 If anybody can please get the doors, that'd be great. Thank you. Thank you. Great, okay. Well, thank you. Welcome, everybody, for this hearing on H-808, as well as the general concept of boosted force. And, what's that word? Okay, so thank you. And I want to thank government operations for being here and joining us. I know that your committee is doing quite a bit of work on this already, and so I think it's important that we both hear this testimony together. So, thank both committees for being here and for the folks who are here to share their viewpoints with us. These two bills are interrelated and have been assigned to two different committees, so we felt it was really important to spend some time this afternoon really getting a 360 degree view of some of these issues, hearing from as many perspectives as possible. I think the first perspective that we would like to hear from this afternoon is from the author of the bill that is in the judiciary committee. So, Representative Ann Donahue, if you want to join us and share with us a few minutes of your thoughts on why you put this idea forward. Thank you, welcome. Thank you very much, I'm Representative Ann Donahue and I really want to just give a brief overview of where it came from. I've followed with the same concern that I think many of these issues have when there's situations where there's a death that results from the use of a lethal force, but especially in mental health situations because that's the community that I'm a part of when people are in mental health crisis and there's been a really significant increase in those deaths in the past four or five years. And there often seems to be a real perception about accountability and I think the issue is public confidence or particularly confidence on the part of members of minority communities like my own. Part of that is just a lack of public understanding about what the standard is for the use of force. That it's the situation kind of right at the moment without a broader context. So people hear about something and they hear, well there was a thumbs up, thumbs down, it was justified, but gee, we thought there was more to it. I want to make clear this is not based on a sense that there is inappropriate use of force in Vermont. I think we have a very high standard of professionalism. But it is about the importance of public transparency and public confidence in the system of how we review those situations when they occur. So this is something that's been on my mind for a while but last spring I saw news reports about the new law that was passed in California that did take a little bit of that broader look about is force really the only option or necessary? What's the slightly broader context? And it seemed to me like a really good place for discussion here in Vermont. So I worked primarily with representative Jessup who was sort of co-sponsored with me asking for a bill to be drafted. And it was only at that point that I learned from legislative council that we didn't actually have a current statutory standard that was a statewide standard on use of force. Surprisingly, because I've been involved in the bill regarding use of tasers some years back. And so we have one for tasers but not for use of legal force. So we brought this bill forward really for two reasons. One, to encourage the adoption of a statewide statutory standard. And second, to encourage that the California law be the basis for discussion about what those standards should be. Might not be that those standards are exactly what's right for Vermont but I think it's a good starting point. We simply asked legislative council to draft what passed in California as a draft. It's not to say this is exactly right or this language is the language that should be followed but it seemed like a really good base for looking at the issue. And the purpose is pretty straightforward. It's to increase transparency and public process. Public confidence, I'm sorry, in that review process both by having a really well articulated standard for accountability and one that includes the logical context of the situation when it occurs. So I appreciate your hearing testimony and hearing different perspectives on where Vermont should be. Great, thank you, thank you so much. So Bryn Hare from legislative council and because there are two different bills, one that has been referred to government operations and the other to the judiciary committee I've asked legislative council to prepare comparison of the two bills, so thank you. You're welcome. Good afternoon. Good afternoon committees. For the record, Bryn Hare from legislative council and I appreciate that introduction that the sponsor H808 just provided that gives me a good entryway here. I think that one of the committee systems just passed out a real high level summary of these two bills given the number of witnesses that you have to hear from today and the times you have a lot of, I'm not going to do a line by line walkthrough of these bills, rather I'm going to talk sort of generally about what each of them do and hopefully the high end summary will give you a little framework. So as the chairs just indicated, both bills address law enforcement policies that govern the use of force in policing. H464, which is in the government operations committee, requires that stakeholders create a policy that encompasses law enforcement use of force. And H808, which is in the judiciary committee sets out, as the sponsor just indicated, a statewide policy that governs the use of deadly force. So the bills do this in two different ways. So H464, and I set it up section by section here, it requires that law enforcement collect data about any use of force that's employed during a roadside stop. And it also updates the existing statutes on law enforcement data collection to require the involvement of the executive director of racial equity. Section two is a section that deals with the use of force policy. So it requires that the criminal justice training council and others create a model policy that deals with the appropriate use of force, de-escalation tactics, and cross patrol awareness. And then it imposes requirements that are similar to the requirements that both these committees are familiar with about fair and impartial policing, how that policy is adopted, how it's updated, what the training requirements are. And then it also requires that the council report regularly to the general assembly on whether or not policies have been adopted and law enforcement officers have been trained. And lastly, it requires four hours of training as part of basic training on the new policy regarding use of force. H808 does things a little differently. It creates a statutory statewide policy regarding the use of deadly force. So it sets it out in law what the policy is. And that policy provides with the allowable use of deadly force is limited to situations when it is necessary in defense of human life. It doesn't impose training requirements on law enforcement and it doesn't impose sanctions on law enforcement for violating the policy. Those were not contemplated in the creation of the bill as I think that the sponsor just indicated. So I did want to point out though that statutory policy can be used in a court by an investigative body in determining whether or not a law enforcement officer, whether or not their actions were appropriate in a given situation. Any questions for Bryn in terms of the two bills? I was wondering if you could dive a bit deeper into the main difference as it relates to California and Vermont because I know it comes from the wording whether it's reasonable versus necessary. I was wondering if you could further define the difference as it relates to the law. So do you mean the difference between the way Vermont has handled that and the way California has handled it or rather the reasonable person's standard? Well, it's my understanding California changed it to the necessary standard and that's what we're looking to change it to potentially. And I was wondering if you could get into the definition of necessary versus reasonable and how they're different. Right, so H808 really draws on both that necessary standard, the necessary sort of a threshold standard and I can point you to the language in the bill which is on page two, subdivision B2. This is the language that provides that law enforcement may only use deadly force when necessary in defense of human life. The remainder of the policy talks more about a reasonable person's standard. It talks about how the law enforcement in determining whether law enforcement's actions were necessary in defense of human life. It draws on the reasonable person's standard. Did that officer act in an objectively reasonable manner in making a determination about whether his or her actions were in defense of human life? So I would say it really draws on both the threshold standard as the necessary standard but that standard is determined by whether or not that officer acted in a reasonable manner. Thanks. So it does look a few, I'm trying it out. So does California follow the standard, the congressional standard? Yes, this is so. It took basically word for word, power for word. Yeah, so this is modeled on the California statute and it's a little bit different because the California statute does have additional language beyond just this which imposes penalties on law enforcement and safety violations of policy. So, but yes, the California language does rely on that. Okay, so Vermont doesn't follow California? No, like as I just mentioned. Just confused because when Representative Donahue was speaking she said, maybe she didn't say but I took it as we follow the California. That's what HAOA does, is it follows California. But what was the difference? Only in that it doesn't, that's worse than statewide policy but it doesn't also in addition impose the sort of violation of the policy. And you just tell me understand the California bill, this is based on the California bill as passed. Yes. The California bill is introduced, does that have a higher standard than the reasonable person standard? Though yes, as it was introduced it looks very different. I would not be able to tell you with certainty right now what those differences were but I do believe it had a higher standard than it wound up with. And I can get you the version as it was introduced. Thank you. Just one more, I don't know if there's probably gonna be any improvement. So, law enforcement is having more contact with people with mental health issues more often. So, I guess it's more of a statement. Is that the problem or is the problem with the system with people with mental health issues? Is that's more to be revealed? Yes. So, question for a witness, Brad. Your sponsor, Tom. Okay. Thank you. Is that the question? Yes. For the record, I can't stay longer so if you want to do a different work of operation. