 Okay, we are live. It is Friday, April 9th in Senate government operations and what we're going to do today committee is a couple things. We're going to hear in. I never can remember the act number I can remember it was s124 but I don't remember the act number. We requested a bunch of reports to come back. Some were official reports and some were just to report to us on different aspects and two of those were. There was usually a lead agency or organization that would lead the discussion and two of them were assigned to the AG's office and the those two were because Julio had talked with us before about different different forms of citizen oversight committees and citizen review committees and we need we felt we needed to be very careful instead of designing any kind of a model to look at what the different types are because different types might fit better into different types of communities, a small community without a police force might have a very different one and then then Burlington that has a is a city with its own police force. So, Julio had talked to us a little bit about some of those before and so we just asked him to come back, having done some research and to look at it and then this is something that hopefully we can get out to to the community so that they can. And I think the le ab was involved in different people. So, we're going to hear about that progress and then we're going to the other thing that was assigned to as the AG as the lead was whether or not there should be a central reporting point for allegations of misconduct by law enforcement officers. And if so where that should live, should it be in the AG's office shouldn't be with the Council should it be with the Academy. So, anyway, that's, and then how much of that should be public and when should it be public and all that information that we're going to hopefully hear a little bit more about today and then add I believe it's two o'clock we're going to do a walkthrough of the Code of Ethics, and hopefully vote out each 135. So, any questions committee. All right. So Julio, thank you for joining us. Good to see you. Good afternoon. So do you want to just take it away. Okay, thank you so for the record I'm Julio Thompson, I'm an assistant attorney general director of the civil rights unit. They're there. Madam chair there are a few members of the committee who I don't I don't think you've heard me testify before is it do you want a little bit of background about my work in policing oversight or just proceed to Sure. Yeah, no that would that would be great. And do you know everybody here we I figured you probably did as I met them before in different contexts but several members here I haven't talked on the subject of policing before at all. Okay, great. Well, sure. So a little background of information about your background would be helpful to the committee I believe. Okay, so I moved to Vermont in 2004 from Los Angeles. After graduating from law school I practice as a lawyer in Los Angeles doing employment labor and civil rights work. My first work in the area police reform began in November of 1991. When there was a series of shootings of African American and Latino community members by the LA County Sheriff's Department which at the time was the fourth largest law enforcement agency in the country. It's as large as the LAPD, in terms of patrol and policing functions and it also runs the LA County jail, which is the largest jail in the country in the West, really, with about 23,000 beds. It was a big organization, and I was asked to be part of a six month study of the LA County Sheriff's Department top to bottom to look at issues of use of force citizens complaints, accountability and the like. At the time. This is an apartment that was facing allegations of severe beatings of chain prisoners of white supremacist gangs within the agency itself. I came in July of 1992, which was two months. After the LA riots following the initial acquittals of Rodney King, there was a report with about 275 odd recommendations for reform. The LA County Board of Supervisors which funds the Sheriff's Department decided to create basically that the country's first police monitor and we'll talk about monitoring models for oversight. But they created an office of monitor at the time they called it the office of special counsel, because it was because it was staffed by attorneys. That was responsible for ensuring implementation of those reforms. So, the sheriff said okay we will change X or Y was a monitor's job to dig in and embed itself in the department and report back to the board. And that was on progress on those reforms at the same time. The duty of the monitor was to research best practices from around the country and and also overseas, Ireland in the UK in particular to identify better ways of the community that provided less risk for officers and the public. And to work with the department to introduce them, you know, to those best practices. I was served as a deputy monitor in that setup from 1993 to 2004 before, after I accepted a job at the State of Vermont I ended up resigning and then traveling across the country. When I was in that position as a deputy monitor, at the time was citizens complaints and officer accountability, use of force tactics de escalation crisis intervention, the canine unit and slot units, as well as incarceration, the mentally ill. And part of that job wasn't just doing document review. The monitor's office really to be effective has to be enmeshed in the department so I participated in Academy and also continuing trainings, including scenario trainings as role player as the officer, the hostage the bystander, or the perpetrator. I'm embedded with the canine unit and rode with them to calls I rode with the gang enforcement team and all of the specialized units so that I could see it from a day to day operational standpoint how the department really works. So a monitoring monitoring entity that is confined merely to paper review is is sort of like surveying the ocean from from the deck of a cruise ship. It's sort of the monitoring model, though it sounds, you know, it sounds maybe more like a, like an auditor where a lot of it is done by paper. It involves a lot of time that spent in the department but also when the community so we spent a lot of time with all of the community organizations, business leaders, victim advocates and the like. So following that work at the start of that work which started to yield results in Los Angeles, other cities started to notice the work of that monitor's office. So in 1996, the city of Detroit hired the monitor and me to do a study of their use of force and accountability systems, following the murder of a Detroit or named malice green by two Detroit police officers who were convicted of the beating death and quite grizzly. We also were asked to then go to different parts of the country and look at their existing or proposed remedies for police for policing practices or civilian oversight. So that included cities like Philadelphia, Burbank, Oakland, Phoenix, Portland, Oregon, and Denver. In 1999. I'll just try to shorten this up and I want to run too long. In 1999, the US Department of Justice asked me to train its lawyers on how to review police shootings from that from the outsider perspective, and then that led to work that I've been off and on as an expert for DOJ on a number of cities, including Washington DC, Seattle, Baltimore, Newark, Maricopa County, Arizona, and most recently, Springfield, Massachusetts. I worked on an investigation that was completed last year. In the state of Vermont my my role is principally in this civil rights unit has been more in the area of hate crimes. I do training with at the