 Okay, good evening, everyone. Everyone can see me at the right now. So the mayor coming to us and coming city of Santa Cruz. I'd like to welcome and thank everyone for joining this evening's forum on changing the face of community policing in the city of Santa Cruz. Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge that the land on which we gather is the unceded territory of the Oaxaca speaking UP tribe. The Amamutian tribal band comprised of the descendants of indigenous people. They've taken to Mission Santa Cruz and San Juan Batista, their Spanish colonization of the Central Coast. Today, working hard to restore the traditional stewardship practices on these lands and heal from historical trauma. In addition to our panelists tonight, I'd like to welcome our city manager, Martin Bernal. I'd like to welcome him and let everyone know that he's joining us. Martin, if you're out there, I'd like to invite you to say a few words to the community. Yes, hold on. I'm trying to open... Oh, there you go. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Justin, very much. Yeah, just very briefly, just wanted to say that I understand and appreciate the pain that the community and the country are going through right now and acknowledge the discrimination and inequities that we have in our society, including in Santa Cruz. And as a community leader, particularly a Latino community leader who myself have experienced that growing up and even in our community and totally dedicated to really doing what I can to make changes and take actions that will move this in a positive direction to improve conditions. And I'm here to listen and to understand and to answer questions. And I pretty much appreciate you inviting me to be here. Thank you. Thank you. In the wake of the murder of George Floyd at the hands of four police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota, we've seen communities throughout our nation and the world speak out and demonstrate in opposition to police violence, especially violence against black communities. On May 25th, 2020, George Floyd regretfully joined a long list of black Americans who've been killed as a result of police violence. Americans of all colors and backgrounds are angry and heartbroken about the lack of accountability and prosecution of police officers who wrongfully use excessive force on citizens, especially within the black community. So the reason why people are screaming and saying black lives matter is not because they believe that black lives are more important than any other life. It is because the rate at which black Americans are killed by police is more than twice as high as the same rate for white Americans. Racism is something that is taught and has been ingrained in many aspects of our culture and in professions, including law enforcement and our criminal justice system. And although work has been done and is being done to change and eliminate racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination for our culture, there's still more that needs to be done. When the police, she contacted me regarding some of the protests that were being organized over the weekend, I thought it was necessary for our local government to provide a safe space for our community to share their feelings and provide recommendations on how we as a community can continue to do better and improve policing. So we decided to pull together this form for our community in a way so that people could speak directly to their elected officials and police chiefs and do so while social distancing. To begin this evening, I wanted to start by letting everyone know that as we convene, members of our community, that as we convene, members of our community are still in the streets protesting and voicing their frustration with the opposition to police violence in our country. I would like to thank members of the public who are exercising their rights to freedom of speech. And I'd like to remind everyone who chooses to participate in actions to please make sure you're wearing your protective equipment and practice social distancing. We hear you, we are with you, we are taking this seriously. And that is part of why we didn't want to cancel this meeting this evening because tonight we are taking steps towards taking action in our community. Given that our meeting is in conflict with a protest that's currently happening on West Cliff, I wanted to start by sharing a couple of videos that were submitted on behalf of the protest organizers and that they asked us to share with the community. And we want to make sure that their voices are being heard. We've also invited Joy Flynn-Wall. She was the organizer of the action on Saturday in memory of George Flynn on the behalf. And after that, I'll turn it over to Santa Cruz police chief Andy Mills who spoke out against the actions taking place by the Minneapolis police officers and took a knee with myself and the rest of our community at Saturday's action. So if you'll give me a minute, I'll pull up these videos that were sent by the organizers of the action that's currently taking place. Hi, the boys are concerned. Hello, my name is Isabella Bonner. I really wanted to start this video off by thanking Mayor Covington for allotting us some time. The boys are concerned within the community. Unfortunately, there were the site scheduling conflict this evening and the Black Lives Matter rally. So quite a few of the Black and Brown voices will be speaking there and unfortunately not be able to fully be heard in this discussion. And we both thought that it was really important to kind of be able to hear from, you know, some of these community members really voice their opinions especially surrounding the topics that will be discussed. So yeah, I'm really excited to present Mr. Stoney V. Gidey who has been Santa Cruz resident for over 30 years and is very vocal and proactive in the community and has a lot of meaningful things to say. And secondly, I want to present to you Anthony LaFrance who actually was courageous enough to speak over the weekend and spoke some really true words that I think the community needs to hear. Going forward, we are all looking forward to continue to have these hard discussions. We really want to facilitate some meaningful change in our community within the systems across America. And we're really looking forward. We're glad you're here. Yes, and it all starts right now. So thank you for your time and here's Stoney. Hello to oneself. It is the time for us to come together and be strong. This is time for us to think about Black Lives Matter. Your child, your family member that is in this situation and you want the