 All right, welcome back to the House Committee on Government Operations Military Affairs. We are continuing our work on the Vermont Criminal Justice Council Miscellaneous Recommendations Bill and I want to start off our testimony this afternoon because I know he's very crunched for time. Chief Maurice Lamoth of the St. Almond's PD has agreed to give us a little feedback. I think he's having a little trouble with the Zoom mode potentially. Oops, give it just a minute here and see if Chief Lamoth can get back on. Hey Chief, can you hear us okay? Like, can you hear me now? Yes, we can. Every time I try to unmute it was kicking me out. Yes, I can hear you. Hello. Great, thanks so much for agreeing to spend a few minutes with us. I know you have a really busy day, so I wanted to get you right in as we're picking up our work again on this bill. I mostly had asked, we've been talking for the past few weeks as we've looked at this about kind of the modernizing training standards for law enforcement certification and moving from, you know, having you got to do so many hours for this and so many hours for that to skills, demonstration of skills and competency base. And, you know, with your experience as a trainer and a law enforcement leader, wanted to kind of get your feedback on that principle overall and this bill specifically if you had a chance to read the draft that I'd sent you. Yes, I have. So one of the challenges that I didn't realize be honest with you as much when I was with the state police because a lot of the things there are kind of laid out for you even in a leadership role in a commander role. When I came here, the police department as the chief particularly, one of the challenges we have is finding adequate training and then finding the time to do it. So what I do appreciate is when stuff is pushed down to the criminal justice training council and then mandated for us to do and is supplied for us. So any training that is done that is pushed out by legislature, by the state is going to be in a mandated type scenario. If it's mandated through the training council and then pushed to us, like domestic violence, for example, is perfect. We know it's coming. They select the training. They devise the training. They adapt the training at their level. They push it to us and whether it's yearly or every other year. And then as a department head, it's very easy for us to make sure it gets done. And I think that's the best way moving forward to get them to get mandatory training that we find applicable to our profession and we can ensure that it gets done on our level. Chief, I probably should have done this. I kind of dove in, asking you a question right off the bat, but could you just introduce yourself for the record and talk about your experience in law enforcement just broadly? Yeah. So my name is Marcel Lomoth. I've been doing this for almost 25 years. The first, just under 21 years, I was with the Vermont State Police, mostly in the northern part of the state. And I concluded my career as a station commander, commander of the St. Albans Barracks. And I left there in 2019. I retired. I was retired for about a week and a half. And I ended up down here at the St. Albans Police Department for the first eight months or so. I was the director of dispatch. And eight months after I started here, I became the interim chief of police and have since been the standing police chief for the last almost three years. So any questions? Great. So chief, I think the conversation that we had had this morning, we had spoken with both the criminal justice council and a couple of representatives from IADLIST who set training standards and develop curricula and certify trainings. And I'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit about how training has evolved. One of the things that we were really focused on was there was some language and statute that was created, you know, six or seven years ago, I think, that said by 2018, all law enforcement in the state has to have at least four hours of fair and impartial policing training by December 31, 2018. Part of what this bill does is it strikes that specific requirement and then talks more broadly about demonstrating competency. So in light of that, there's been a little bit of a concern about getting rid of the specific number of hours, even though that's kind of an old number. I'm just wondering if you have any perspective on the kind of evolution of fair and impartial police training and what the officers at agencies like the San Alamance Police Department see in terms of fair and impartial police training every couple of years. So fair and impartial police training, it has evolved. So I'm sorry, that wasn't even really a topic when I started in the 90s. So it's becoming more of a continuous topic because that evolves as well and along with a lot of the other topics that we're trained on. And as far as the way it's laid out, when it started just like many topics with training when I started, it all started with every time a topic became, it came to the forefront that it became known that police departments weren't either one, weren't being trained on at all, or two weren't being trained consistently across the state. You know, larger departments were usually head of the smaller departments. It became more of a mandatory training where it wasn't suggested anymore that, hey, every department should have this or even thought that they did. It became mandatory. Every department was still on its own to figure out how to get roll those trainings out. And it