police academy on hate crimes. And so a lot of the expertise, if you can call it that I could I just call it experience and learning comes from a lot of work that I've done in other parts of the state. I have not participated as a monitor, or an oversight member for any entity in the state. I have provided technical assistance from time to time to state police as well as some municipalities on ideas that they are either on, you know, issues of investigations or models that communities are thinking about for their own version of oversight. So, so that's, that's my background I've never served on a review board as such I really my personal involvement has either to serve as a monitor or deputy monitor or be tasked to audit review boards and police departments coming in from the outside to find out what works and what doesn't and to propose fixes to make sure that it's meeting what the community wants them to meet. So I'll stop there. If there's any questions about that. Anybody have any questions about. Yeah, Senator Clarkson. After becoming such an expert on all these things will go all over the country, it does. The obvious question is, why, from my mind, but we can have that offline at another point, but I'd love to hear that story. So, with with the great indulgence from the two attorneys general that I've served with they've allowed me to continue to do this work in my off hours so my vacation time for many years has been spent on these other these other entities and I'm still engaged in some of those those projects so that's not something I've, I've surrendered I mean I'm still working on those issues with right now most of it involves either a federal consent decree monitor, I work for the consent decree monitor for Newark New Jersey I'm on the monitoring team. So that's a court that's a court imported court appointed position. And then I'm also serving as an expert for DJ on Baltimore America, Maricopa County. And so, so what there are a few things that I think I've learned a lot more than I've taught or shared during the period of time and there are a few things that along the way at least for members who haven't heard testimony on the subject before that. Are just lessons that were learned over time. And there are a few, a few kind of key principles to keep in mind. One the history of civilian oversight in the United States is not a very good history. There have been there have been different models of civilian review entities were going on to 50 years in the United States they all follow, follow or nearly all of them follow a familiar birth story which is that there is some critical flash point in the community, or in or sometimes traditionally has happened initially with Rodney King and we've seen it several we've seen it several times since then, including what's going on in Minneapolis right now. And then there are and usually at the municipal level. There's a rush to create some sort of entity with vaguely defined powers, usually little funding, almost no training. There are tasks to meet once a month and do something whether that's reviewing completed investigations, or taking civilian complaints and the like. The other story of civilian oversight is that there are constant there's constant evolution of these entities so the cycle of these and I and I've provided I think the committee. We have a white paper from the National Association for civilian oversight of law enforcement. That talks about the history of the different models is that they, many of them go through a cycle where time passes. They're forgotten in the public eye, and then additional critical incidents arise and then allies are back on that entity, which is found to have been ineffectual and then there's another, another reform. History teaches us I think who work in this area and people in the communities that have worked in the area of police reform and civilian oversight and partnering is that. The quick solution doesn't usually work. And that's especially the case where it is a sort of top down, you know, a proposal where it comes from someone who already works in a city or county government. They come up with an idea or they take an idea from another similarly sized city and then they propose it and then there's a limited period of public comment from the members of the community who are supposed to participate in this model and be served by it. The more successful efforts have really worked in the opposite way they are born from ideas that are provided by the community. First, that those ideas are that principles are staked out by the community rather than the government and then is the government's role to try to match town and government operations to meet those needs. And then, and part of those discussions necessarily include law enforcement since they are going to be the ones who will be governed by an interacting with whatever the civilian oversight entity is. So they can't be excluded from the conversation but they are, you know, they are a co producer of public safety, the community is the other co producer. And so the more successful model or approach to developing a model builds up from the community. And so in connection with the work that we've done here so far in the AG's office and we're not done pursuant to act 166. Thank you action 16. We were tasked with soliciting input from different community groups, you know, municipalities to talk about what they want or what they think they can afford what they think they're missing in terms of police accountability. And as you can expect, if you read the newspapers in the last year and a half, even before the murder of George Floyd last May. They were already working at revising or we're attacking the issue of accountability to make sure that the police are serving the agenda or meeting the agenda that the community really sets. And so we've seen in the last year efforts obviously in Burlington and in Brattleboro we've seen it in smaller towns like Bennington or virgins where communities are themselves doing the research and trying to identify what it what fits their organization. And it's important as the chair noted at the outset is that the size of police departments in Vermont is varies widely. There are departments that have two officers, and many departments that have fewer than a dozen officers. The capacity for a town to build some, or to invest in some larger structure to govern a dozen officers or fewer isn't really, you know, isn't really or historically hasn't been viewed as an economical way to approach it and so the default position that Vermont has been that is the town managers usually, or the town select board that are the ones who are expected to cast an eye on say an investigation of a complaint or a critical force incident. And in many cases they don't have any training or support in the area of law enforcement. They're at a serious disadvantage when it comes to evaluating, you know, as an honest neutral broker, you know what what the circumstances are. And also, there are the disadvantage to know what alternatives to conflict, you know, or encounters in conflict situation that are available to the department. It may be that the department or an officer follows a policy, but the problem may be with the policy itself. And historically Vermont, it's no different than many other states towns and towns and cities have individuals that just don't have that sort of background. And so that's that's kind of the problem statement that that exists right now. I'll stop right there before I start talking about the individual models. If there are questions because I don't want to get ahead of anybody or myself here. Does anybody have any questions right now. I would just in thinking about