community to come together for you. So it's time for you to come together for Black Lives Matter, all lives matter, all together. So I challenge you to put aside your fears. So you learn to overcome them, one love. Thank you very much for your time. Have a beautiful day. Be blessed. We gotta unify just like this. That's what we need on the highest scale. So when you leave here today, because what the people know, that you made a change by being here. The biggest change you can make is the town houses that are not here. The ones that are not here are for certain reasons. Because they don't follow up to this. They don't believe in this. I was out of work before, worked three hours, and said I gotta be out, I gotta be with my people. Not my people just for the Black boys, but my people that represent and want to help the Black boys. You understand? When I heard of Black Lives Matter, was when a young boy died and got shot for Skittles. And y'all know his name. Trayvon Martin. Trayvon Martin. Somebody already knew that. That means it's still in your life and your soul. They won't know where. Same thing, 10 years later today. That was when I was 16. I'm 26 now, look what happened with George Floyd. 10 years from now when my little son that's three, about to be 13. I don't want to know his story. I want positive change. Not for equal rights, because we never fought for that. We're still fighting this day for civil rights. Not even equal, we've never been equal. Our ancestors are grand parents, but civil rights, no justice, no peace. Thank you again for the people who are organizing in our community, and the people who are on this call, who weren't able to make this call, but who are wanting to make a difference in our community. At this point in time, I would like to invite Joy Flynn-Wall to join us. Joy, if you're out there and you can turn on your video and your audio. I have my audio. It says that I cannot start my video because the host has not started my video, here we go. Here we go. All right, hello everybody. Thanks for joining us tonight. Thank you so much for inviting me. It's an honor. And I know you have a couple of questions for me, so if you wanna ask away. Yeah, well first I wanted to thank you for joining us tonight and thank you for the work that you did to bring everybody out for what was a really peaceful action that got captured and is being seen around the world. And so I was wondering if you could start by just explaining to folks how this came about and how you organized this event. So I just wanna speak, thank you so much to the ability for one person to make a difference. And while this was a few days in the making, it was really years in the making. Mentioning earlier when I was speaking with chief very involved in the community. And I have been, I grew up here and I think that that really played a role because there's pockets of people in the community who knew my name and knew they know my heart and they know really what I want is people to come together and I wanna see peace. So you and I had met a year prior. I had a couple of introductions with chief Mills. So really, I don't think it would have been possible if it weren't for my active life in the community. And I just was in the position of wanting to see something happen and nobody was talking about it. Nobody was saying anything. And I was pacing in my home and just feeling really frustrated. And I didn't feel like for whatever reason with my own story of being a biracial woman that I had permission to start that conversation. And I think a lot of people are feeling like they don't have permission to start that conversation. And I had met with this group, Black Girl Magic Santa Cruz one time but that experience really helped me kind of come into my own courage I guess and feeling like I do have a valid story as a biracial woman and that I do have permission to start the conversation. And so while I kept looking at our text feed and nobody was saying anything, I finally said, well, I can do it. And so I just simply put, I'm gonna be at the clock tower at nine o'clock on Saturday in silent solidarity. And then they just caught the spark and then they sent it out and then my friends sent it out, my friends and allies. And really what it was was an opportunity to see in our community who our allies are because that's who we need to access and use as resources at this time. And when I say the word ally, it's any person, any non-person of color that would be an ally, somebody who has the ability to roam around the government, the United States, our town and businesses in a way that somebody of color can't to really stand and defend us as a race. And so that was my call to action at the end of the action. And so thank you also, Mayor Cummings, for using that word action because while people were using the word protest and using the word rally, I really, it was really a call to action. And I think people are ready to get down and dirty and tear this apart. And I see other races coming in, other minority groups coming in and really wanting to support people of color because black lives matter and that's not saying that other lives don't matter. But the thing that people have to understand is that the systemic racism that we've experienced for centuries is the template in which they are experiencing oppression and racism as well. And so if we are able to laser focus on this particular issue, then it's gonna break down the rest of oppression and marginalization as a country. So finding how we cannot get distracted and by other, by other injustices that are real. But if we're able to really just laser focus on this particular issue and break that template, then we're gonna create a new template that's gonna trickle down to every other oppressed person. That's kind of where I was trying to go with Saturday. And I think, like I said, it was peaceful because it was grassroots, totally 100% grassroots. And because it was people telling people, telling other people, we were all telling the people that we knew the energy of what we wanted. And I just am very overwhelmed at how people responded. And thank you for being there. Thank you Chief Mills for being there. And I'm really excited to start this conversation. And I want to make a call to action to people of color and our allies to step out in courage and step out of fear and have a conversation, like really have a conversation. We're gonna make mistakes along the way, we will, but it's important to forgive and move forward and allow people to make mistakes and learn from the mistakes so that we can really make a difference. It's gonna be a long, long journey. And I hope that