was difficult for the smaller departments to find time or funding. And then, you know, fair and impartial being the same thing. And even then you didn't know what the competency level was of those trainings. It could have been a three-minute speech by a commander or a supervisor and that could have been it or a one hour online training or with no testing. And then a lot of the online trainings, it was just you could let it play in the background, whatever you're doing. And that was enough to do it, even if you didn't read a single word. Then it became the state police started using trainings that were timed. So, you know, you at least had to be looking at it or there were tests at the end, which was, you know, the way to go. So at least you knew you were getting something out of it. And slowly trainings evolved more and more to where, like I said, we're seeing a lot more mandatory trainings that are devised by the Criminal Justice Training Council and they're either Zoom-based or it's even something that's sent out that it has a test at the end of it. And I think that's where the evolution has come and is still going that way. It's still very difficult, like I said, for departments to devise or locate, even if the money is there, to find training that isn't sent by the state of Vermont. First on Morgan, that's a question. Yes. Hey, good afternoon, Chief Michael Morgan here from Milton. So you've, we've got one of your residents is our Chief and Milton, Steve from Russia. I'm sure you're stupid from time to time. But anyway, Chief, so if I hear you correctly, it sounds like to me you're 100% on board, you've read this bill, you like what you see, sounds like what you're conveying to us, correct? I am. I mean, like I said, we spend, we have a couple of people here that devise most of our training, like every agency probably has a team of a group of or even a single person. And we spend a lot of time trying to find trainings, especially towards um, fair and impartial, um, equality, um, bias-free policing. We spend a lot of time trying, trying to find, trying to find, finding training in this area, meaning Vermont National, um, that is designed specifically for officers in that realm. And it's very, very difficult. So anything you can do at the state level, um, to help with that. And if it comes to Vermont Criminal Justice Council, it's easy for us to push it out. It's easy for us to justify. It's easy for us. Um, if we're called to the carpet per se, uh, to say, where are you getting this training? Why are you using this specific training? It's nice for us to fall back on that and say, we are all treating the same in the state of Vermont. And this is where it came from. Excellent. But appreciate it. Follow on to that then. And it sounds like, so you all, as a general whole, sounds like as law enforcement, um, leadership in the state are pretty much on board with the CJC's, uh, um, that connection or that, uh, the words are escaping here. That, that agenda, yeah, I guess a gender or the means of operation, how that filters down to you all and how that train gets conducted. You're on board with that process. I believe I heard you saying it works. Yeah, I mean, you know, I've dealt with a criminal justice training council. I was a trainer down there. I'm an instructor down there. I trained a certified instructor down there for years. Um, there are certainly critiques you can make of the criminal justice training council. However, if you look at the big picture and realize that they're playing into a lot of different, uh, a lot of different people that are pushing for them, their own agendas on what we're supposed to learn, what they want us to learn, but you only have so many hours to train new officers coming out. That is a fact. You only have so many weeks to get them pushed out into the world. Then it becomes incumbent on the, on the individual agencies are going to to expand their training. So that's where that's just as important as your initial Academy time. So that's where I think the Academy could get better and they are getting better at pushing out these mandatory trainings and these consistent training. So again, every officer in state is getting trained the same, uh, because as we all know, liability is huge in this world and especially in this profession. And when we're called out on something to say, Hey, we, this is the latest training that was offered. We took it. We were proficient in it because this testing was done. It showed we read it. We went through it. We tested and this is what we learned. So at least we have that as a chief's perspective anyway, in the city's perspective, we at least have done what we could to train our officers with the most up to date information. Thanks for that perspective. Chief appreciate it. Representative Hank. Thank you, Chief. I have a question about the transition period as the CJC is going from a prescribed number of hours to competency based testing and training, training and testing. How, how do you feel about that interim period where you may or may not know exactly? I mean, I have not gotten an answer from them how they are going to prescribe what an officer needs for training because it's quote unquote in the process of being decided on. How are you going to feel when you have officers who are coming due for training and you're not really sure what they're actually going to need because it's not going to be written in statute what they need? Yeah, that so that this conversation here in the and hearing from Mr. McCarthy yesterday was the first