whether we call it citizen oversight or review or whatever we call end up calling it is what what really is the the function of of the committee is it just to review allegations of misconduct. I mean, I think that it's important to under for people to understand what what what the breadth of the responsibility is and great and how that gets defined. That's a great question. There really is no limit on what a community's participation in law enforcement is and that's the way historically I viewed it is not merely oversight in policing, but participation in public safety. There are many models. Sometimes it's in a police commission model. Sometimes it's in the monitor model where the community has direct input on the policies themselves that they identify existing policies. I do research on what our national best practices, maybe consult or engage that experts, but also define for themselves what sort of police responses they want for certain types of calls. And so, for example, Brattleboro in January released a large, a large report. It was a major undertaking for Brattleboro, where a very useful section of the report. We don't have time today to go over in any detail, but the community's review of their own policies identified what what they viewed as systemic biases towards confrontation towards an aggressive model of policing towards. They basically captured a mindset that according to the authors of the report didn't really align with what the community was expecting its police to do. There are many models of many cities that have civilian entities that are responsible for providing that input and approving policies that that serve the community so it's not just complaints it's the very policies themselves. Senator Clarkson. Thank you Julio I think our chairs also touched on this I think you're right it I think it seems to be much more effective if it's community engagement and it's not just responding to complaints or responding to bad awful things happening. It's it's really proactively addressing what is communities engagement with its public safety. What does it want, what does it need. And, and how do they will, how do they see, how do they envision it how does it help further the vision and and goals of the community. I mean, for example, when I worked on the Seattle consent decree so I in that one I worked for the court appointed monitor so we were the consent decree is overseen by a federal judge. And then in that case he appointed a team of individuals with experience and police reform to oversee and monitor the Seattle police departments changes in what is going to comply with constitutional policing and meet the community standards. A big issue in Seattle when we started I think it started that in late 2013 was, there were certain areas in Seattle certain parks or squares that were represented by individuals or maybe we're the homes of individuals who really were not supported by any of the existing systems for mental health or housing, and a study which we oversaw to identify the amount of 911 calls and police calls for service for these areas where there were only a few dozen individuals that were accounting for many hundreds of calls, and many, you know, by different officers, all the time. The community. They have they have a community council there that, you know that offers recommendations for policing and they were very supportive of the creation of a unit of officers with the background and mental health and social work to be assigned to those areas so that they knew after a period of time, all the people who occupied those areas. And so those officers knew the individuals the residents, the community members and vice versa. And in most of the cases, where there was, you know, some public disturbance or nuisance, it related to medication or housing issues. And their job wasn't really to show up with the handcuffs but to make the calls and cut through some of the red tape in the city to get those individuals back in treatment. You know, in a safe place at night, where they, you know, they could avoid risk from other, you know, other, other members of the community. That was dictated by the community, it was saying, you know, why do we, why should we have the same couple dozen individuals encounter over the period of a year maybe 20 or 30 patrol officers who don't know anything about them. They just show up and it's just another guy who lives in the park rather than investing the time to have that the department's employees zero in on these people almost become the fact that case workers or work with their existing case workers so they could meet those needs and get some of them as many as they could off the streets and certainly in treatment where they needed both, you know, medical attention and really rehabilitative services. Here's an example of a gender setting that came directly from the community in the department, which was under a consent decree and had a new chief who was very effective. Kathleen a tool former chief of the Boston police department. They were very very receptive for that it was a win win for the department, because what they found is once they made that small investment, then the volume of the 911 call started to decrease. The use of force in where individuals would have to be removed from a scene because they presented a risk to the tells rather the uses of force were cut by roughly 75% was really remarkable, because the people arriving at the scene didn't come with an arrest or use of force they came there more as with a guardian or a caregiver, rather than a warrior mindset and so where they arrive at the scene, it was all about helping that individual rather than forcefully removing that individual or commanding them to leave and then using force if they resisted. So that's that's just one example. And it's been, it's been utilized in other cities that's just one I have some experience and you know I'm seeing how that program developed. This agenda setting and policy is one of those areas and related to that is a community input into training officer training to not merely to comment on officer behavior. After it happens, but to make the investment upfront to see whether they are training their officers to engage in confrontation. And so, you know that if you have us having civilian or community input means that they should be welcome to review it shouldn't it shouldn't be secretive. In most cases I mean some SWAT like tactics you don't want publicly disclosed for safety reasons but in general, you know, for the public or the community to be able to see firsthand what the training is participate in it. And watch officers run through it and, and then see, you know whether their approach matches up with what the community's expectations are. So, you know when I started in doing this, you know, ages ago, one of the more frustrating areas of a police encounters would be an officers encounter with someone usually in crisis who had an edged weapon. They had a broken bottle. They had an umbrella they had some sharpened object that presented you with a deadly weapon and no question it was something that if they were in the strike out at somebody could cause serious injury. And, you know, most of the training in most of the United States, the paradigm was all about appropriate distance and getting the firearm out. Getting it in the low ready position, because the teaching at the time was, was to demonstrate how quickly someone could close the gap there was a famous 21 foot rule that came out of a trainer from Salt Lake City, Utah, where they were trying to demonstrate for officer safety purposes, that someone could close 21 foot gap before an officer could on holster point and fire to defend themselves. It