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, Michael Charling, the commissioner of public safety for the last few months. There's an enormous amount to say on this particular topic. So, I'm gonna confine things to giving you a brief overview of the existing state of process. Speak a little bit about the challenges that have emerged over the last decade or so and give you a little preview about the things that we're working on right now that in part address some of the concerns that this bill is drafted to address. Let me start by saying there's no there's no cross section of the monitors that is as acutely aware as the community that's impacted by this mental health community as law enforcement. Instances where lethal force are used, whether it's an instance where someone suffers from a mental illness or any other instance are incredibly devastating events for all involved. So, this is an area where we've got tremendous interest in improving outcomes. The challenge that you're facing is one that's not endemic to Vermont, something that is happening on a national level. But before I get to that, let me just give you some sense of the thinking that goes into the way we operate and contemporary law enforcement here in Vermont in the 21st century. Our law enforcement agencies, whether they're state, county, or local are consistently involved in an ongoing, consistent improvement process on a host of topics. The operating landscape is increasingly complex every year whether it's related to use of force, search and seizure, the types of tools that are necessary, the threats that are faced, frankly, on the street on any given day. The operating environment gets more complex every year. So as a result of that, and because it is the right thing to do, we've got organizations that are constantly looking for the next best way of doing business. And we do that with an eye toward five key things that make successful organizations. Good hiring, which of course is a challenge, we'll save that for another day. Training, policy development, supervision, data, and data-driven analysis of what's going on to ensure that we're getting the right outcomes. And then leadership, which intersects all of those things. So we have an eye toward a variety of things to get good outcomes for monitors. There is a robust amount of training and policy development that happens on a day-to-day basis. It's a constant iterative process. Our policies that are in place in almost every area in Vermont I can't speak to every specific department, but in all the ones that I'm aware of are contemporary. They follow the models that are put forth by their under accreditation standards by the Commission on the Law Enforcement Accreditation, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, Police Executive Research Forum, a variety of high-end think tank organizations that help to craft these policies to work on a national basis. Use of force is a constitutional standard. It flows from the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. Use of force on someone that we're arresting, whether it's a low level or a high level, like lethal force, is governed by the Fourth Amendment. It is the seizure of a person. There is an almost indescribable amount of case law that flows from the Fourth Amendment that's been interpreted now for more than five decades by the courts that very specifically guides the way law enforcement officers across the nation, including Vermont, employ force. It's a very well-formed area of the law. The only state that we're aware of that has differed from the constitutional standards that by the Supreme Court is California, which has created a statutory construct, the outcome of which is unknown because it is relatively new. Shifting gears a bit. The types of things we're trying to prevent, the use of deadly force and or the ugly events that are part of the policing environment, unfortunately by default, because we're the last line of defense when things are not going well in any particular scenario. There isn't anybody else to call. So some of the things that happen are relatively ugly. Most of those things, even when they're disheartening to see on a video tape or described in a witness interview, are handled pursuant to the law and with great professionalism. There is a cross-section like in any other business that involves humans where there are errors made and occasionally, very occasionally, there is malicious intent to the types of things that happen. But to give you a sense of the volume, you all know the kinds of things that make headlines that are those events that go sideways and have poor outcomes. To give you a sense of what that sets against, there are hundreds of thousands of interactions between police officers and the public in Vermont every year. A very small cross-section of them result in the use of any kind of force and a very small cross-section of those that result in the use of force, result in the use of deadly force. Those numbers can be typically measured on one hand and occasionally two hands in Vermont in a given year set against hundreds of thousands of interactions. That's not to diminish the importance or the severity or the impact of a very small number of things. They are still very impactful to families, to communities, to the officers that are involved. But it's just to give you a sense of how frequent these kinds of events are. The goal, of course, is to get to zero. Now narrowing the focus a little bit to interactions with folks that are suffering from some type of mental health crisis. It is no secret that the numbers of interactions between law enforcement and the criminal justice system more broadly, in some cases that's corrections and other components of the system, not only in Vermont, but nationally, have increased exponentially hundreds of a percent over the last decade as a result of a variety of factors. But the core component is what I believe was a well-intentioned public policy instituted now 50 years ago deinstitutionalization but poorly executed. It was a failed promise on the part of government nationally to replace institutionalization with field level mental health assistance and a variety of approaches using a continuum to help people who are in crisis at various stages. We took the cost savings, but we didn't actually implement the back end of what was promised 50 years ago. And as a result, we've seen an increasing deterioration of conditions on the street for people suffering from crisis and an inability to respond to the volume of cases that are presented. And the artificial construct that I've developed to describe this is if you look at the mental health continuum of response in four components, at tier one you have folks that by virtue of their circumstance require long-term, secure kinds of placements, a relatively low number of people, but they exist. At tier two you have folks that might require in-hostile assessment for a short period of time but need a bed for a period of time. At level three, you have folks that require some kind of, what I've heard clinicians refer to, in an informal way as a tune-up, they require crisis staffing typically where it's about, I think I've been asked. One or two days of assistance in a facility where they can get more intense services. And then tier four, I'm sort of oversimplifying this, folks that are perfectly fine in the community, they just engage with services on an ongoing basis. The problem is we have such limited capacity at the top end of the system that folks that need those services are cascading all the way through the remainder of the system. Emblematic of that is the increase in the number of folks that are either getting rights to the hospital in the back of an ambulance or presenting themselves in emergency departments and have multiple week, in some cases, stays away from a more secure place with bed for them to get assistance and not the number of emergency responses on the part of law enforcement that are going to these events. So that is not the responsibility of anyone at the currently at the Department of Mental Health and it's not indemnitive Vermont. It is something that's happening on a national level and the resources and the tools to create an effective abatement strategy have been elusive for all of us on a national level. Should also know for the record that as we're talking about the intersection of law enforcement and folks that are suffering with some kind of a mental illness, that should not be seen as any kind of a badge of shame on the part of folks that are suffering with this illness. One of our fundamental problems is for some reason we bifurcate an illness that is mental health in nature from illness that is physical in nature. Imagine for a moment you walked into an emergency department and you were told or you had to sit in a bed for 33 days awaiting assistance for heart ailment. We would be up in arms instantaneously but that unfortunately is what repeats itself in Vermont and throughout the country with folks that are suffering with an illness that's often less tangible for people. So, important as I know. So, all of that is to say, it's to set up this. When things cascade out of control and someone is unable to access the requisite level of treatment that they need or the basic assistance, it may not even be treatment, it may just be the ability to see someone at a time they're having a crisis and things continue to, what's referred to in mental health world is decompensate. They continue to get worse. Imagine the physical side of things. You have a severe laceration that requires some kind of intervention but you're unable to do anything with it. It continues to get worse and worse, eventually gets infected and things are going very poorly. Same general analogy. You're unable to access the treatment you need at the time you need it. You continue to decompensate and at some point with a very small number of people but with some cross-section, they're now in a scenario where they pose a danger to themselves or others and we're forced to bring in many instances the wrong tool to bear. And at the time when this crisis is emerging, some of the things you've seen as front page news, it wouldn't actually matter who you put at the scene because things have gone so badly we could send a team of psychiatrists to the scene and they would be unable because of the level of deterioration that's happened to make any significant impact with that person because they're acting out in a violent way or more often they're actually in a scenario where they want the responders to do something to them that takes their life, what we call suicide by cop which is unfortunately a fairly common thing that happens in the United States and in Vermont. So the goal is through our webs is to create a continuum of response to both public safety and public health that addresses things at the lowest possible level. So we've developed a multi-phase modernization strategy for public safety. One piece of that strategy is to develop this construct and to develop the tools necessary to ensure that we're putting the right resources on the scene at the right time and it's everything from prevention and education, preventing things from happening is the best dollar invested again to use a medical analogy if you can prevent illness or injury it's far less expensive and far more effective. The next level is outreach and intervention going out and providing services at that low level what I described as the fourth bucket, field level, street outreach and intervention those kinds of response methodologies to help people at the lowest possible level fix whatever the issue is. At the next level, alternative sanctions is really more criminal justice but our restorative justice models and things like that can get people onto off-ramps from traditional course and corrections and toward the mental health system and then finally having enough capacity in the back of the system for those who unfortunately need the beds to be able to get them in as quickly as possible because the quicker you provide the treatment physicians speak to this in greater depth or healthcare professionals speak to this in greater depth but just like an injury the quicker you're able to provide the requisite treatment the less impactful the state is and the less impactful the illness or injury can be. So that's the general overview what you will hear next is a more in-depth analysis or a picture painted of what we do around training, around policy developments or the nuts and bolts of what happens but I want to be really clear we've spent a lot of time in the last decade talking about how we train law enforcement officers at a higher level to respond to mental health. We have tweaked use of force policies to ensure that they are as contemporary as possible. In many instances we are looking in the wrong place the correct answer I believe is to put different resources onto the problem earlier in the process that is what's going to change the outcomes and to that end part of what we've proposed during this budget cycle is for a partnership between the Department of Public Safety, the Department of Mental Health and the Department of Correction to pool resources to expand statewide the street outreach intervention a social worker model that we have in two barracks that is actively in place in Chittenden County and there are a number of other departments around Vermont, actually they should give kudos to Bellows Falls, it was the first one in Vermont to have an embedded social worker within their police department. We believe that that alteration to the response methodology is the right answer it's the right investment, it fits in the continuum of approach that we're suggesting is the right way to approach all of these issues and simultaneously