I've heard of that being discussed. I don't know. That's that's a great question because we can't hear from them in December that, you know, you didn't meet your 30 hours and us thinking that is going to be competency based and all of a sudden we have to come up with these hours in a month for every officer we have. That's not going to work. So in our eyes in our world, I'd rather see them keep a number and then come up with their competency based and give us a year to transition into that so we can do it unless those competency based trainings are going to equate to enough hours so that it can overlap and you're still going to break the 30 hour threshold because right now that is the number we've been looking at since I got here and in the state police and that's number we balance everything on. We organize our trainings right now in January. We started looking at the year and laying it out so that we'll break that that will minimally hit 30 hours per officer over the course of the entire year. So it doesn't hurt us as far as staffing hours in budgetary use to make sure we hit it. So again, it's going to be a transition that hopefully they give us some time to look ahead so that we don't get crunched at the end of the year because if we have to all of a sudden pay everybody hits training at them in the same month. Chief, I think the idea as we've heard it in testimony from the Criminal Justice Council and some of the folks that are helping them continuously improve the curriculum there is to try and make sure that the hours that are being spent aren't just checking off the box but are more efficiently helping your officers get to the place where they can demonstrate competency. So we're definitely not going to increase the total number of hours but on specific things like fair and partial policing and A-Ride training, here we're basically pushing on the A-Ride piece flexibility for the Criminal Justice Council to say these are the appropriate folks who actually need the hours of training. We're not going to require 16 hours for every single law enforcement officer in the state the way the statute does right now which they're not even achieving now or sort of acknowledging reality in a lot of what we're doing in this bill. So yeah, I just wanted to lay any concern you had that we're looking at a mandated number of hours total for all training on that, you know, binding overview that you all have to do. Yeah, I mean that'd be great if there was no set hours and you're right it feels more of a based on your proficiency maybe the hours come down maybe they go up if you're not proficient that makes more sense right? I mean if somebody takes longer to do something to become proficient then it makes sense that that's the way it is and if you're better more proficient at it you have experts in some areas or better in some areas then maybe it takes less hours. The question is then what is the gauge and that's something I'm not sure how we're gonna how they're gonna put that out if it's all just a written test or if it's proficiency test and that's gonna be the challenge. Representative Hank. Thank you and again is that proficiency is that challenge a staffing and scheduling challenge for you? Is that your concern? And who does it so if it's a written test right that's pretty easy I mean the the system will will either pass your failure but if it's proficiency test who who is the one that's given that test that's certified or are capable of giving that test in a way that's not going to be challenged by either the employee that may or may not pass it or liability wise if somebody says did they in fact really pass it or did you just push them through to make you know to check that box as far as saying they're good. I don't know and if it comes down to now they have to with the academy to be found proficient that becomes a staffing and a budgetary problem. Thank you. Well chief thank you for I knew that your time is really limited so I'm wondering if anybody has any other burning questions for the chief or if there's anything you want to leave us with as we continue working on this and this will not be the last time I think that we're talking about law enforcement training in this biennium but. So I would just leave that I appreciate your time by the way but I think the proficiency test that one thing I would think about is is there any way they can do satellite if they're going to get to that and that proficiency means going to the academy and this been talked about for my 20 plus years is is there a way they can set up a northern area northeastern northwestern south eastern southwestern days so that every agency doesn't have to travel to meet down there you know you know once a month they can do it in different locations just to save every little agency some time and money that's the only thing I would throw out there. We've had a statutory requirement that the criminal justice council work to adopt ultimate routes to certification and one of the things this bill does is push out the timeline to adopt final rules that would allow for that kind of flexibility satellite campuses some synchronous remote learning for some of the sort of classroom coursework etc so it pushes it out but the idea is that we're endorsing the three-year plan that the governor recommended and that the CJC has been working on with the department of public safety on some of that I know you're you're aware that they're going to try to tease out easier ways for folks to get the coursework done that they need then to just go to the academy