was very little focus on things like backing up, or moving so that there was an obstacle like a car or a table between the weapon and the officer. And it was really only, I mean, it was a very there's been very slow progress but progress on getting officers to focus on de escalation that every minute you spend talking to someone with a weapon and they're talking to you, and they're not using the weapon is a victory for that officer to allow other officers to arrive. If there's family members that need to be, you know, at a distance at a safe distance that can help in the de escalation. Then they could do that but you, you would see the results and when I did monitoring, you could see the results on the street. The officers were just following what they've been trained. And in a high stress situation. Any professional it's not just police officers. It's EMTs it's airplane pilots. You know air traffic controllers when they're in a high stress situation. They don't have much time to think they will resort to their training is what's most available to them. And so participation in training, you have the right training and the training and an edge weapon encounter is time distance and talk. Then that's what they will start the fall fall back on rather than tactical position on holster low ready position, because once the gun is out the officers options are very limited. Now the gun is, it's an asset for the officer but it's also a liability, because it's a deadly weapon that the officer might lose in the fight. So once it's out of the holster the officer has narrowed a lot of their options, certainly de escalation is almost certainly off the page, because no one reacts almost no one reacts positively if they're in crisis to sing a drawn gun. And if the person closes with the officer, they would have to reholster and go downward to maybe use pepper spray, or just to put their hands out to create distance. And so resorting to that gun sort of traps the officer into a very narrow range of choices. And if the truth and if that's the officers training, then you'll get those predictable results. And so exposing it and, you know, transparency on training to get a fresh eye from the outside to see how you have they do scenarios what are the scenarios look like the scenarios always have the bad guy. That's always a male, that's always a person of color, you know, those sort of examples, it trains officers to disregard risks that might be presented to them by white females, for example, where they might their training examples are just. If there's a group and never shots fired, I'm going to focus on on the male as a potential threat and that's dangerous, not only to those individuals but that's dangerous to the officer, because they may be zeroing in on the wrong person. So that focus on the outside look and training can be very very valuable and starts to slow down the pace if not eliminate the sorts of bad outcomes on the street. So I'll stop there. I noticed that I think Senator Rom had a question. Yeah, I mean, you know, Julio before we go on to the models. I hear you defining the problem statement but kind of taking the same statement you just made and extrapolating it out when there's a crisis in a community around their level of trust of the police. That's often when the police stop wanting to listen and hear what that crisis of trust is coming from the community. So I'm really curious how you and the Attorney General's office are working with police departments around the state to be at the table in equal with the communities that they serve because I, you know, I hear a lot of police officers frankly saying, Well, we want to hear the community but you know, we want we want to sit down at the table with them and they still want to be at the head of the table. And I don't think they really know what it looks like to truly be an equitable relationship with the communities they serve and have civilian oversight and have that conversation. So I am, I feel a lot of defensiveness from law enforcement agency, and that's not a good place to start these conversations, it doesn't build trust so how are you helping them define the problem statement because we can't get to all these models, until they are willing to sit down with the community and see that they have a problem with trust. I'm going to follow up with that, just if I might. I believe that one of the weaknesses that was pointed out, and I may be wrong here but I'm pretty sure I'm right in the Brattleboro study that was done was that law enforcement was not allowed at the table at all. There was no communication there. So that was the other side of what case is alluding to here is that you need to have both and they need to be equal partners. Yeah, there's actually, so I can talk to some example, I mean, you both have defined the issue perfectly there is, there is inevitably resistance and fear. When there's any kind of reform of an organization, and that's true of law enforcement as well. I'm going to talk about some historically or examples that I've seen where, or how those fears manifest themselves and, you know, to note success stories or, or failures. On the issue of participation, for example, in Seattle and in a different committee in the judiciary committees I've been testifying with others about the use of forest policies and things like that. I've also have been looking at use of forest policies that really have spread out from Seattle Seattle has as viewed as having one of the more robust use of forest policies in the country. I'm very familiar with that because I was working on that with the police department and the community and and the unions. In Seattle. I think the agency. And the city was very focused on participating with the community and very focused on dealing with the monitor because I had to frankly they're under a court order. But I think the reports that that came out was that there wasn't that much input with the officers union about what the changes were going to be. There was a consequence or certainly related to that shortly after the policy was issued. I think it was 110 officers filed a lawsuit to enjoy the policy to and to make arguments in court about why this policy was inappropriate and put officers at risk. The lawsuit did not have merit on the law. And it was ultimately dismissed, but it was an example of the sword of failure, a process follow if you will, that was committed during the development process where not everybody felt like they had an equal voice. And a lot of these officers sued on their own just because they themselves felt threatened and thought that options that they would use to save their lives if they were in in high risk situations were being removed, and that was very motivating to them. And I think that everyone has to be at the table the one, one of the more successful use of force policies in the last two years that's been developed came out came out of Camden County, New Jersey. And that person was the head of head of that department, and there used to force policy which is viewed as, you know, you know, again one of the standout policies in the country was a project between New York University's policing project, the local ACLU and double ACP chapters, and the fraternal order of police that they were all, they, there was community involvement as well. And everyone worked together so when the policy was at its final stage to be presented to the county government, the, you know the rank and file and the, the, the officer unions had provided their input, as had, again, other community stakeholders you're absolutely right that a successful outcome requires all voices there. So how do you, how do you, how do you get to that point how