everybody has the stamina for it. So thank you so much for having me. Yeah, no, I just want to thank you for all the work you just said and then for all the action that you've been doing. And I think it's really important to highlight that it was just one post on one text that led to a gathering of hundreds of people where there was a tone that was set that we wanted to be peaceful, that we wanted it to, we wanted people to socially distance and making sure that we weren't kind of cluster gathering in one spot, we made mindful and winding up down Pacific Island and just kind of riding through that. So I left my house and I got on a bike and I rode down Pacific Avenue, rode past all the people who were silent, holding their signs and it was just really powerful. And so I got to the clock tower, which is where I ran into the police chief and we were able to all take a knee together. And I think that it was just, a lot of people have told me about how beautiful it was. And so I just want to thank you and the rest of the organizers out there for everything that they're doing, the panel outs, the march that's currently taking place right now. And I just want to help the other communities can learn from our actions. Yeah, I think if anybody else is wanting to plan something, number one, make sure that you are already involved in the community and forge a relationship with elected officials and the police and then be very specific on what the idea is. And that was one of the other things that I did is I said, this is where we're meeting, this is what we're doing and this is how we're doing it. And it was very short as well. Because I wanted people to feel safe, just also for their health as well as their wellbeing. So thank you for your support. Great, thank you. We'll continue moving forward with tonight's program. And I know that a lot of folks have asked what the city has been doing. I'll let Chief Mills talk a lot about that. I did want to point out though that earlier this year, Councilmember Clone, Crown Glover and I have brought forward an item to prohibit the use and restrict the use of surveillance technologies that have proven to be biased against communities of color, which included predictive policing and live facial recognition. We've been receiving emails about these technologies. And I just wanted to let folks know that these items were sent to the Public Safety Committee back in March. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, we had to put a lot of city items on hold. But this is still something that we think is important to our community in order to keep our residents safe. Moving on, in the midst of this tragedy, I will say that I have been very much impressed due to many people who are coming out and protesting peacefully. I think that there really needs to be a highlight on some of the actions that have taken place in Minneapolis. Unlike other cities or other times when we hear of people color being shot, we see videos of them being choked to death. This was an instance where immediately after this video was shown, it was known that the four officers involved were fired. They weren't paid for administrative leave. They lost their jobs because of this. And as of today, all four of those officers aren't custody and had charges pressed against them. We also saw throughout our country that there were police chiefs who were standing up and speaking out against the killing of George Floyd and the actions that were done by those police. And for me, this is what hopefully looks like. This is what we protest for and why our elected officials need to work with the community and the police officers to begin implementing change. I'd like to thank all the officers in addition to our committee members for speaking out across the country, including the members of the Santa Cruz Police Department of Santa Cruz community. And I'd like to thank Santa Cruz for playing, the police for playing a role in supporting the community as they are taking action on the streets. With that, I've invited Chief Mills to join us this evening to talk about some of the things that have been changed in our police department in terms of how our police department functions. And after Chief Mills speaks, we'd like to open it up to the community to be able to ask those questions. We've had some people write in questions. We've had other members of the public who are online and we will be allowing people to speak. We'll have two minutes at that time to speak. You'll need to press start in the meeting. And again, we want everybody to be, this is an opportunity to speak to your elected officials, speak to your police chiefs, so please be respectful. And with that, I'll turn it over to Chief Mills. Well, thank you, Mr. Mayor, for allowing me to be part of this community discussion on the police, on racism, on use of force, on technologies that affect all the above. And I think that when I saw the murder of George Floyd, my reaction was visceral, it was pain. And I think that for me, what it was is the ultimate breaking of the spirit. Not only Mr. Floyd was broken, but I think police officers, including me, all of the nation were broken. And I think that that's how you begin to build a different system is when you get to the point where you hit rock bottom and you feel like you've hit the pit, that the only place you can go is up from there. And so as a result of that, I felt it was important to speak out, as a police leader, as they cop for 42 years, and clearly state that what happened there was not only wrong, it was murder, one. And number two, that we have some enormous problems in policing and the justice system in specific that need to be fixed. I can't control the whole justice system, but I can certainly control what happens in my police department. And so my responsibility is to control what I can control and influence what I can influence. And it begins with me. And everybody across the nation begins with them. And I am pleased to say that I've seen police officers from all the nation, including my own department, over posting online who have come up to me personally with tears in their eyes and said, thank you for taking a knee because we have to do better. And this is where it begins. If it doesn't start here, it'll never happen. But we can't settle for shallow symbolism of taking a knee. That's important, but we have to do more than that. There has to be policy. There has to be law. There has to be procedure. But most importantly, there has to be a change of heart. And that can only come internally. And so I'm hopeful that some of the young people who are now police in our cities understand race and