it sounds like you're endorsing the plan probably wish it could happen faster if I if I was going to guess yep good perfect I appreciate it well chief thank you so much feel free to stick around if you want to but I know it sounds like you had a couple of pretty serious cases you were working on we do I but I appreciate your the time and the bill let me have me give me the ability to talk to all of you thanks for being with us have a good day I am just going to make sure we're getting this revised draft with this one extra little line in it posted um it is posted okay draft 3.1 is up the last person that I wanted to have come and speak with us is uh Karen Tronskarts got from the network and how are you I'm very well chair McCarthy thank you so much for having me uh good good afternoon committee members for the record I'm Karen Tronskarts Scott and I'm the executive director at the Vermont network against domestic and sexual violence I'm here today to speak in support of the changes that are proposed by the criminal justice council we're pertinent to be able to be working with them we think that this is the exact pathway forward to improve the relationship between law enforcement officers who are investigating domestic and sexual violence cases and the victims of those crimes we see that um you know I've been around for a really long time and uh back in 2009 I was the director at the network when we thought that the best way to move forward would be to seek uh a statutory language that uh established mandatory training on domestic and sexual violence two hours of training every two years train the training was uh we helped devise the training it's an online training officers sit in front of a computer and as chief Lamar talked about sometimes you have to wonder if anybody's actually listening to those trainings because it's tied to time they just have to put in those two hours with the computer on uh we we've been working with the police academy uh and the criminal the criminal justice council to create a training that not only is skills and competency based but also recognizes differential roles within the law enforcement community so currently the kernel of the state police and the fresh cadet all get the same mandatory training on domestic and sexual violence and so we're working with the criminal justice council to create training that offers training on competency and skill building specific to roles so that so people in officers and executive positions would get a different training or you know markedly similar but different training to uh to um in community leaders to uh the folks that are out there driving cars and uh directly responding to situations and cadets so we think that this is we think that actually this is an incredible opportunity for um Vermont to really change the way that we're training our law enforcement officers in relationship to domestic and sexual violence I also just want to say that we um you know I'm I'm a newer appointee on the criminal justice council I was appointed two years ago I've been doing this work on domestic and sexual violence for 31 years 16 years as the executive director of the Vermont network the new criminal justice council is about 50 community members like myself and 50 law enforcement officers and there's a terrific level of respect and collaboration that exists within that council I was interested to hear the issues that chief Lamoth brought up I've heard those very same issues being discussed at council meetings where we are working to not only improve systems and and improve what happens out in the field but also to provide different kinds of supports for law enforcement officers so that the community experience is different and um and I believe that it's been my experience that the criminal justice council models that experience where there's just so much respect and so much consideration given for both the the challenges of running a law enforcement uh agency as well as the goals that we have for policing in our state so I'm happy to answer any questions about our position or anything else okay thank you for your service on the criminal justice council and and kind of endorsing this move and to help inform it are there questions that the committee has for Karen one of the questions I have is we've talked today a lot about the evolution from a specific required number of hours to demonstration of competency and the you know we're going back to the things like in 2018 what we were requiring versus today um in your years of working on these issues you know is this are we kind of starting to arrive at a place where we're embracing models that you think will work better and get away from the the kind of I don't know just just trying to fight against the cultural momentum in law enforcement training by requiring a number of hours yeah I you know I really appreciate that that question chair McCarthy again I've been around for a really long time uh uh and at no time in my history here in Vermont have we ever had these kinds of conversations with relationship to how we train law enforcement officers you know we did a survey of our member organizations we represent 15 nonprofits that provide direct services to victims of domestic and sexual violence and we surveyed them earlier this year asked them what would be the most important things for law enforcement officers to know from the perspective of crime victims about their interaction asked them what what they wished for when a police officer arrived at a domestic or sexual violence scene what did