do you, how do you convince the law enforcement officers that the community needs to have an equal voice and they need to be there and how do you convince the community that the law enforcement needs to be there at the table also and, and how do you choose. I guess, which community members you're talking with and which police officers you're talking with because you, I mean is it leadership in the police department that I don't know if I guess I think we're getting into a little into more detail here and what I'm going to suggest is that we continue this conversation for maybe 15 more minutes, because we have I believe we have the ethics. Walkthrough at to a to am I right about that. And Gail is that right to 30. Oh to 30. Okay, so we have until 230. So let's, but I think we're, we're going to continue this conversation again at another time also so thank you, thank you, Senator column where I was getting a little nervous here. Okay. Thanks. So, there are a couple of issues that I identified I we're not in a position really to recommend a given model yet and part of that is that the community input process for us is not done. It's not close to being done. A key ingredient for a successful change is that you have to spend the time. It's a slow moving process, because you need to provide multiple opportunities for the community it's harder to get the communities input because they're so diverse it's not that hard to get a city attorney and a police chief in a room. But it's harder to get members of the community, particularly those who are afraid of their police departments in the room or in a group setting so it's more time consuming. You have to invest that time, not only at the beginning but as policies are training are being drafted. You have to provide multiple opportunities for people to take a look at that. So that's that's part of it, and that contact if it's a respectful inter interaction I find helps the relationship time spent in the room. When people realize that the, that the people who are on quote the opposite side. You know, don't, don't have, you know, don't have a pitchfork and tail that kind of thing that you're talking with individuals that that the personal interaction and regular interaction is really important. Yes. Thank you Madam chair. So one of the things that this committee and the legislature in general seems to struggle with. And I don't know that there's a right answer to this is to get a sweet spot in terms of the number of people that you involve in this type of situation. So you reach a point where if you get to 15, 16, 20. There's too many people that actually be able to get a lot of stuff done, but if you don't involve enough you risk leaving an important voice out of the process to what what have you discovered Julio in terms of sort of hitting that sweet spot in terms of the number of people involved. Yeah, there's really, I mean in terms of the community involvement and all the projects I've worked on with their changes of policies. For example, there'll be a draft policy that is posted for pub for public comment for a period of months. There might be public meetings to go through that policy. It's almost like rulemaking like a rulemaking a proposed rule and a comment period. And then organizational interactions, you know the community organizations are really vital, because there will be people there who are who might have training or experience in the area. So they come to the table with knowledge, or they come with models that they've gotten from, you know, sister organizations. But those individuals are also going back to their constituency, and they need to have the opportunity to be there with without you in the room. So it's not like in, it won't say that won't name names but we might be talking about a policy with somebody who represents a local NAACP chapter. And then they're going to go back and talk to a whole bunch of people without you in the room, so that they can have that candid discussion without, you know, wondering what, you know, you might say or think about them even as an outsider where, you know, I was I might be from another state so just to give them that ability. So using those organizations as conduits, and also giving them advanced notice of what you're going to talk about so that before you let's say you would meet with NAACP for example. If there was a draft or an outline you'd send it to them in advance and give them time to go talk with the community and get their input again on their own, fully candid without you so that when they met you. They were ready to talk they weren't just kind of reacting in the moment and not having an opportunity to get that advanced feedback. And that's part of what slows it down a little bit. But you really do get very, very meaningful input that way places that don't that don't follow that. Typically will have policies that will go out. And that will generate on unintended results for everybody for the community and the department. And then they have to go back and change that policy or the training and involve more people so it's better to get it right at the same time. And so, like in some of the consent degrees I worked on. People are involved in the proposal, the drafting, you know, like multiple red lines. There's public posting where you get written comments. And the people who are more involved in the drafting process from the community and the agency work on that. And then again there's public. There's community meetings that are led by community members who will explain. Let me tell you what this policy is going to be about. And I'll say, police dogs like some city might have issues with officers of canines for for searches or high risk arrests, you know where someone's in an attic in a burglary and they need a police dog type, identify somebody how to do that safely. And so that present what the policy is going to be. We're going to keep the dogs on leash. It's a find and bark policy rather than a find and bite policy and explain it to them and then get that additional input. So I've seen the public input, you know, in the near final draft that didn't elicit really good ideas that everyone missed at the beginning. It's inevitable. So it can be time consuming but it's really really valuable. And, and it really does help people feel more ownership from the agency side but also the community side in that policy. And what's what inevitably happens is that you, is that you have to then launch the policy and train on the policy, and then have a community commitment you're going to come back in the next year to see what changes you need to make, because you, because experience will generate situations where you think we didn't quite capture what we needed to do we need to make tweaks or adjustments. And you just need to accept that. And for any good, you know, for any good. Let's say de escalation or use of force policy and training if you look at you go on the web and look at the versions of the documents you'll see it's like version seven or version nine, because they will inevitably be situations that arise. And people didn't think about and say okay, you know, our, our model for handling something like a call where someone's in a position to self harm in a residence that it's not meeting what's actually happening in the community. And we open about that police leadership obviously is important but so is community leadership was really vital I just want to say this just to get this in, because it was in it was in the, in the Brattleboro report, I was, I was happy to see it. This is a passage from a study done by the police assessment resource center in Los Angeles, where I worked from 2002 to 2004 that emphasize the really critical need