we're working on a variety of other efforts around data, improving our data system so that we can help you and ourselves make long-term better policy and better strategy on these complicated issues. I could go on for about six more hours but I'll get out of the way and let some other folks talk. Thank you and this certainly isn't the only time we'll be having this conversation it's really the very beginning of the conversation. Sorry. Mr. Sherwin, thank you for your elaborate testimony and your leadership. You talked about continuous improvement process and how that can improve outcomes. So how does that process include input from the community? It varies, that's a great question, it varies on a case by case basis based on the size of the department but actually some of the most, you'd think the larger the department the more robust the community engagement efforts would be but actually some of the smaller departments are the ones sometimes we're following. It ranges from everything from community academies where you're getting people in and both training them how law enforcement operations work and simultaneously getting feedback, community meetings on a variety of topics. In some instances when policy is developed you have the folks within agencies that are developing policy that are doing outreach to community groups and stakeholders to help inform how that policy is crafted. There's probably 10 others that I'm not remembering off the top of my head. I know the Grand Isle Sheriff has some youth engagement efforts that he has done. He does a community barbecue every year where they engage people on a host of topics. The types of strategies are as varied as the Vermont community which is good. Thank you. What I heard implicit in your testimony is maybe not support for either of these bills but a whole still different approach and I wanted to walk away with the wrong impression which that's not what I'm saying. I think that is correct. It is the, so I would advise two things at this point. A, let's hold fast and see what happens in California because they have completely broken the glass on 50 years of case law relative to this topic and we don't know what's going to happen. So let's see. More important than that, I think if we're trying to get a handle on how to have better outcomes on this particular topic that the first place to look for our effort in investment is in alternative response methodologies and making investments, policy decisions and pushing ourselves and our communities to embrace that model as quickly and effectively as possible. So just to follow up to that, so do you see any room for or possibly proposals around improvements regarding these course policies or definitions? That's a great question. I think on our, and it's been distributed to some of the committees represented here, but on our website, the media will be able to read it and the public as well. DPS.comon.gov forward slash modernization is the modernization strategy among the things that we think are sort of first order of operation in addition to the mental health response which is embedded there is improving our data collection system so that we can better inform how we make policy and modernizing our training methodology. To that end, you have created the law enforcement advisory board which has wide representation including law enforcement professionals, the Attorney General, the Defender General. It's 24 VSA 1939. It's designed to advise me, the governor and the general assembly in part on law enforcement policy. I think where I would tend to go with this is to ask the LEAV not only to give a recommendations on any requisite improvements to use of force policy, but also to take a look at training, not just in use of force, but I do believe, and I've had this conversation with the criminal justice training council and stakeholders over the first few months of my tenure here, I believe the model, the content of the training we provide is exceptional but we have room to improve the delivery mechanisms and modernize those so that we get better outcomes. Using technology, looking at different ways of doing both our basic, intermediate and advanced policing training, so I think there are ways that we can make improvements and leverage the great content that we've already got which we're gonna hear about in a few minutes by improving the systems of delivery. Same thing with the data systems, but I observe in my first five months in public safety, you've got an exceptional product that is being delivered by the state police emergency management fire safety, the lab, Vermont crime information center. Despite the fact that there are some foundational difficulties, we have some budgetary difficulties, we've got data system difficulties, we've got ways we can modernize the way that we share equipment in public safety. All of this is embedded in this construct of public safety modernization that I'm pointing to now and we've been testifying about various committees for a couple of weeks. Sorry if I went far with your question but there's a lot here. Being from Wyndham County, I'm well aware of how effective it was when Clark first embedded a social worker in the bill's folks police department. I think the rest went down 50% close to that. Are we seeing those kind of outcomes embedding social workers in the state police barracks? We are. We're seeing contact with the folks that are frequently on the radar for a variety of reasons. It's not always mental health, it might be substance abuse. It's often as co-occurring disorders. We're seeing those numbers going down. In Burlington, this operating methodology has been in place for two decades now starting with one person on one street expanding to now two teams of nine people. And the contact with the folks who find themselves intersecting not only law enforcement resources but emergency department, other field mental health resources, a variety of systems goes down and as a result the outcomes improve primarily for that person which is incredibly impactful but then the costs actually go down for folks in the system. There's a 1980s article called Million Dollar Murray that was written by Malcolm Gladwell. It was an assessment of a single person in New York who suffered from multiple disorders and intersected multiple systems at the time of the 80s. The assessment was he was a million dollar person to various systems because no one took ownership and tried to assist Murray in using wraparound services as we call it today. I would submit to you today that there are multiple, multi-million dollar people in our communities because we have an assault and scrawl and it's not their fault we're actually doing them a disservice by not providing the right resources at the right time. I'm trying to get out of here. So you said that the California Stack that you broke 50 years of case law, so are you saying broke it? It broke tradition with 50 years of case law. It's the first one to break the glass and not follow Randy Connors, the core piece of case law and then there's multiple cases that flow from it. So are you saying it's unconstitutional? I'm not. I'm saying let's wait and see what it looks like. Thank you. Probably I already said, how long will we come for you? Just took effect, I believe it. She and you were there a few days July. 29th, right? I'm just back in the game. I was on the sideline. Yeah. The reason I asked is because a couple of years ago in the building we started doing a lot of legislating around results based accountability to me to change to that, we don't have the results to change that, we've tried to do it with most every day. With your testimony, it's just what I'm hearing. I was on human services when I was first four years here and of course not knowing where you were going with your testimony, you're talking a lot about, over half of what you're talking about was mental health issues and I guess going forward, I would hope at some point that if this bill, these bills would have been combined or continue to go forward that you would get in front of the human services committee because of mental health, I mean, I would see it as that part of our jurisdiction's part of our duty. It just made sense to me. We'll be there upon invitation and we're actively working with Commissioner Squirrel, Secretary Smith acting Commissioner Baker on these issues as well. I should also note for the record, recently completed work by the Council State Governance on Justice Reinvestment and the construct for this continuum that we're talking about in modernization, WTL's perfectly with the work that they've just completed and some of the suggestions they have on how to move forward for better outcomes across the entire spectrum of the system. Thank you. Thank you very much. General, welcome. Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you very much for your comments, Attorney General. I want to thank both of you for taking this bill up and I want to particularly thank Representative Dianne for introducing this bill. Representative Dianne, you have had many conversations about this issue and I truly appreciate your advocacy. I fully support this conversation. And this conversation is not just about public safety, this conversation is about the trust in law enforcement and this is why we need to have this conversation. I also wanted to say that the police have an incredibly difficult job and the police do an extremely good job in the state of Vermont. And this conversation should not be about who's doing something wrong. This conversation should be about what can we do better to have a 21st century law enforcement system and services which encompasses many of the things that Commissioner Shirley just talked about in the state of Vermont. Training is a big piece of that. Mental illness is a big piece of that. Recognizing disability and understanding disability is a big piece of that. We can culturally comprehend it is a big piece of that. And we've asked the police to do a tremendous amount and we have to make sure that we're provided the adequate resources and training in order to confront these compromised challenges. But I come to this conversation in my role as a prosecutor who reviews officer-in-law students and the vast majority are justified. Those are my role based on the facts and based on the legal standard. But I don't think anybody thinks that an outcome that results in the death of somebody is a good outcome and that's our challenge. And so having this conversation about the records and training, the appropriate standard and looking at California and learning from California, we should do what we absolutely should do. Any time I talk about these issues, I think about some of the cases and some of the decisions I've made. The one that always comes to my mind is the Phil Gretting case, which was in Burlington. Where he was a 77-year-old man in his apartment on College Street and he was in a mental health crisis. He was shot and killed and I will not justify it. And it wasn't justified, like under the current standard. But if we look at the totality of circumstances, of when it is necessary, the question about what's necessary, let's be very clear, that's not defined yet. That's part of the issue here. We need to talk to California and talk to the Assistant Attorney General who worked on this. He's willing to testify to this committee and I would urge you to have him appear and I'm happy to help facilitate that. But we should explore this conversation of the legal standard, understanding the consequences, understanding the unintended causes and be deliberate about this because this is about public trust at the end of the day. Can recall talking to parents of an individual who was shot and killed, will that justify it? And one of the things I try to do is to, before I make my decision, public is to reach out to the family and explain my decision the reasons for it. And they said, had we ever imagined or known that this would have happened, we would have never called the police. And if anybody thinks that way in the state which they do, then it's incumbent on us to challenge our conventional wisdom of what we're doing. And this is what this bill does. It is a challenge to us to say, are we doing everything possibly that we can? Is this the right standard? It may be the right standard. Or should there be