culture and bias better than we did at my end when I started. And this hopefully pushes us in the right direction to bring systemic change so that black parents don't have to explain to their black teenage kids how to prevent getting shot by the police. But that can't be acceptable in our society. And so I'm committed to change. And so here's a couple of things that I'd like to start off the conversation with. Today I should order to my entire department that we've changed our policy and we will no longer use the carotid restraint. Also notice the chokehold. It's done. It's gone. No police officer will use it in Santa Cruz anymore. And I feel strongly about that. My command staff felt strongly about that. We've been discussing it for some time. But when we saw San Diego in Watsonville, also Bennett and now other cities are falling in line as well. It's a low-hanging fruit, but it's a good place to start. We don't wanna put our people in a position where they're taking the life of a human being because it's applied incorrectly. And so that is done. But let me also mention a few other things that I think are really important. For the last two and a half years we've been hyper-focused on de-escalation. We recognize that not all the police shootings that take place need to take place. And we can do better by giving a time talk and tactics to reduce the frequency of when the police use the lethal force. As a result, just this year we've probably had five different circumstances where officers would have been justified in using lethal force, but they elected not to and were able to talk people down or use other means to get them to stop using a weapon. This is how change happens. It started with policy and then it went to training and now we have action and reward for that. We've done some other things that I think are really important. We've instituted a critical incident to the training in our department where we teach our folks how to speak with people and how to calm people down rather than spend things up. This is a critical element in working with our community. But I think the most important thing we can do is work shoulder to shoulder with our community. When we are in step with our community, working with our community, talking to our community in a real and meaningful way, that's when change happens. It's pretty hard to not like somebody who's next to you and that you know really well from working with them. And so this is an important topic and conversation in our department and our officers are getting it and we'll continue to do this even more in the future. As we move forward in our community, we want to hear from the community members. We got some really smart people in our department, but we also have some really smart people in our city. And we want your input, we want your direction, we want your influence on our police agency. And so that we're policing from your perspective. We can only learn that if you're communicating with us. So as you know, I have a 930 to 1030 on Monday mornings, people can come in and sit down and talk with me. I would love to hear your ideas of how to reduce our police use of force or improve our relationship with the community and reduce racism. You can also email me directly at amills at cityofsantacruz.com. Amills at cityofsantacruz.com. And give me a call also at 831-420-5816. And let's talk about it because we have to be better to make sure that our community is headed the right direction. Look, we're not perfect. There is racism. There is bias, whether it's unconscious or overt. And we're trying to weed that out of our organization and policing in general. But I can tell you this, we are going to give it our best effort. And I expect you to hold us accountable for that because this is far too important. If we don't fix this permanently now in 20 years, we'll be right back here again, just like we were about 20 years ago at Rodney King. And we can't afford that as a country. We can't afford it as a community. We certainly can't afford it up for that as individuals. We have to treat all of our brothers and sisters better than this. Those are just a few of the things that are going on. And I can probably go on a lot longer, but I wanted to make sure that we answer all the questions in here from the community as well. We're also moving forward with, as you mentioned, Minister Mayer reducing the, we are not going to use and have not been using for a while a predictive policing, but it will now become official city policy or law. And then also a live facial recognition technology because we just don't want to be in a position where we're using that to harm other communities of color. So having said that, I'd be happy to take questions or comments or whatever you think first, Mr. Mayor. Thanks, Chief Miller. I have a question and maybe it could be for you and possibly the city manager as well. I know that employees receive and council members as well see the diversity training on being hired. So just wondering if you can speak to the kind of training maybe Martina at the city level and then Chief Miller that there's additional training that police receive around diversity, equity and inclusion. Yes, sir. I'd be happy to answer that question. Yes, it's a requirement that all employees who are management or supervisors in the city are required to take diversity training and harassment prevention training and discrimination prevention training as well. And you do it when you're first hired and then you have to redo it every few years. So it's an ongoing training that happens on a recurring basis for new employees and ongoing employees and employees also get promoted. And also it's available to all city employees in the city. So we have quite a few employees that take the program on ongoing basis. Yeah, in addition to that, we do actually an incredible amount of training in our department to start against unconscious bias. So one of the trainings that we just sent people through is implicit bias training to make sure that we're looking at ourselves. We know that we all bring bias to these positions and these jobs just by the way we grew up or who were raised. And so we're doing that training to increase our understanding and awareness of implicit bias training. We've also, just before COVID hit, had the diversity center was going to provide some training as well so that we're understanding LBGTQ issues and doing much better at that. There's a lot of training both planned and delivered. And so we need to continue to do more to continue to sensitize our people towards the things that can drive the race and racism, prejudice and bias, whether it's conscious or