably was the only person of color but only to say that yeah I think that people being able to tell those kind of stories from their own experience especially people who live there I mean I tell it, I kind of laugh stuff like this happens all the time but I still remember it, right? and it was probably 30 years ago so or no more, yes it was like more than 30 years ago oh my gosh, so in any event I was a really really really long answer but I do think that those kind of processes where people can tell their stories I mean they have to be done well they have to be carefully managed and not to control people but to make sure that if you open up this can of worms you have the tools and the space and the expertise to support people who've shared these stories and who may get disbelieving reactions from people and other people who may hear those stories and it reminds them of things that they've experienced so it is, yeah but it's hard I'm sorry, okay give me starting to talk about these issues I'm going all night thank you very much it's incredibly interesting thank you very much that's an incredibly thoughtful answer thank you thank you so much I had some questions but they've been largely covered and I'm mindful of the time that you have so generously given us as somebody said on pretty short notice and we will probably take advantage of your offer for us to follow up and ask questions as we move along in this process but thank you so much this is really so valuable for us you're absolutely very welcome as I said at the beginning I'm so glad to be able to do this I mean I do this with people over the country and to be able to do it with my neighbors is really gratifying so no I mean it and then finally if you know if you want me to do something in person that's like a bigger community thing just know that I'm happy to do that as well I mean I could be briefer or I could take an hour or two I think we will definitely keep that in mind as we sort of work on that community outreach side of things that you referred to which is one of our big tasks ahead oh and then I just saw in the chat yep I can actually I think I'll just save the PowerPoint I'll try to find that typo and correct the PowerPoint and save it as a PDF and I can send it to Susan so she can make it available to the committee the group your group we are a committee we are a study committee thank you so much thank you you're here you're so it is now seven I don't know eight fifty one Bob I don't know do you want to give a quick summary of the information that you had sent us or do you want to save that for the next meeting you're muted we can't hear you perhaps the host could quick on the little three dots in his upper right corner and ask him to unmute then he should get a little unmute button oh okay thank you I did that the other perhaps he can type us an answer something that would be kind of nice to do would be to approve the previous minutes okay and then I'm going to suggest that since we're having technical difficulties we we've approved the previous minutes and then adjourn and hopefully we can hear from Bob and in three I think it's three weeks the 24th yeah whatever whether that's two or three weeks so does someone want to make a motion about the minutes from the July let me share them 20th meeting yep and I will share them briefly maybe are you able to see those yeah okay so really I mean the big thing is make sure we have the attendance right oops sorry those are yeah oh July 20th yes perfect so we approved minutes no updates from committees we have my presentation I had some questions that people asked I'll include my actual presentation I think that on the attendance I think that Jill came to the meeting were you were you waiting Jill on the 20th I was there for like three minutes okay I remember seeing your like your name pop up but I didn't know when it was which way would you like me to marker I feel like I was absent okay I came in because didn't the meeting and early yes yeah I came in thinking I'm yeah I'm gonna be here for half an hour and then it was over and I was like okay um would someone make a motion move to move second do you like to do a call yes please Mr. Morales here I'm sorry I won't be so formal Sanjay yes Susan yes Michael yes Anne yes Mary yes I think that's all of the voting oh uh Laura yes it's a unanimous vote thank you um and I also want to know that we did have chief clarity on the agenda to to give us some updates I hope that you will forgive us for bumping you um to the next meeting as well don't worry I'll be okay okay thank you so much for being prepared sorry about that chief no this is really valuable for us um and I guess the only last thing is for somebody make a motion to adjourn to adjourn second on a motion by Susan seconded by Sanjay uh Anne yes Marlos yes Michael yes Karen yes Sanjay yes Carlos did I get you yes Susan yes Laura yes unanimous vote thank you the meeting adjourned see you all in a couple weeks thank you again Brian thank you you're very much appreciated glad to do it take care everyone