a change? But let's go through this process and have this conversation and ask the tough questions to ourselves because we are, we want a state where people call the police what so many do because they need help. And the police do a tremendous job on so many circumstances that we never hear about. And we never hear of that. Cross-state police is an excellent job for the people of state of law. And do many other departments. But it's those cases that folks whether it's parents with a child who may have a disability, who may react differently to authority that others may. It's being culturally competent. And we're asking the police to do a tremendous amount so we have to make sure that we're given the resources to be successful in these encounters to successfully de-escalate incredibly complex and tense situations. So when we talk about how police and how we interact with the people of the state of Vermont, nobody wants these outcomes where there is the use of lethal force. Nobody wants that. We all, I think we can all agree with that. Sometimes they are going to be necessary. And I want to be clear about that too. There was a case at William and Windsor County where individual fired shots at the police and essentially put a gun to his pregnant girlfriend's head. Postage situation. We asked the police to respond to that. They did, they did so properly and courageously. We were not justified. And these are incredibly dynamic situations where I think if we can have this conversation to challenge ourselves, and it should not just be a law force to have a conversation with the stakeholders from everybody at the table, including mostly the mental health advocates, folks with disabilities, making sure that you have everybody who interacts with the police and folks who come from marginalized communities, folks from communities of color, because the way we're policing today is not the way we've policed the last 20 years. Vermont has an opportunity to lead. And so I fully support exploring this conversation looking at California, talking with the lawyers in California, understanding what's working. We very clear that words matter here and they're not yet defined. And when you're talking about legal standards, definitions matter. And training matters and resources matter. So if I ask is that there is a working group convene that is not just law enforcement, that is wire that has all the stakeholders involved, and we work with the legislature to address this issue and to really scrutinize how we're doing business. I'm fully confident in the decisions I've made in terms of the legal, the current legal standard. I go back to that photographic case because I think it was different. I'm not sure the police had to go into his apartment that day, but they did. And I'm not gonna second guess that. And once the rain you're looking for me at those last few seconds of what happens. And Commissioner Schoen is absolutely right when he talks about, and I'll perhaps be more important than Commissioner Schoen, this question of, we have a fundamental question as, should we be calling the police to respond to mental health crises? And when nobody else is, are we may have done everything we can to provide enough training and resources to the police to address complex dynamic situations in seconds? And when you have lawyers come in after the fact and to make that review, we are looking at those seconds. And perhaps by expanding it, we would come to a different conclusion. I don't know, but I am open to the conversation. I'm open to exploring things, to looking at this because this is too important for anybody in this state to be fearful that an interaction with the police would end up violently. And that as Representative Don, you said that the public has trust and confidence in how the state lawyers review it. And I just would reiterate the complexities involved here. This is difficult stuff. These are hard conversations. This should not be a rush. That this should be methodical, deliberate. And then we really need to dig into this. So we are grateful that you're holding this hearing of Grateful for Representative Don Hughes leadership. I'm grateful for the police. I'm grateful that Colonel Birmingham's in the room today. I'm grateful for his leadership. We've had a lot of conversations about this. People want to do the right thing. And it's not always easy to challenge our conventional thinking and to say, could we be doing things differently? That's what I view this bill as, as a challenge to us. Not to point out who's doing something wrong, but to point to perhaps say we can do things better and to increase not only the public safety, but the public trust in our state towards law enforcement. And I include myself in that as somebody who has made these decisions. So thank you. Thank you for your perspective. You had mentioned earlier about, you know, you investigate a lot of shootings, officer shootings, and you may find them. They did everything by the book, by the law. What have you. They were justified, but it's still a shooting that we all would have liked to avoid. Yeah. What do you do with what you learn in that maybe, what do you prevent it with next time? If there's a way to do that? I think it's a great question, you know. Harry, I understand your question, Representative Harrison, that while things may be justified legally, are there trends that were seen that would go to a call for different types of training or advocacy? And we haven't done that. And perhaps we should. I would say that the thread that is in almost all these cases is mental illness. That goes to training, that goes to de-escalation. And that is the thread through that. I also wanna say from the police, these are incredibly dangerous situations and they exercise incredible restraint, in my opinion. I don't question that. They have sights, even that much time to make a life or death situation or decision. But if I could also go back to California and they changed their standard from what I am gleaming today, do they have any information that's suggested that are outcomes or is it too early? It's too early. I was on a panel with one of the lawyers in the AGs who's I think in charge of attracting and implementing this and that's individual voices. When you come to Vermont, at least get on the phone and talk to us, because I think there's a process that they're going through right now in terms of the implementation of the law. I'm not quite clear what that is, but the short answer is it's too soon. They did change their standard, Commissioner Sherwin's right. It is a different standard than what we would use. One of the standards you had this question which I'm not sure I support, but it could be changed. It changes it from a reasonable person standard to a reasonable officer standard. I think that's complicated. And it goes into when this is just about the use of deadly force, why it's necessary to defend against and could threaten that for serious bodily injury. I don't think necessary has been defied. And I'm sad like a real lawyer here, but that is complicated because it's based on facts and it's going to be based on courts interpreting that. And there are real policy questions too about if it is just necessary to come against and then threaten that for serious bodily injury, what are you doing with an individual who may be suicidal? Not a threat to public safety, but a threat to themselves. What are we asking as policy makers for the police to do? What are we doing when somebody flees? Are we giving chase or not giving chase? What if there's an arrest warrant? Are we disregarding their arrest warrant? You think of the case of a new seat? Young man ran, one officer gave chase, ended up in a deadly use of force. Other officers did not give chase. What was the policy? Should there a policy to give chase? Then you deal with it, what is? If something bad is going to happen, if you don't give chase for the police, is public safety at risk? Was it necessary? And there are no easy answers and easy, easier for work lawyers after the fact and in that review, it's incredibly hard for that police officer to make the decimals seconds decision on the scene. And so when we talk about the challenge and when we talk about those definitions, we need to be really clear about what the law is if it changes, so the training is equally clear. But I think this is a conversation that we need to have and it needs to be inclusive of everybody because I think the public trust issue is real because I've had the conversations with parents. And that's not a commentary on law enforcement. It's an acknowledgement of the complexities that exist in our communities and the struggles that parents and families are dealing with. And we've asked the police to step in and deal with this a lot. We need to be fair to the police too on this. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. So we're for Yang, we would love to have you come and share your perspective with us. Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. I'm gonna keep my comments very brief today but I would like to introduce the Human Rights Commission to those of you who are not familiar with it and sort of just talk about why we're here today and what our interest is. So the Human Rights Commission is a state entity and we investigate claims of discrimination in three primary areas. Housing, state government employment and places of public accommodations. And places of public accommodations include any place that provides any sort of services or benefits to the general public. And that is a very broad definition. Of course that includes all of our businesses and so forth but it also includes law enforcement and the benefits and services that they provide for the general public. Place of public accommodation includes roads and so we would also be investigating things that happen with lease stops on roads as well. And it also includes presents. And so certainly we think that this is an issue that is important and I'm glad that these are the bills that have been introduced. And generally I would say that the Human Rights Commission supports both bills. That they are good and they are progressive and also one of the bills here before 64 takes into consideration cultural competency. And I think that's really important. There are two groups of people that are probably mostly at target here. And those are people with psychiatric disabilities and mental health issues. And the other group is particularly men of color. And it is absolutely true that the work of the police is very hard but it is also true that there is a great disparity in the stops and police practices and the services and benefits that are provided to these two groups of people. I think that that's really important to keep in mind. I did listen to the testimony that was provided beforehand. I think what seems to be missing currently is a conversation that includes advocates. I also think that while the idea of a working group is great, we do have a lot of existing working groups right now that could take on some of these issues. I don't necessarily think that it is necessary to wait for California to see what happens there for a few years before we decide whether we should do something that is equally progressive. So I would encourage you necessarily to do that. I think that currently there are conversations about use of force that they entirely involve law enforcement. DOC working with, I think of public safety. Even the Department of Mental Health is a government entity. And so I would be, I guess my concern is that the conversation has not traditionally involved the people who are most impacted by force and by police practices and that is a problem. And I see 464 as a bill that starts to change that and that is something that the human rights would support. Currently the bill, 464, has data being sent to the Executive Director of Racial Equity and my only concern about that is that we're missing a piece of our psychiatric disability, some quote, mental health issues. So I would encourage that if you move forward on 464 that we consider having another entity receive that information as well unless we are ready to expand the work of the Racial Equity Executive Director, which I would not necessarily encourage us to do. Also, under 464, we've asked the data be collected in regards to