over. Mr. Judy, I think if I could just add one more thing. The other thing that we do have in the city is we have the EO committee and equal employment opportunity committee who is comprised of different employees from different sectors of the organization, different employee groups, as well as a community representative who also focus on identifying representation in our workforce and make recommendations related to policies as well as training and that sort of thing. So we have an ongoing committee that focuses on those issues as well. So I thought I'd point that out too. Chief Mills, we have a lot of people letting in kind of asking about mutual aid and the fact that there's been Santa Cruz, the pictures of Santa Cruz police and Santa Cruz sheriffs at the open process. And I was just wondering if you could kind of speak to what's happening there and maybe talk a little bit more about what mutual aid is. Yeah, it's a fair question that people are asking. And it's a concern of theirs and it's a concern of ours as well. In fact, I've been having a conversation with Chief Honda from Watsonville and Chief McManus from Capitola and some of the other police executives about taking a look at the policy under which we send people and to make sure that we're implementing the correct oversight if we do send people on mutual aid. So what happens in the need of disaster, whether it's man-made or nature, we rely on other jurisdictions to help us get through those. So for instance, the earthquake that took place in Santa Cruz. That's a disaster that goes beyond the scope of the police agency who's there. In the fire department as well or a natural wildfire that's consumed thousands of acres. You need help. A use can't do that on your own. And so when things got out of control in Oakland, they contact the governor's office to Cal OES office of emergency services. They send an order down to the sheriff of the county and the sheriff contacts the local police agencies telling us what the need is. And then we send people to those locations to help them restore order. It's not to manage a protest. It's to restore order when there's a riot. And that's a very clear distinction. And what we did because we were, we did send a half dozen officers to sergeants and lieutenant. What we did is we wanna make sure that we had somebody from management there to make sure that we were not going to be enforcing people who were peacefully protesting. Because that was the case. I want that manager make the decision to pull our team out and leave. And so we had a manager go to that location and report back to the deputy chief who was reporting back to me on a regular basis about how it was going. And just to give people the scope of what was going on, as soon as the officers arrived, the first officer that exited the vehicle at the direction of Oakland got hit in the arm with an object and we thought it was broken. Turned out that it wasn't broken after X-rays. But there was some serious violence taking place. And that's why they were there to help stop people from rioting and not to prevent people from protesting the God-given right to do in their first amendment. So that's the purpose of Mutual Aid. And I wanna be in a position where we have something where we need help from other agencies that I can pick up the phone and call the governor's office and they'll respond. Reminds me of a member of the cheering box of the paradise that you had fire battalions from all of it, you know, provides that kind of Mutual Aid from bad incidents. And so, you know, how Mutual Aid works. Next question is one that we had emailed into us. And the person says, in the AB 392 peace officer's deadly force passed in August 2019, it states that a police officer may use deadly force when the officer reasonably believes deadly force is necessary. What is the protocol for making the distinction that deadly force is deemed necessary? Well, that's a pretty broad question, but let me see if I can explain it this way. First of all, that's AB 392 was just passed. I talked to Dr. Weber, the assembly person who wrote that bill. I met with her in her office and had a great conversation with her. See how I could help her manage and pass the bill because it was gonna be dead on arrival. But she ultimately got it through, not because of me, but because she was tenacious about it and got it pushed through. We had a great conversation for almost an hour. And I think that was helpful for her to understand the police side of it. In order to use lethal force on someone, there has to be a threat that is going to either do injury, life-threatening injury, or death. And that, by the definition of the law, has to be eminent. It has to be, the force you're gonna use has to be what's called reasonable and necessary, but it also has to be eminent. And then it defines what eminent is. We've gone a step further in our policy. Not only does it have to be reasonable and necessary, it also has to be an immediate threat. In other words, it's not a threat that is likely to come. It has to be a threat that you're responding to immediately to save your life or somebody else's life. And now what AV 392 does is it also looks at these surrounding circumstances around that event and looks at it, could you, I've done something else to prevent it, which is where our de-escalation training comes in. So if there's a threat, you or somebody else that is likely caused great bodily injury or death, then you have the right to use lethal force. You're muted, Mr. Mayor. If the law is set in AV 392, which is, you know, how are they held accountable to ensure the justice is enforced? If an officer violates the law, first of all, let's start with the investigation. The investigation is actually done by the district attorney's office with a lead investigator from our department. So take it out of the department. We have the district attorney's office take the lead on that. So there's some once removed level of objectivity. Once that is done, the investigation is done. It goes to the district attorney. He determines whether or not there was a violation of the law. If there was a violation of law, then he determines or she bits, in our case, it's a E, whether or not to issue the case and to prosecute the person. The only other option, two options they could do is a grand jury, a criminal grand jury, or else go to a coroner's inquest, which is not done very often. The mechanism really isn't there, but they have not had that circumstance in our county least recently that I know of. And, but it can, and it does happen around the nation. I have a question from one of the attendees. They're interested in