what was the wish that would happen and what are the barriers for people calling the police and uniformly across the state what we heard over and over again was people don't call the police because they're afraid they won't be treated with respect we wish that police officers knew more about domestic violence and sexual assault so they so they would understand what's happening in that moment and be able to treat victims with respect and I'm not impugning law or law enforcement officers 100 for the most part they do an incredible job when they respond respond to domestic violence but we actually believe a different kind of training that not only speaks to absorbing information but also creates the kind of adult learning that we know to be best practiced where that where folks are absorbing information and then they're able to test out their skills and competencies through the course of the training to see where it's landing and to understand what what exactly is required of folks we think that if we can do that kind of training we will never get those kinds of responses from survivors going forward that that kind of that interaction that in that in that you know the the chances moment will actually be vastly improved so so we think we're we're we're on the right track here and we are so proud of our criminal justice council and our police academy it's been an honor to serve on that committee I'm also on the professional regulation committee so I have you know front row seat to to what happens when officers don't have the the support and training that they need in those very tense situations we have a lot of hope moving forward you know the Vermont network was recently we've been recently called on to develop a national training center on gender-based violence and to do that we wanted to make sure that we were including the kinds of trainings and the kinds of partnerships that we're seeing at the criminal justice council today so we asked the police academy this academy to sign on as a primary partner in that work and we're working very closely with them to not only develop training that is applicable to police officers but also to develop training that's applicable to the advocates that are helping people in the community so that we have a much closer relationship and can do a better job on both sides of that equation in making sure that survivors get get their needs met and that we're improving community safety at every opportunity well thanks for being with us today Karen any questions for Karen before we take a look at the updated draft well thanks for being with us we're gonna take a look at the latest and greatest version of the bill now and uh i'm gonna fight turn devlin to come back on the zoom thanks for being with us Karen thank you so much thank you for your work on this and all the different things you're all doing take care all right uh so Tim I think we've all got uh draft 3.1 what o'clock time soon for the one o'clock time stand yes that is the correct draft thank you very much for having me back um chair McCarthy again for the record my name is tim devlin legislative council um draft 3.1 has the inclusion of just one new sentence that can be found on page two in section one line seven and this is updates the text to the session law um pertaining to the purpose of the bill the entire section will now read starting on line five the purpose of this act in part is in part to amend the laws of remand regarding law enforcement officer training to emphasize achieving increased competency over prescribed minimum hours of training in fair and impartial policing this is the new sentence the change to a focus on skills and competency is meant to align with the goals of the increasing of increasing transparency and accountability to historically stigmatized communities the committee that was my uh after listening to the wise words of doctor um just right in long go i um tried to transcribe what he had said to us because what he said in his initial testimony was so great so um i hope that that uh that works for the committee all right all right let's keep moving so tim i think if you could just give us a walk through um just to see if there are any flags before we move the this draft of the bill sorry i'd be more than happy to thank you moving on um from section one to section two and again just for context we are in the part of the bill pertaining to fair and impartial police training uh as well as advanced roadside impaired driving enforcement training both are found in the same area of statutes and so that's why both topics are in one part section two um removes um as was discussed earlier on line 19 in 20 um some ambiguous language um pertaining to a fixed number of hours for required training the next part of amended law will appear on the top of page three under section three the same section and this designates sorry this adds language excuse me one moment this uh new language on line four and five of page three um echoes the uh sentiment that was in the policy um better say the purpose section above and in or i think it's easy for me to read it out loud in order to remain certified law enforcement officers shall receive a refresher course in the training required by the subsection during every odd number year and a program approved by the Vermont criminal justice council designed to demonstrate achieve law enforcement officer competency in fair and impartial policing subsection f sorry in line seven which has been removed here dissolves the fixed hour requirement for the advanced roadside