age, gender, and the race of the driver but I think it's also important to be able to collect whether that driver has a disability, whether it be physical or psychiatric or mental health or anything else. So those would be my primary changes to that statute, to that bill. And I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you. I was wondering if, thank you for your testimony, by the way, and thank you for talking about 464. I was wondering if you wouldn't mind delving in a bit more into 808 and why you are in support of that? Yeah, so I want to be fair, that the Human Rights Commission doesn't have jurisdiction to necessarily review police shootings or use of force unless someone files a complaint at the Human Rights Commission. We have not had such an opportunity to investigate such a client. But certainly we are concerned. We've certainly heard of some of the stories that were even mentioned earlier and some of the concerns from community members who have said, I should not have called the police. I was calling the police to help my husband. I should not have called the police because they in fact killed him. And I do think that that is a human rights issue. And generally, I think that when we have a bill that is progressive and looking for, when we have a bill that is willing to make a change that might be more proactive in this regard, I think it's helpful. The only thing that I would suggest that 808 kick into consideration is what I find in age 464, which is a group of individuals who are also going to be looking at the standard and reviewing the standard and taking into consideration cultural competency. And so if 808 goes forward, I would encourage that we borrow some of the language from 464, particularly in terms of the group of persons who are tasked to create those standards. Here in 808, you have the law, the standards already, but you have the rope in place to review that. And to also review what's happening in California and that's the concern. So if you move forward on 808, the group should be useful in reviewing those policies and making recommendations in the next lunch, as they recession. What I think is, I think I heard you say that if there was a working group constituted as part of this work, that there might be existing bodies who would be associated to do that. Did I hear you or mishear you? You didn't mishear me. I mean, we have the training council, we have the human rights commission, obviously we have the racial disparities panel, we have, so I always hesitate to even list any of those names because usually you seek the permission of those groups before you can identify them. So I would say that yes, there are already some bodies that are tasked with fair and impartial policing and tasked with looking at disparities and so forth. So yes, that possibility exists that those groups already are here and could do some of this work and review this. Yeah. And do you think just to your point, well, I don't want to speak on the spot about individual groups because I hear your point, but I guess one of my questions about any of those groups would be to your point about making sure that voices are heard that maybe that's your question. Later, James, there's one reward of those groups that's better suited for that. I think that's a great question. I think oftentimes the groups that we create are entities that are agencies and they're government related. So obviously I'm working for the Human Rights Commission, but I also want to be respectful of the fact that we are not the voice of all people in the state of Vermont. We're not the voice of people with, and we're not a great voice for people with disabilities. No, we're a great voice for all people of color. And I certainly think that there are many community groups that are missing from those as well. So if you were interested in passing the work here onto an existing group, I would suggest that we add some community members to that. Yeah. I'd be happy to reach out to some of those community groups. Yeah, okay. Time, and then Raul. You mentioned a story about a wife calling the police and her husband ended up, I'm not sure how, ended up dead anyway, but the whole thing, just wondering what some of the details might have been that led to that. Yeah, I don't know if we did investigate it. I do also recall the gentleman that died in Long Failure High School when he was shot down by multiple people. And he ended up having just a big gun or not a, Raul, I don't know the details. We didn't investigate this case. I don't wanna suggest that those were not, were on lawful use of force or not lawful use of force. I think my, what I heard is, and what I'm trying to express here is that there is a real concern from community members about the use of force. And most of those concerns come from people with psychiatric disabilities and they come from people of color. And I think that's just an important voice that needs to be heard here. Thank you. You've referred a couple of times in your testimony, and I think I worked at cultural competes, competes, or in other words, this cross-cultural awareness. What does that mean to you? Sure. It means, and it can be very difficult to explain it, for someone to have a cultural competency, it means that they have the knowledge and expertise and experience working with different groups of people coming from different backgrounds. And they understand that there is a difference in how people act and react and behave. And that sometimes we have to adjust our policies and our practices accordingly. So it changes, cultural competency changes depending on the context. So for example, for our legislators to have cultural competency, it might mean that you are respectful of service animals and assistance animals. It might mean that you are respectful of interpreters and that you understand also that some of the people that you need to hear from may not be available from nine to five, and that's an understanding of cultural competency. Cultural competency in the hospital setting is also very different as well. And so cultural competency for the police could be very different. It might mean that the police have learned about what different psychiatric disabilities are. It might mean that they take classes about social work, and might mean that we give them more skills to identify when someone is behaving a certain way because they are a criminal or they're behaving a certain way because of their psychiatric disabilities and they are not harmful and that they are not currently a threat. And so I imagine that if, and again, I may not even be explaining this very well, but I imagine that social workers and doctors and people in the mental health field would be better able to explain what different psychiatric disabilities look like and why when someone reacts a certain way, it's a danger or it's not. But I would guess that our current law enforcement agencies are not equipped to deal and do not have cultural competency in that regard. Thank you, thank you very much. So I believe we have Cindy Taylor Patch and Drew Bloom from the Criminal Justice Training Council and would love to have you come and share a little information about the landscape around training. Currently. Thank you. As she said, I'm Cindy Taylor Patch, I'm the Director of Training for the Vermont Criminal Justice Training Council and that means that I overseen and supervise the Vermont Police Academy's basic training and in-service programs. To tell you a little bit about myself, I've been at the Academy since about 2003 and was above a little bit prior, but full-time since 2003. So I've been there for a long period of time and seen a lot of change over the years. Prior to my work in law enforcement, I was a crisis screener and I did mental health crisis response work that I'd counsel service by some county for mental health and mental and visual medical center. I've worked in inpatient psychiatric facility and crisis work over the phone face-to-face, consulted the police on mental health crisis response and I train officers in the same. So I can certainly answer any questions that you have about that training. I know Sheriff Keith Lark was mentioned earlier and he and I worked together for a long time in the developing of curriculum and teaching officers on crisis response. Our curriculum on mental health was established by the Act's 8-Year Commission. Some of you may recall hearing about that over the years and it included people from various backgrounds, people in the treatment side of things, consumers of mental health services, law enforcement was a multidisciplinary group of folks, advocates, activists, people with very serious lived experience, everybody coming together to establish the curriculum that we teach from. I also sit on the Mental Health Crisis Response Commission which was established by the support of Representative Donahue and sits with the AG's office and there's a number of members of that commission in the room, but essentially if you're not familiar with the commission, it is a group of individuals, some of them law enforcement, some from advocacy organizations, some of them lived experience who hears cases like the Phil Brennan case where someone experiences death or serious bodily injury from police where they have a mental health issue and we're going to continue to review those types of cases. So we review them to see what we can learn not just from the law enforcement response but from various aspects of their life, what's the role of the mental health and their services and their life, housing services, sort of looking at the full gamut and trying to glean what we can and be helpful from multiple services to bring back to you all of what we can gather from them. Before I talk about basic training, I just wanted to give you an overview of what that looks like for folks who aren't familiar. For basic training for level three certified officers in Vermont, they receive about 800 hours of training on various topics and one of the things that they receive in their very first week of training is a block of training from myself and from law enforcement officers about the foundations in policing. And I give them this booklet called the Nobility of Policing Guardians of Democracy and we have a very lengthy conversation but just to give you an idea, we really emphasize, one page in here I'll read really quickly, it's critical responsibilities and the critical responsibilities of a police officer to preserve freedom and uphold democracy, to uphold the law, to ensure justice, to protect life and to keep the peace and we set that tone right away in our program because we believe in it wholeheartedly and everything else that they're gonna learn in our program that needs to be at its base. So as part of that, obviously we cover all different types of law and all different types of topics and situations but some of the things that you're talking about today just to give you an idea, recruits are gonna receive about 120 hours of use of force and firearms training. That's both classroom and hands-on and scenario based training. So 120 hours, it's pretty significant because we take it and take that responsibility very seriously. They also receive 16 hours of interpersonal communication skills, mental health training and communication skills are certainly part of that. As I mentioned, that mental health training was developed by a statewide commission on multiple stakeholders and multiple backgrounds. They also receive eight hours of training on fair and partial policing and hate crimes. So the fair and partial policing curriculum that we teach at the academy is based on a model that's used nationally that was pushed out pretty heavily by the Bureau of Justice Assistance and we've established a committee of various stakeholders, some law enforcement and some advocacy organizations to come together to advise us and guide us on the mandatory training that we have related to fair and partial policing going forward. So what are we teaching at basic and what are we teaching every other year after graduation is all guided by both law enforcement and stakeholders from the community. With the hate crimes curriculum it's taught by William Thompson. He's chief of the Civil Rights Division from the Attorney General's office as folks probably know him. He's the lead instructor for our hate crimes