understanding and whether or not you know, Chief, about how many people have been coming out to the protest and Santa Cruz these past couple of days. So the first protest that Joy so wonderfully organized was probably around a thousand people were estimated. We just don't go every person and count them. We can only do an estimation based on distance and space and compaction and all that kind of thing. But there's about a thousand people there in my estimation as well. Some of our folks think Saturday was as high as 5,000 people. And I don't know what it was today, but I can tell you this. I'm sitting to dream in a protest and ran over here to get on this call. And all I know is that there were streams of people on the West quick drive that were, it was thick and it probably lasted a half hour looking at my staff here. So there had to be thousands of people. We'll get an estimate a little bit later, but there's a great level of interest in our community, which is an active community anyway. And seeing and speaking out against injustice when it comes to race and police and police abuse. Great, thanks. I got a question on here to Joy. If you're still on the line, I was gonna see if I could ask you a question real quick. Yes, I'm here. So one of the members of the public asked, where can I find information on becoming a part of the group Black Girl Magic? Well, she can DM me on Instagram, at assemble with Joy. And I can give her that information. Actually kind of be unmuted. You'll kind of hear this, try to get as many people on our lines as possible. So me and Patton, I feel of changing the way we believe is actually being open about our biases and how we perceive each other. Is it wrong to acknowledge that there's a silent veil of brotherhood that keeps officers safe even when they break the code of ethics and moral? Question correctly, is there a blue code of silence? I think we have to acknowledge that. That there is some level of a blue code of silence. But if I can just give a couple of other, most of the sustained allegations that I have that come in that we approve when a citizen complains or there's an investigation that we're doing internal investigation, most of the sustained serious allegations come from other cops. It doesn't come from the community. And so they're willing, when they see something that's egregious, at least here in Santa Cruz, I can't speak for everywhere to come forward and speak. But generally speaking in the United States, yes, there's a blue code of silence. I think it's frequent in professions. It doesn't excuse what the police do it. So I know doctors, I've talked to a friend who's a surgeon that covers for other surgeons and teachers. And because you want to believe the best of the people you work with, you don't want to think of them poorly. But that doesn't negate or excuse or equivocate our responsibility in policing especially because we have so much power to make sure that we do this correctly. And so that is something we talk about with our people. It is something that we have to train about and also counsel about. But so yes, thank you for that question. You know, I actually have one other really good question that came through that I think other people have asked. And so I'm going to ask this one in a minute because of the phone lines. But what's your view on creating a more independent oversight for Santa Cruz PD? And I know that other folks have asked about, you know, police review boards and different things like that. So maybe if I'm, we're not mistaken. I think at one point in time there might have been a police review board in Santa Cruz but correct me if I'm wrong. So yeah, if you can speak to that. Yeah, I think there was a police review board at one time. And I think by most estimations, it didn't work very well for a lot of reasons and was well before my time. So maybe somebody who was here at the time could speak about that. I'm not opposed to civilian oversight. The question is what's the best model to use and what's going to be most effective in controlling the behavior of the police officers that they're investigating. If in fact, they're sustained allegations. And is it subpoena power? Is it outside the independent review like we currently have right now? Who's a former US attorney, Civil Rights Division as who we're currently using as our independent reviewer, Mike Giannaco. So there's a variety of ways to do it. I just had a conversation with a couple of my colleagues here in the county to have this discussion about how do we do this in a thoughtful way? One of the suggestions or at least broad thoughts is to have this discussion with each other about coming up with a system that makes sense and is consistent throughout the county. Now, that's as rough as it is right now but we'll be determined to have a cup of coffee next week over this and really talk about how do we bring change in that way. And so it's very beginning stages and of course there's a political process. We'd have to go through the city council manager's office to actually change what we currently have. And so again, this is very shallow level but I think that in policing, we're at a point where we recognize that there needs to be something much stronger than what we currently have. Paul, can you tell folks a little bit about the current independent reviewer and how they function with the police department? Yeah, so how it works is we have three levels of complaints. One is an inquiry, somebody has a question about our policy. I saw an officer do this, is this correct or is it not correct? Sergeant can handle that in the field. When they have that, they type up a little memo, go to some internal affairs and we can track those. So if we're getting this consistent complaint on the same person over and over, then we know that we need to do some training or there's an issue there that we have to deal with. The second level is a category two complaint that is a violation of policy or discurrency, fairly low level of fend, if you will. The person's direct supervisor is responsible for investigating that. They write an internal affairs document and we're bringing in Pete Rodney who's a lawyer who does a lot of these investigations for other local jurisdictions to train all of our folks as soon as the COVID crisis is lifted and how to do those supervisors investigations and how to determine and make sure that the person's rights are protected but at the same time do a complete thorough investigation holding us to the highest standard. And then the most serious offenses, prejudice, use of force or criminal activity is done by an internal affairs section. If Scott Garner is