impaired driving enforcement training and that is being transitioned into um a rulemaking authority for the Vermont criminal justice council to adopt via rule at a later point in time section three pertains to the fair and impartial policing training report this will require a report back um honor before january 15th 2024 by the Vermont criminal justice council to both the house um committee on government operations military affairs and the senate committee on government operations in particular on its efforts update and implement the fair impartial policing training and also the point of whether the integrity of the training standards have been maintained in this transition well the moving on to section four at the top of page four we have counsel powers and duties referring to the Vermont criminal justice council in here under the amended title 20 vsa section 2355 sub division a 13 you'll find a rulemaking authority granted to the council to propagate rules and training requirements for that advanced roadside impaired driving enforcement training that was mentioned above the next part of the bill beginning on line 10 of page four pertains to roadside stop data collection here in section five um which amends title 20 vsa 2366 that is a section that's titled law enforcement agencies prepare an impartial policing policy and race data collection subdivision e um which dates on or before september first 2014 every state county and a municipality law enforcement agency shall collect roadside data stop data consisting of the following and two new categories are added or sorry one new category is added requiring that the date time and location of the stop be included in that proffered information the next section sorry the next part of the bill pertains to the duty to contact current or former agencies when hiring law enforcement officers in particular section six beginning on line nine of page five amends title 20 vsa section 2362 a not only changing the title which will now read potential hiring agency duty to contact current or former agencies will also require that when hiring a new officer instead of just contacting the latest employee employer of that officer they go back to look at all previous employers to the extent that those previous employers are law enforcement agencies and if you'd like i can read through that particular language chairman carthy we've been through that a couple of times um it's pretty straightforward community i'm seeing nodding heads so unless anybody has an injection we will not torture you with having to read that to us again the next part of the bill pertains to rule adoption deadline modification specifically this repeals a previous deadline and pushes it out to july 1st 2025 for the vermont criminal justice council to adopt rules regarding alternate routes to the certification required by title 20 vsa section 2355 a one the final part of the bill is the effective date which shall take effect upon passage and represent higley has a question yeah ten this is maybe not a big deal but again under the rule adoption deadline i don't know so i've ever seen it uh referred to that uh criminal justice council shall finally adopt the rules usually it's just makes reference to you know whatever entity it is shall adopt rules i don't i don't know as i've seen shall finally adopt the rules so finally no idea shall adopt rules here no that's a great point uh representative there's not a preliminary rule or final rule uh as i understand it so i can certainly remove the term finally to prove that did that language come from the original section that was being repealed in section seven um i'd have to check it may have okay i may have crept in as well i don't know this kind of sounds like somebody's being scolded for not doing that one yeah you will don't see us so we would like so uh we should do a quick edit on that so i i agree represent higley so we wanted to say i think arm before july 1st 2025 the criminal justice council shall adopt rules regarding ultimate roots the certification required by it okay i'm making that edit now and i will send a new draft to the committee in a few minutes okay great so committee let's take uh just a 10 minute break here and we should now have um draft 3.2 with a time stamp of 145 pm i'm there at the bottom under tim's name right there at the last page with this change right yes and sorry again for the record name is tim double legislative council the change made in draft 3.2 will appear well it won't really appear because it's no mission but it reads across uh lines 14 and 16 it will now read um section eight rule adoption deadline on or before july 1st 2025 the remote criminal justice council shall adopt the rules regarding alternative routes to the certification required by 20 vsa section 23 5581 and so because it's honored before if they want to adopt those rules earlier they have all the flexibility they need right we're not yes by removing that finally language we're not tripping them up in any way no you're correct okay any other questions for mr devlin before we lose him to our senate colleagues tim thank you for your hard work on this bill and i hope that you have a restful weekend and are feeling 100 better when we see you next week thank you very much take care everybody thank you thank you so uh we're missing mr hooper and mr roakey and mr byron here and it is now five of so um let's just relax for a minute now see if i can scoop up our ballots from all the way well you're doing that i'm gonna go to the next door to approach right you