for the government, the governmental entity to provide training support for any members of the community who are participating in the policy development or oversight. Well principle concern. It's not just it doesn't happen in policing. It happens. It happens with engineers. It happens in airline industry. There's always a concern where professionals are subject to oversight by individuals they don't feel understand the profession that don't understand this happens in medicine. It happens in law. It happens in teaching where individuals want to make sure that those who are involved with evaluating performance or evaluating policy are themselves. At least well, you know, fairly well acquainted with how the occupation actually works in a long standing failure for a lot of civilian oversight entities is they say okay we're going to get five community members. We're going to represent these constituencies and these individuals it's good to get a broad selection you have somebody works in real estate, somebody's a basketball coach someone who's a substance abuse a counselor. And then they're kind of thrown in there, and they don't know what the rules are regarding searches after an arrest. They don't know whether, you know, an existing strip search policy meets the constitutional standard or not or whether. You know, there are better practices out that afford that keep safety in mind but also for afford people more dignity. And so the broader board report I think really zeroed in on an essential need whatever is the outcome here is that there do need to be supports and resources for training opportunity so that board members are acquainted so that they can be effective. The bright the part of the broader board report found that where they've done studies of those reports that don't have the training over time. The, the community present oversight so to speak, ends up agreeing with the department 90% or more the time. I can't say whether that's the right percentage, but what, what, you know what academic and other studies have have shown is that the lack of knowledge works to the disadvantage of the community in terms of its effectiveness, but it also is an impediment to trust enforcement, because a rank and file may recognize that the people who are evaluating their work aren't familiar with the occupation aren't familiar with the laws the many laws the many regulations that apply to the profession. It doesn't really help anyone. If you don't provide those supports and so I think, looking down the road, again, we're quite a way I think, away from offering our final views on this, but it's hard to imagine a situation where you would have an effective. You would have an effective entity or entities of any form where they didn't have access, and maybe perhaps a mandate for training to make sure people are experienced enough so that they can become better issue spotters and better problem spotters because they're more familiar with the subject matter on the job training, historically has not been a very effective way of, of increasing the quality of community participation and oversight. So I'll stop there if there's a question about that. Senator run. Hi Julia when you were talking I was thinking about the year that I was arrested as a teenager by the LAPD for absolutely nothing and it was 2003. So I wish I could say that I think the LAPD has improved, but the on the ground experience for black and brown people would unfortunately tell me otherwise. That's kind of what I wanted to ask about it. It's, it's gravely harmful for people of color to have to come out and say, this is not okay and I am not okay and the police are not doing their jobs properly. I just saw that in Bennington. Again, with a couple coming forward having been given tickets 12 times in 20 something days, feeling like they were being run out of town by a lot of decision makers. It extracts a lot of pain and resources from people of color to have to speak up and go on the record saying that that they are being harmed by the police and to file those complaints, and then nothing happens with them half the time. I'm just, I'm really like I appreciate everything you're saying, but I'm not hearing what the Attorney General's office is doing to improve the situation. And I really want to make it specific to what are we doing, not what can we do what would be ideal but we are having a problem in Vermont and we need to know what the Attorney General is doing about it. Well, it's great question under under Vermont law including act 166 we don't have any authority over law enforcement reform other than criminal prosecution, we have representation on the criminal justice Council, we have one seat on that council. We don't have the ability, like the Human Rights Commission does to do a civil investigation of racial profiling and the like. So, we've been tasked in this law to get input, not only from law law enforcement but from a broad range of Vermonters and different institutions to hear about what they want in terms of increased accountability mechanisms. So that's our job under 166 is is to get that information and offer some recommendations or ideas to the legislature. Along the way, we certainly interact with law enforcement and members of the Council to identify instances or problems that they're trying to solve, but we don't have a legal charge to do that. That's not I mean we don't, I can't, I can't make a police chief anywhere, sit down to talk with me, or answer to me or produce files for my review. We don't have that I mean, one of the things we'll be talking about later. One of the things this project develops are models of oversight that include that kind of authority. For example, you may be where the house passed the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act, and one provision of that law allows state criminal to conduct pattern and practice investigations very much like the DOJ does for police departments where they investigate, whether an agency is, you know, kind of chronically systemically discriminating against the community. Vermont doesn't give us that authority most states do not have that authority. Congress is proposing it in a bill right now that's before the Senate. Senator Clarkson. Thank you so Julio, given that you feel you need further time to make a recommendation on community engagement or community oversight model whatever we're going to call it. I would hope it would have a more proactive name. When do you feel you have that in time for us to take action here or later this session this summer. When do you think you'll actually have that work to a done enough to make a recommendation. I would say my best projection is it's probably going to run into the summer in part, and I'm very proud of this but there's been a lot of work right now in communities, and getting certain underserved communities vaccinated. And so there's been a lot of energy that's been devoted to that, which I think is terrific. And I think we still have a lot of work to do there are lots of folks in towns we want to talk to. And that's going to be on, you know, in smaller sessions but also we anticipate having you know number of, I assume for most of them they'll be zoom based town hall kind of meetings, and then also soliciting. You know written input from organizations. We're also talking by the way, and I'm a real believe in that believer in this. If you're thinking about creating organization that or building up an organization engages in oversight. Go talk to the professionals who do that. So for example Monday, I'm talking to a lawyer who right now works for the Pennsylvania Attorney General but she worked for years as an investigator in the office of police complaints