responsible for that, he reports directly to Bernie Escalante, the deputy chief and he does those investigations and keeps the deputy chief apprised all along the way of the investigation as it's going. Once that's all done, it comes to me for review and then we forward it over to Mike Giannaco as organization who is the former US Attorney Civil Rights Division to review the information, to evaluate it, to give us critiques on what we might do better and whether or not he agrees or disagrees with the investigation. We also use him as a sounding board throughout the process to make sure that we are headed the right direction so that it's not weaning it on our own. So that's the process that we currently use. It's certainly not perfect, but we felt it's a pretty good process and I look at the academic literature on this from Sam Walker University of Nebraska at Lincoln and some other folks who think that that's probably one of the better ways to do it, but I'm open if there's other places that are more effective. If I could just add really briefly as far as the independent police auditor and the structure that we have in our city. One of the things of course is that it is independent and that means independent of the police department. And so the police auditor reports to the city manager and the city council. And so the auditor reviews obviously the complaints and then if there are any issues or concerns raises them to the city manager's attention. I supervise police department police chief and also to the public safety committee of the city council and there's a report that gets reviewed and the council gets an opportunity to review the complaints and provide feedback in response to that. So, and then of course that the public also has access to the public safety committee. There's a public interaction component that goes with that as well. So that's the overall structure of how that works. That's my team for that update and clarification. You're welcome. At this point in time, I feel there's a lot of members of the community who want to speak to the chief and myself. And so again, if you'd like to speak a star nine on your phone when you are unmuted and allowed to speak, you'll have two minutes. And if you go over two minutes, we'll kindly ask you to please wrap things up and then if it goes on any longer, we're often gonna have to mute you so we can ensure that the people who want to speak have an opportunity to speak. And so with that, we'll start with that first call. I don't know if it's working yet or not. Oh, it is. Okay, great. First of all, and this may cut into my minutes, but I think I need to do an introduction of myself and also explain why I'm here. My name is Daria Rowe. I think plenty of people know me here. I've been a chef in the community for many years. I also do quite a bit of farming and things like that. More relevant to this specific conversation, Chief Mills, it's nice to see you here. I grew up in Humboldt County, so I'm familiar with your record as well as some of the issues from the past county. On top of that, I was also present for the action that happened in Oakland. So with all that said, I would like to say that I appreciate you and Mayor Cummings for having this conversation. And I would just like to talk about a few topics, which are that Black people are still disproportionately arrested in Santa Cruz despite having a ridiculously low population. I also think that we have an incredibly high number of misdemeanor arrests in this county that are too high. I'd like you to speak briefly to Santa Cruz's participation in the actions of brutality towards UCSC grad students during their strike actions. I'd also like to talk about the fact that riots and protests are happening right now regardless of COVID. So waiting for training to happen post COVID seems a bit late, especially while we're in a crisis across our country. I have some qualms about this conversation happening during an action in Santa Cruz. So there are people that had to choose between participating in this discussion and being on the streets. And I'd also like to know your opinion on the Santa Cruz action being peaceful, not because of who showed up, but because of who didn't. The department did not send officers in riot gear for this. And Santa Cruz is full of white people, similar to the women's march, which didn't not much in actual policy changes and seem mostly just for falling down to this frustration. Eureka had some problems with an old guard that is very aggressive, that likes fear of civilians. There were some police shootings that did not really get resolved. And I guess I would just like you to speak about that a little bit. And also on your screen. Thank you. We're gonna have to stop you because. First is riots. Thank you. Chief, I'm wondering if there's any pieces of that that I might want to speak to? Yeah, I'll try to impact a couple of them real quickly. I was in those 131 questions still there that we have to somehow get through. Let me first talk about the UCSC protests. We did help out university police. Our primary role was just traffic, controlling the traffic in the area and facilitating, again, protests. Mutual aid requests from the UCSC, they frequently come to help us in the city as well. All the uniforms saw were mostly California Highway Patrol and other university systems people from all over the state, they bring them in. They brought in a lot of people for that, but we know they sent like two or three officers, I think as high as six one time on overtime that the state pays for, due to controlled traffic. Without the officer involved shooting information that she was speaking of and humbled, I don't know which ones per se that she was speaking of. The ones that I had won while I was there and that was resolved. And so, I don't know really how to answer that per se, but I do hear very clearly about making sure that if we're going to go to Oakland for the purpose of, or any other city for the purpose of a riot that it needs to be a riot. And that's why I sent a ranking officer with them to make sure that we're doing that, not just policing people who are protesting. The, you know, when this meeting is being held and just know that when we tried organizing this back last Friday, so that they wanted to give the public enough time so that they knew that it was happening. I found out about the protest that was taking place today, yesterday morning, we put a lot of effort in trying to get the message out to the community so that we can connect the community and, you know, really have an opportunity for people to address their elected officials and the police chief. And I