training. He teaches also with Amy Farms, the victims advocate from his office and Julia Torti from the US Attorney General's office. So we're certainly not doing any of this training in hiding or in a vacuum. It's very, you know, multiple people involved both in its development and delivery. In the mental health training that I mentioned before, I make a point to make sure that we also have a personal Olympics where you two comes in and talks about their interactions with police. When have they in their life fed in crisis and what worked for them, what didn't work for them as far as to help resolve that. So we have them, they are in the classroom spending time with officers giving the good and the bad. What helped me, what didn't help me. And that's been a very powerful part of our curriculum that I feel really strongly about. Also in addition I mentioned, you know, we talked about the foundation. So we spent 16 hours of the course of our curriculum really specifically targeting ethics, ideas about democracy, police legitimacy, community perceptions of our role and what it means to be a leader in law enforcement or in your community as a law enforcement officer. And those, because of the way we run our curriculum, because I work closely with people who teach use of force and I work closely with people who teach patrol tactics, they know what my expectations are around these issues. It's not just me going in and talking about this stuff but they understand and believe and buy into the fact that they're also carrying the same messaging out in their curriculum wherever they possibly can. I think sometimes there's a perception that we teach topics in silos and that's certainly not the case. Our training is always very integrated. It's really important to us that people see the complexities of how things apply to different situations. So scenario-based training is very important to us, something that we're trying to expand because we hear from recruits and officers in the field that it's one of the ways that they learn the best. We actually get to try things in a scenario that's as close to real life as we can get. And those scenarios involve everything from criminal law, communication skills, use of force. They're all over the place assessing various types of skills. So nothing is in a silo. Everything kind of integrates together. As far as oversight of the training that we deliver depends on the topic that we have. Obviously the Criminal Justice Training Council and the Ultimate Level of Oversight, we also have a variety of committee supervising on our training. So I mentioned the Fair and partial policing training committee that's advising that and we have others as well. We have proposed a significant expansion to our basic training program. We want to add more opportunity for scenario-based training. We've received input from new recruits, officers on the road, there are supervisors, agency executives, all over the state who support an increased training around use of force, fair and partial policing, de-escalation techniques. We have the knowledge and the expertise to offer more training on those things than we don't have the resources to expand the basic training program. It's not funded. And so that's really where we stand. We are ready to go. We have support. We don't have the money. So that's one thing I'll just ask you to keep in mind as we're trying to work through this. I hear what I think where these bills are coming from, what the concerns are. I really, truly value the concerns. I hear you and I definitely am on board. I mentally, I know all my staff, my edged faculty are in the right place. They want more training on these issues but they need to be funded. I'm thinking for your help to understand the training that goes on now. Would you envision a four-hour requirement in page 464 to be in addition to the 800 or new hours that you currently do for level eight three? Law enforcement or is most of this covered already? So I think I would need more detail as far as what folks are wanting to see in that four hours. We usually build training around objectives rather than time frames. So what are the objectives that we're trying to achieve? What do stakeholders and subject matter experts agree are the objectives? How long is it gonna take us to get there? So we tend not to set a time limit but rather looking at what we want to accomplish. And they may be things that we are already accomplishing with basic training. There may be new concepts. We have a lot of methods for getting a service training or training the attention of other things to get more out to people. So really would the pandemic sort of join a deeper dive of what that will look like and what folks want to see and how we do it? You also mentioned that you currently have eight hours. Part of policing and hate crimes. Okay. How does that compare to other states? Are we doing less? Are we doing more? Are we doing a lot? That's a good question. I would say in states that I'm aware of, we've been a little better. We've been a little bit more advanced, I think, in front of some things than some of their states have. I'm sure there are others who do more. But we've been doing pretty well on that topic. I'm pretty advanced, I think, in our thinking about how we approach during the part of policing training. Thank you. And as far as the mandatory training, I'm not aware of anybody that's doing that. There may be somebody I haven't heard of yet. Thank you for walking us through the council's training program. What is your process for reviewing and updating your training program so it's as relevant and as effective as possible? Yes, I'm really glad that you asked that question. We are constantly evolving. So every single class that we do, we have adjunct faculty who are people that are working out in the community. They're active practitioners. And as they bring up ideas or new ways of doing things or problems that they run into and want to try something different, we have teams of instructors who discuss what could we do to change things? What could we do to update? We're always researching best practice. Reaching out to organizations like IACP and the IATOS, which is the International Association of Directors of the Law Enforcement of Standards and Training. We're aware of a lot of big-take groups that have already findings on these issues and we look at everything. And we take it on to consideration and say, you know, what's best for the state of Vermont on this issue? Because sometimes the best in some places might not fit Vermont, given our demographics, our geography, our populations. So we look at them in the context of Vermont and what makes the most sense for us and we adjust as needed. But it's never something where it's stagnant. Things are always being reviewed and changing. Thank you. Hi, it's good to see you again. Good to see you. Thank you for the testimony. So we heard earlier about the importance of training and we've also heard earlier that the word necessary doesn't quite have a definition yet in this context. And I was wondering if you have an opinion as to whether or not it would be challenging or not challenging to change around the curriculum for use of horse training when the language in this statute is causing some change? I can tell you that I think depending on what happens, there certainly could be some extreme need to change training. And I think that director of administration, Drew Blumas, gonna talk specifically about that in a lot more detail, so I'll let him do that. But certainly it was these coming in for some challenges. The bias training, implicit bias training is part of the work. Yes. So it goes into some of these other units you've talked about, or is it? It's sort of a separate training but it relates to other things. It's the very partial policing curriculum that is completely based on the concept of understanding implicit bias. And so we spend a fair amount of time in there explaining what that is to get people to open up their mind about what bias means. People have bias for the word bias. And they can get really offended right out of the game to hear that concept. But when we present it in a way that helps people wrap their mind around ways that they might be biased that they don't even recognize. And it could be to anything, right? When we talk about anything from race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, poverty, and you name it, and how folks can have bias that they may not even have ever contemplated and try to get them to open up their mind to that idea. And we really also promote the idea of contact theory of find out who's in your community and get to know the different groups that are in your community. Do outreach, talk to them. There's a lot of advantages to that from multiple reasons. So those are all things that we talk about in that very partial policing curriculum. And how important it is to develop relationships of public trust. I think sometimes control officers can have a feeling that that's something that's out of their control. That's just for their chief or sheriff or a colonel to worry about. And we talk, we end up being the basic training that they're part of that process. They're the ones who are out there facing the community every day and have an ability to establish relationships of trust on a daily basis. So get out there, meet people in your community, develop positive relationships with them so they feel like they're able to trust you. And that's it, yeah, completely within that curriculum. And we touch on other places where we can and it's also what we're looking to expand if we could possibly get the funding to expand the program. Thank you. Did I hear you say correctly that they get about 800 hours of training? So. Initially. And out of that 800 hours, how much of it, if you had to pick a number, would you say would you dedicate towards de-escalation in dealing with mental health scenarios? So that's part of the proposal for expansion. It's not a lot right now, we get eight hours that's really dedicated to a classroom lecture where we talk about a variety of things related to symptoms. So how do you recognize that you might be dealing with someone who has mental health diagnosis? We talk about issues of stereotypes and stigma and why people might be hesitant to agree to go to a hospital if that's what the officer's trying to suggest. We talk about how to use your local resources if you haven't embedded social worker or if you have a local crisis team that might respond boldly to you. Unfortunately, that's kind of inconsistent around the state or inconsistent regarding the time of day when you can get more crisis response or not. But we talk about working with those folks when you can. And then we talk about communication skills how to position yourself in a room so you're not threatening but you're still tactically safe, things to say, just kind of walk people through that. So that's in and of itself is eight hours. I have another hour just on interpersonal communication skills. We also, and I know Director Moon is gonna talk about this in a moment, we also heavily emphasize de-escalation techniques in within our use of forest training program and he's gonna talk about that in a moment. So we have only a limited amount of time left and we do wanna make sure that we get to Drew's testimony. Is that okay? Did you have a question on this? Okay, great. Thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you. Having this discussion and thank you for inviting us all here today to talk about these pieces of legislation. And please forgive me if I'm not the most eloquent speaker, I've never been accused of being the most eloquent speaker in a room and I've certainly never been accused of being the smartest person in the room even when I'm in a room by myself. So I'm gonna pass the camera to get through this and just give you a little bit of a snapshot of our training at the Academy and some perspectives specific to use of forest. So I've been a law enforcement officer in Vermont for 39 and a half years. This is a really long time and it's a long time that I've taken that responsibility very seriously and have been dedicated as a public servant to the people of the state who are very dear and dear to my heart. I've had a lot of great opportunities throughout my career to work in a whole