in Washington DC and then the parallel office in New York City. And she's agreed by the way to talk to some of Vermont cities and towns about her experience so she can tell you, you know, what were her frustrations as an investigator under a given system. I think that's really one of the best ways to do it so we're getting that sort of input from people who are either experts or people who work in the field. Which is, if you haven't done one in Windsor County, or east side I'd love to be in. I mean if it was appropriate. I'd love to be invited to one of those. Of course. What, of course. Yeah, I mean, I mean have you and has any have any of the rest of my colleagues on this committee been invited to join one of those. I don't think you know the person who on this project I'm working with Dave share assistant attorney general, David chair or I think you've met before. On occasion. Yeah, so David has been more the one dealing like with a lot of the scheduling so I can't I'm not really, you know, familiar with like what the latest details are. But what I've been saying when I have been talking to folks is that we're going to talk to you more than once. It's not enough to, you know, meet with somebody for a half an hour or give them five minutes in a town hall, because what happens is we go on to the next group. We get their ideas and then we want to go back to the first folks and say, Hey, yeah, this is an issue we overlook what do you think about that. It's, it's very, it's very involved and there'll be multiple opportunities. Any of the, you know, any of the events that we do with communities. Everybody's going to be invited from that we were going to try to arrange speakers who are from that community. But it's going to be available to everyone and there'll be multiple opportunities because we're never tired of hearing from people. I mean it's really really important it is. You know, there's a lot of research to be done about existing entities and that sort of stuff. And we've done a lot of that. But it's really hearing what the communities want, because they, they have very different views about what they want. Before I go to you, Senator Clarkson, I just, I think we need to be really careful about, and this just jumped out at me when Senator Clarkson when you said, I hope we can have a more proactive name, or something like that you said and I don't, I think that we need to acknowledge that what we have in Vermont is many, many different types of communities. So we have approximately 65 or 70 top municipalities that actually have police departments. We have about 180 towns that don't have police departments. So whatever what Dumberston does, in terms of its public safety and how it's going to respond to public safety is going to be very, very different than Brattleboro Brattleboro can have some kind of a community involvement community oversight, whatever it is. There's nothing to oversee, because they don't have a police department they don't have. So, I think we need to be very careful about thinking that whatever we come up with some some places may call it a citizen review committee some places may call it a public safety advisory committee committee. So I just wanted to point that out that we need to be really careful that we're not, we're not thinking that there's going to be something here that's going to solve, solve this and then I will also make sure that when we're having these conversations and particularly around investigating disciplinary actions that kind of thing that we remember that we have a whole new criminal justice council that has a really, really active right now investigation subcommittee that is made up of mostly non law enforcement people some law enforcement people on there also. So we need to be really careful that we don't set up something that is going to conflict with with that they've worked, they're working very hard the community representatives on there to make sure that they're setting up the right kind of investigative right of. And so, I just think we need to, it's more it's much more complicated than just having Brattleboro set up some kind of a, an oversight committee. So I just wanted to point that out. I couldn't agree more fully, but I think it goes back two years to our tour of the of the state, and to our thinking broadly about how do communities envision public safety in their communities whether they have a police department or not. I mean they have a vision. I bet if you ask people in Denver Center if you ask people in Reading or, or, or, you know, Mount Holly places that don't have police departments, but that I bet they have a, if they if there was a group of people that put together to talk about what's your vision for your public safety how do you envision. I mean, I think it's a bigger. I wasn't wanting to be prescriptive at all. I actually think it goes to our questions from two years ago which is, how does, what's a community's vision for its own public safety. Yeah, I agree with you and one of the things that we are going to hear is the inventory that we've asked the planning commissions to do on how many, how many towns actually have public safety plans, and what is constituted in those plans so we will we will be hearing from them about that inventory. So, but it does the whole. I think that the really in my mind here the important thing is to be getting the community. And I'm talking here about the broad community with representing all aspects of its community and the public safety people. To be able to come together and talk and, and some, there might be different things in different communities growing out of that conversation and in some they, they may. They, I just think that that is the most crucial thing is to get people to sit down together and and begin to form that trust. So that they really can talk about what, what are some of the issues here and how do we approach them and how do we. And, and not necessarily even the, the community group coming up with the policy but here's what we expect here's here's, here's how we would like to see things happen in our community and from that grows the policy, not the policy. Anyway, I'll be, I'll be quiet down, Senator Ron. Well, I mean, we should probably let Julio talk a little bit more in in some of the sort of final thoughts. I was, I was just wondering. I imagine with most models, as you said, some towns have money for this and some don't. And we've had started this conversation in this committee, you know, regardless of the source of funding. The state needs to help the communities who don't have the resources have these conversations in a way that people are able to participate which costs money. I can't imagine one of these models is free and effective at the same time. Whether or not, and you know historically that's where that's where state government has lent its hand most civilian oversight entities when you're talking about oversight of non state law enforcement so cities and towns their law or counties, their law enforcement. State doesn't doesn't have that much of a hand it typically has a hand and Vermont already has some of that for mine has a human rights commission anyone who alleges a discrimination by any government agency state or local can go to the human rights commission which has subpoena power as the ability to take the department or agency, the court whether that's law enforcement or any other government we also have law enforcement certification where officers their quote license to you know the practice of police policing is subject to revocation or suspension. In the last year, where states have taken legislative action that's one area, which is that they've increased the role or the powers, or authority