myriad of different aspects of this job serving in numerous capacities. But prior to coming to the Academy I've been part of their adjunct staff since the early 1990s and I've been teaching police use of forest since 1992 and I've been teaching men, women and children self-defense and martial arts for over 30 years and I've been doing that for my entire life which is not only teaching people how to defend themselves and protect themselves in the moment, in a physical situation but also to do things ethically more lean to defend themselves properly so that there's no adverse consequence. And I do the same thing with law enforcement officers and I've had the opportunity to teach police and law enforcement not only in Vermont but throughout the United States national and international conferences and I've been invited to instruct to teach use of forest in other countries as well and it's something that I've done for a very long time to take that responsibility very seriously. In policing in my opinion there are no two greater areas of liability and no two greater areas of safety to the public and safety to our officers other than use of forest and driving cars because when it comes to either one of those things whether it's driving a police vehicle or driving your own car or use of forest if you make a mistake it can never be fixed it can never be undone and that is the utmost responsibility. It can never be undone. It can't be amended, it can't be changed you can't go back and fix it. Now in other mistakes that you make in police unfortunately you can't if you write the wrong amount of money on a traffic ticket because you screw up the fine and you didn't get it right then you can amend the ticket. If you put the wrong charge in an avid date with the state's attorney can change their information and they can do a different charge so those things can be fixed. If you make a mistake, diagramming a crash scene you can go back and you can amend it and you can say yeah I screwed up I screwed up and I made that mistake. When it comes to use of forest and operating vehicle those things can't be undone it can't be fixed and because of that when I instruct officers either as end level users of use of forest for instructors or senior instructors which are instructor trainers it is their responsibility to make sure that they do not error when they're using forest and it must be ethical, it must be judicious and of course it must be reasonable and it must be lawful and even 99% right is still 100% wrong and we can't afford that. So I just wanna let you know that the academy takes this responsibility very seriously and when I think back to what we used to teach nationwide and in this state 20 years ago 25 years ago and how it has evolved and how it is constantly evolving I'm so grateful for that. I think it's a very, very good thing and sometimes to evolve is a little bit scary isn't it and I would submit to you that in order to evolve you have to become vulnerable and that means you have to let go of some of the things that you're used to and sometimes you have to sacrifice a little bit of ego when it comes to that and I can tell you that at the academy it's not something that we're afraid to do. We do it all the time and we've done it. We've done it over and over and over not just in Vermont but throughout this country because I'm very in tune with what happens in other jurisdictions throughout the country because I'm in contact with many women who teach these things that they're law enforcement. So I just wanted to lay a little bit of foundation by giving you that background. Now prior to 2018 there was no mandate in Vermont that after basic training at the police academy law enforcement officers receive any subsequent use of force training when they went back to their agencies other than firearms. They have to qualify with their firearm and they still do every year at a minimum level but there was zero requirement relative to having in service use of force training. Now fortunately, fortunately because we've got about 125 instructors certified in the state that are actively working at these different agencies they provide that training and most departments did a really good job and they continue to do a really good job of providing that in service training to their personnel on an annual basis which covers all sorts of different aspects of our program and what we certified them to do. But we recognized at the council that there were a lot of agencies that didn't that didn't live up to these standards and these recommended best practices. So we changed our administrative rules, the council rules and one of the things that we did when we renovated the rules which hadn't been done in a number of years was we put in there a requirement that every law enforcement officer in order to remain certified as such must have a minimum of four hours a year in use of force refresher training. So in my view, is that enough? It's not but it's a starter and it's better than nothing and it's at least getting the foot in the door. So that's something that we now have put into place since 2018 and I'm really happy about that. When it comes to use of force in general in the United States and in this country's territories. Use of force has always been governed by the judiciary and the community's needs and that's where policy comes from. It comes from decisions, it comes from cases in US district court, it comes from the US Supreme Court and our own Vermont Supreme Court in addition to what the community's needs are and that's how use of force policies are developed. Now there's a lot of recommended best practices and we have met or exceeded those in Vermont and I'm very proud of our program here because as I have traveled around the country and worked with instructors, worked with law enforcement officers in other communities and I've brought some of our training there. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten done with the training in just an academic classroom environment and I've had use of force instructors from other states. Most recently I was at the Pennsylvania Game Commission teaching use of force instructors for game wardens in Pennsylvania and many of those instructors came up to me and they said, gee, can I get a copy of your program? Can I get a copy of that? Because this is some really good stuff and because of that, it serves as a litmus test to me when I travel around the country and I hear these accolades of our program there's a tremendous amount of personal pride in that for me. So getting back to my point about the courts, in what when commissioner Shirley spoke, he talked about RAM, which has been that nearly 50 year test when it comes to determining the reasonfulness when assessing the use of force case, when assessing a force situation. And the reason in my opinion that that's lasted for as long as it has is because the US Supreme Court gave us some really good tools to calculate reasonableness when you're looking to assess whether or not a law enforcement's officers actions were reasonable when they applied force and force as far as the Supreme Court is concerned is all governed like the commissioner said under the Fourth Amendment, which protects free citizens in this country from unreasonable search and seizure. And any time, any use of force, even something as minute as detaining someone and saying, let me see your driver's license as far as the Supreme Court is concerned, that's a use of force and that is the seizure under the Fourth Amendment. And therefore it is of the paramount importance that that is administered judiciously and fairly and under the law. So the tools that the court gave us was the Supreme Court said, the US Supreme Court said, we're gonna give you a four-pronged test when we're assessing reasonableness, when we're looking at whether or not an officer's actions were reasonable. We're gonna look at the severity of the crime, the severity of the situation, which is basically, how big a deal is it? What's the officer there for? What are they lawfully present for? What do they have? Do they have a legal right to be there? Do they have a legal right to remain there and has that right evaporated? And if not, what are they there for? How big of a deal is it? Then the court said, we're gonna look at whether or not the person or subjects involved pose an immediate threat, immediate threat to that officer, to someone else, which means right now, immediate means right now. And I want you to keep that in mind because when we talk about right now, the luxury that you don't have necessarily is taught. And that becomes pretty critical when you start talking about officers having to make split-second decisions, split-second decisions that can get them hurt, that can get someone else hurt, or that can ruin their career, that could be one fraction of a second away from either a lawful use of force or them being indicted or charged with simple assault or aggravated assault or got a bit homicide. So that's something that is a heavy responsibility. And when I stand in front of the classroom, especially in basic training, never mind the instructor level when I'm talking about officers that are veteran officers and now they wanna become instructors and they wanna further their career. And I see the look on these young men and women's face in the classroom for the first time when I start talking about the legalities of reasonable application of force. And they realize for the first time that it's not like TV and they realize that it's not like the movies and you can see them slump down into chairs and you can see the looks of defeat on their face when they realize what they've really signed up for. And I ask them, I ask them, when they go to bed that night, when they put their heads down on the pillows to really take a look internally to make sure that they're up for this challenge because it is a tremendous burden for them. So getting back to the court's four-pronged test, they're gonna ask us, was there an immediate threat? Then they're gonna wanna know whether or not the person was actively resisting or attempting to evade a capture, which is in that moment. And finally they said, are the circumstances tense uncertain and rapidly evolving? Which again takes away time. But the court went a step further and they said, we're not only gonna look at that four-pronged test every time we're assessing force and whether or not it was reasonable. They said, we're gonna look at whether or not this force was reasonable based on another law enforcement officer of similar training and experience, whether or not they would look at what you did and say, yeah, that's okay. That may not necessarily have been what I would have done, but that's still reasonable. And they gave us some additional tools to do that. And we refer to those as perceptual factors because it is impossible with any certainty to say in a given situation that if a suspect is doing this, an officer can always do that. You can speak in general terms and say, yeah, generally that is probably gonna be okay. But it's gonna require a whole lot more information because everyone's perception is slightly different. So those perceptual factors that we try to consider when we're assessing reasonableness are things like age, size, gender, skill level of the officer, skill level of the other people involved, whether or not there was an injury or an exhaustion that occurred, whether or not an officer was ended up on the ground in an uncontrolled situation, whether or not there were weapons involved, whether or not there was a close proximity to weapons involved, whether or not there were some special circumstances and knowledge that you knew about this person prior to dealing with that individual. We have to take all of those things into account when we're trying to determine that calculation of reasonableness. And then finally, you have to look at things like pre-attack behavior, pre-attack cues, all of those things that people will do when they're stressed, when their body is going into fight, flight, or freeze. And then those officers are trying to recognize these signs to quickly calculate in their mind what's about to happen here. And when something becomes tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving, their plan A is out the window, their plan B is out the window, and now