of the licensing entity to investigate specific actions on officers who are engaging in actions either of excessive force or discriminatory policing, so that there's not only a consequence within the agency whether they're disciplined or not, but their ability to practice the application as it were, maybe an issue and you know critical cases, as well. I think another area that you're going to see again I can't. I can't see the future is like what we're ultimately going to say, but it's hard for me to imagine that. And we haven't seen anybody who's spoken in opposition to it, but where the state could really benefit is to provide the kind of training support or resources for people. In the state policing Academy we don't have any sort of entity for training or and skills building for people who are already right now engaged in law enforcement oversight. They are sort of on their own in terms of training there are organizations like they call which I mentioned that do provide training I've done some of those trainings at the national conferences, but it's not really enough it's very episodic, and it's not tailored to, you know the city or town or the state. So that's that's one area I could see where there'll be more discussions about whether the state can provide those supports, so that someone is looking at a use of force and force complaint in, you know Northwest Vermont is applying similar skills and procedures and checklists or anything like that, as someone who's in, you know, the southern part of the state, that they have a common understanding of what could one of the I mean it's, it's kind of a details thing but I think it's a good illustration is that when when you have an entity that might be looking at the department or someone's investigation of a critical incident. Everyone can read what's in the file. But you have to have someone training or experience to know what's not in the file that should be in the file. You don't know what you don't know or you don't know what's, what's missing, unless you have exposure to that. And so, for you know I mentioned earlier that I did this training for DOJ way back I think it was a 99 about reviewing police shootings. We did a case study of a police or shooting investigation that a lot of the lawyers in Civil Rights Division thought was pretty good, but there were big gaps in the investigation. So things that were not in the, in the investigation that one would expect to be in a deadly force investigation that weren't there and many of the people in the room, because they weren't familiar with that sort of that project of reviewing a shooting case. They didn't know what was missing. So what they saw look good but the problems were what wasn't in the investigation, what wasn't investigated what wasn't analyzed, and you can't really know that just by being a good reader. You have to have some experience or some training about what are the, what are the essential components of a good, you know, a good and fair investigation. I think, when we're talking about training here I just, it just dawned on me that I think we have to differentiate between what a Brattleboro or a Putney or a St. Albans oversight committee would have the ability to investigate and and review, as opposed to the council, the the investigate because I'm not sure that that we, I don't know if what we want is for the Brattleboro advisory committee or whatever they end up calling themselves to be investigating a deadly shooting. Because they, they haven't had the training and I don't know that we can provide that to 250 towns, but we can provide really extensive training to the people who are on the investigation committee at the council. And, and it seems to me that we're talking mostly what we're, we seem to be focusing on is investigations of police conduct by these that we keep going back to that is to investigations, but I think that they need to be far more than and maybe the investigations happen elsewhere than at the community level. It's a very good point and I didn't mean to suggest at all that we would want to train, you know, a couple of, you know, select board members on how to do how to become deadly force experts. I didn't suggest that at all I was just using as an example of even people who are well trained and, you know, very careful analytically, if they don't have training they will miss things. Part of part of oversight models are not just investigating that's the most expensive model where you have build a new investigative entity. There are other ones that review completed investigations, the monitor auditor. Well, they don't, they're not decision makers on individual cases. What they do is they look for systemic failures, they look for. So they might like, they might say, I'm going to look at, you know, the last 10 use of force investigations you've done to see if you are investigating those cases fairly or not to identify problems or suggest best practices or learn lessons. If there's an agency that's doing something really great to share that, you know, with other with other counties, you know, neighboring towns. That's that's part of the auditor model as well as like the commission model is one that's more involved in policy and may have some role in the say of discipline. These are all big issues and they and not every community agrees about the role or the investment that they want to make. The ones that are going to invest in a particular type of model locally for them to be able to go somewhere or have a resource in the state of Vermont is really, really helpful because there are a lot of people out there who are online consultants who offer that may not even fit Vermont Vermont's view of law enforcement so it's very hard to zero in on quality so, like I said, going back to what Senator Rom said a while ago I think that you're definitely going to see a need for supports by the states because just won't have those resources and it also helps to have some sort of uniformity to have people have a common basis for training and to cross train so I think that when you have communities where people who are participating in policing in one community know their counterparts for other communities so that everybody knows what they're doing, and they're learning from each other, because they will all encounter. Many of the same issues that they might be dealing with issues of race poverty, about the illness homelessness, as well as law enforcement role if any in the schools. So having to have some, some common source of information I think is probably going to improve to be very helpful. We don't know the details of that because we're still listening to folks, and we're happy to talk to, to any of you or anybody you recommend as much as possible. The emphasis here is that it's multiple conversations with a lot of people. Right. Any questions or comments. Oh, good luck as you continue. Okay, and if you do anything on this side I'd love to be a fly on the wall. Definitely sure. And Matt. Okay, anything else. You're muted madam chair. Oh, I'm sorry. I was going to suggest that we take a five minute break. We come back and that we schedule Julio in maybe two weeks to just come back and give us an update again. We also talk about the issue of the central reporting point and whether you've had any made any headway on that, on that issue. And, and maybe when when you come in next time, we can have somebody from the council and maybe a couple people from the, the community members on the council to join us in the conversation. Yeah, sure. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. As always, very informative. Thank you for your time. I appreciate the attention. Okay, we're going to take a five minute break.