they have to make these split second decisions and they're thinking about the liabilities that are involved with that. Our own Vermont Supreme Court back in 1993 echoed the Graham decision. And we've had that legal decision here ever since which we have continued to train to. I've also had the opportunity to bring our use of force training, particularly this block of a recent application of force to the government of Mental Health Commission and have spoken to that group and have spoken with them about our training and the response that I got from that group during this presentation was very, very favorable. And I think that that group was impressed with the length that we go to to train our officers to use force lawfully and properly in this country. And when it comes to deadly force, there's also an additional standard. And I don't teach firearms, I'm a firearms instructor, I teach all of the everything leading up to firearms. And then we have a whole separate group of instructors that teach firearms out of range and they teach deadly force. But as Director Pat said, we've got between just use of force and tactics, which is my shop. And with firearms, it's just about 120 hours of basic recruit gets. And that is not including all of the hours that they get in patrol procedures in criminal law and motor vehicle law. And then eventually our scenario based training makes sure that they are able to weave all of these disciplines together so that they don't operate in silos because they're all interconnected because that's the goal. And that's the ultimate test is that from a scenario based perspective, can these officers, these men, when we graduate and can they do this same thing out in the field? And that's the ultimate test. But there's a long path that has to be followed when you're not only teaching academic portions of use of force, but the cycle motor skills, which is the physical stuff that you have to do. And that's what they learn in the gym. And that's done through various phases of teaching cycle motor skills learning to adults. And that can get, that gets a little complicated and it takes a lot of time. We spend a tremendous amount of time doing that. But getting back to the standard in Vermont for deadly force, we refer to this as AOJ, which is the deadly force triangle, A being ability and then O for opportunity and J being jeopardy. Which means in order for an officer to employ deadly force, all three walls of that triangle must exist. Which means does the subject involved have the ability to cause serious bodily injury or death? Do they have the opportunity to do it? And is the jeopardy immediately? Is it happening right now? And if any of the walls of that triangle evaporate, it's not lawful. It's not lawful use of force anymore. And that's been the standard that we've used for many, many years. And I think it continues, coupled with the grand standard and what the standards echoed by our own from Moss and Cream Court are very, very good standard. The other things I want to mention is use of force models. I'm not sure if you're familiar with use of force models. Thanks, good question, just yesterday. Yeah, and I'm sorry, we're gonna have to wrap it up soon and certainly never committee this goes to next, we'll certainly have you back, yeah. So the ability, opportunity and jeopardy, that triangle, how is that, why don't we make this a lead question but I guess it will be, how is that different than showing the necessity of the use of force? Well, I plan to get into that as I went down my laundry with the bullet points here. But I can, if you're gonna, I'm gonna have to pull the pin on this. One of the things that I just want to leave you with today is that when we talk about words like lease, minimum, necessary, it becomes very, very dangerous. It becomes very, very dangerous and that's the nice to try on. Now, do we want to use the least amount of force? Absolutely, because de-escalation is coupled into everything we do. It's coupled into everything we do and I teach officers from day one to sacrifice your ego to avoid conflict because that is war and order. And we talk about the forays of defensive tactics, awareness, avoidance is number two and avoidance is not getting into struggles with people, it's not fighting with people and then it's acceptance and taking action but it is in everything that we do. We ask, we advise, we order. In that order and we try to always use those communication skills but when there is no time and the time has evaporated, that's when you gotta make those split second decisions which it's very easy to watch a video on YouTube or see something on the news and look at something that's fairly horrible and say, wow, that looks really bad. Okay, click on to the next video but when you're in that circumstance and when you're experiencing the human emotion and drama when you're facing what you're perceiving to be a potentially deadly, malignant threat, that's really something else and having been in those situations personally myself, I can tell you that you fall back on your training because you do not have time to think. It's like driving a car. I would submit to you that you're all probably would agree that you're better drivers now than when you got your learner's purpose. I can't imagine any of you would admit that you're not but what does your foot do when the car in front of you, the brake lights come on? Your right foot goes from that gas pedal to that brake and you don't do it with any thought because if you had to think about it, it's gonna be too late and that's the goal with law enforcement when we train for you supporters. It must be that fast and that's why good training and quality training become so important. But getting back to your question about necessity, we would love to always use force that is the least, the minimum, only force that is necessary but the problem with that is from my perspective is that you never know what that is because in order to know what that is you have to get inside someone's head so you have to base your decisions on circumstances known to you at the time of that incident only based on all of those perceptual factors. You have to base it on that only because if someone is pointing a firearm at an officer and they say, I am going to kill you, the officer's perception is gonna be I'm about to lose my life or someone else is about to lose their life. This is a deadly force situation but maybe all it's gonna take is for that officer to say put down the gun and the person does it. Well certainly then the least amount of force was a verbal command. The minimum amount of force was a verbal command. The only force that was necessary was a verbal command but there's no way for the officer to know that and conversely if the officer thinks that they have to take the time to say I'm a law enforcement officer and if you don't drop the gun I'm gonna have to use deadly force. What if it really is the person's intent? Well now that person's, that officer's lost their life or the life of someone else that they were trying to defend. So that's what I see as a problem you get into words like least minimum or necessary versus reasonable officer perception. I've got more but I know you want me to give you the link so. You answered one of my questions about basically slowing down the an officer's response and the situation and the dangerous situation. I've brought this up many times and a lot of people in here know that. This stuff is kind of near and dear to my heart and may seem kind of funny but I kind of look at all law enforcement now as my son because my son is in law enforcement and has been in those situations. And I would hate to think that he had to stop and think for the second or two things can happen in that second. His job, and maybe your job too is time can be dangerous enough without having to react because of your training is going to be a lot more sensible than having to stop and think about what you're doing in a sense. I know you're still thinking about what you're doing but like you said with the foot, the break, I'd rather have that skilled reaction than having to wait for that extra time. With, you said you do use of force training outside of the state. It sounds like it's a pretty valuable, I guess you can almost say it's a modern expert. And so it's, it's something, I'm going to assume that the Vermont training that you do with use of force is something that's sought after. It is, yeah. So that tells me that you're probably going to a pretty good job at what you do and I mean it's a sense it's a valuable export but it's more on the import side where it's going to be more valuable to your students. And I guess I want to commend the academy on that, that your use of force training is something that people want. In one of the, I heard I think the academy's 800 hours. Approximately for level three basic certification which does not include the post-basic training that they have to have before they come on shoe up the door. So that's 20 weeks, is it 20 weeks? 16 weeks plus several weeks of post-basic training after that. Does that determine specifically? Yes, and it's relative to whether or not they, for instance, if their agency issues conduct electrical weapons commonly referred to as a taser then they'll come back and they'll get that specific training. So I guess, and I don't remember what you were relating to, but you talked about 10 years ago, 20 years ago or something like that about how this training has changed so, has the hours changed to 30 years ago? Was it 800 hours or that type of thing? Or you may not know. I couldn't tell you exactly how long the academy was. Like when I went through it was 14 weeks and now it's 16 weeks. So it's increased just by two weeks. But we would really like to have that expansion if we have the funding for that expansion. And one of the things that the training advisory committee concluded was that if we do have the expansion, if we're able to ever get there we would increase our use of force training by two more days, which would be 16 more hours of training. And I think that that would be fairly important. And I just wanted to echo one other thing that you mentioned when it comes to slowing down situations and teaching that de-escalation. Not only do we have very specific scenarios that officers are tested on during the use of force training where in order to pass, they have to de-escalate the situation. So it's not always an escalation of force, but they must de-escalate something that we want them to think is going to be a use of force. But in order to pass it, they have to recognize that it's not. But one other thing when it comes to de-escalation because when you say that now, what do you think of? When you say de-escalation, people think that a law enforcement officer will be able to effectively communicate so that there's no conflict. And on his face that's absolutely what de-escalation is. But here's the part of de-escalation that most people never think about. But I have to think about it all the time as a trainer. And that's teaching officers when to recognize that you must de-escalate in the heat of the moment, but the fight's not done. Nobody ever thinks about that. So if an officer is right in the middle of a vital struggle or someone's actively resisting or they're being assaulted and they're trying to harm that officer or someone else, in a split second, I may be able to strike that person with a baton. I may be able to strike them with an empty hand technique. I may be able to utilize a conductive electrical weapon on that person. But then in a fraction of a second, that person's behavior changes and they're no longer being assaulted, but now they're just physically resisting being put in handcuffs. Well, I can't do what I could do. I have a second to go. But I'm still fighting with them. And that, to me, is a very critical aspect of de-escalation that I would love to have more time to train because the difference between a fraction of a second is a reasonable application of force and being indicted for aggravated assault. And that, to me, is very serious water to train. Okay, so I have a question. Thank you. Thank you very much. So we're gonna have to end it now. I apologize for the few instances that we haven't gotten but we certainly will get back to this topic. Thank you. Thank you, everybody.