think it's really important that, you know, one, in addition to people, well, I should just say that in addition to people protesting and asking for action, that governments and their police chiefs are taking action and that's what tonight is. I don't think that we should wait until all protests are over. I think that we need to acknowledge what happened and start taking action as quickly as possible. And so I had a conversation with the organizing of that protest. They agreed that, you know, that we should both move forward and which is why we gave them the voice and we want all of your voices to be heard and there's multiple ways for voices to be heard. Processing in the streets is one of them and showing up here tonight and speaking to us is another. And just so folks are aware, this video will be, is being recorded and it will also be available to get distributed on the internet or however you feel, however you think that. And again, if you'd like to reach out to us, you can email me and call me, myself and the chief, Jay Cummings at citysandcrease.com and happy to hear what you have to say and we will take it into consideration. Mia Patton, we've asked you to unmute. So your name is Mia Patton. Please unmute your phone at this time. We'll give you a couple more. There we go. Have to move on to the next person. Police chief and congratulations to your wise actions that prevented things from getting out of hand. So where do we go from here? I'm wondering about hiring policies because you seem like you have some good ideas on training. I know in the past that we had points given for veterans, preferential points. I'm wondering if people that were trained to deal with confrontation with violence is the pool that you wanna be favoring to have as police officers. I'm also wondering, is there any kind of testing for PTSD which could lead to people with short fuses? If there's any credit given to people for training such as in psychology, sociology, in other words, nonviolent problems, solving credits and university degrees. Also, you mentioned some of the use of force issues that you're working on. I'm glad to see that. And also psychological profiling. There's a small number of people as we have unfortunately seen in some of these videos from the demonstrations that apparently become policemen so they can bully and push people around for whatever psychological aberrations they unfortunately have. So I'm talking about screening people to get hired before they get hired and making sure they are appropriate people to be police officers rather than trying to correct the problems they cause after the fact. Thank you. Well, Fred, well, those are all a lot of very good points and my system is here taking notes and we'll take them back. In fact, my deputy chief who helps me do all the hiring sitting here also and I can see on his face that we have some work to do. So we do screen people and we do a great deal of psychological testing. It's actually a pretty brutal test that you fill out the hundreds and hundreds of questions and it's MMPI as well as some other things that then they used to dump an interview with the police psychologist who comes back and tells us whether or not the person would have the tendencies to be a person who's going to be abusive. And so we are doing that. I don't know how effective it is because you see some examples around the nation of people who are pretty brutal. And I think the riots and the attention that is caused by that, you can see people overreacting in some ways. So that has to be to be better. I'd be happy to talk to our human resources division to make sure that if we can offer hiring points for things like people with advanced de-escalation skills or advanced communication skills or training and something that could help us de-escalate and diffuse the incidents that we have, I think that's a marvelous idea. And so we will absolutely check into that and see if that's something that we can be as part of the hiring process. When we go through our questions, we ask the, through the interview, we ask these very kinds of questions to people. Have you been in a very stressful or violent situation before? And tell us what happened and how did you work through it? And what we're looking for is for them to tell us that they were able to successfully de-escalate. That's one side of it. The other side of it is it takes a lot of cops to go through the system, a lot of applicants to go through the system to hire just a handful of people. We screen about 1,100 people a year through testing processes and we hire about 20. So it's a pretty difficult job to keep a police agency fully staffed and with retirements and people moving on and going to other agencies and so forth. And now we're in the midst of a budget crisis on top of it. But those are great ideas. Thank you so much. Great after this next speaker. Is that could manage these conflicts better without police in them? Finally, I wanted to ask are you, what are you doing to address violence started by the police at these protests? I bet you're that an officer and throwing something at a Santa Cruz officer, but these protests- Well, let me address these in reverse because that's how my mind works. First of all, the situation in Oakland was violent hours before we got there. We don't go when we're expecting a violence at these things. We go when it's already beyond the capability of that local police agency. And so there are already fires, we're already looting. There are already massive amounts of people were injured from a handful of protesters who are of riders who are using a peaceful protest to cause anarchy. And that's not acceptable and we can't permit that in a free society. So that's already taken place. As far as what are we doing, I just announced one tonight, even though it's a baby step of preventing our officers from using the carotid strain or a toco. And it's gonna take those kinds of changes to make sure that we're not doing the things that are going to cause people to die. And there's a lot more that needs to be done. Again, these are just the first steps. And I am having conversations with my colleagues around the nation. I was phoned yesterday with the chief of police in major cities. I've been on the phone with the police executive research forum I've been on and we've been highlighted what our department has been doing. So we are doing everything we can to influence the profession. That's why I'm speaking out so loudly and so clearly nationwide so that people understand exactly where I am. And it comes with the cost. I've had lots of people private message me and use epithets, but I've also had a lot of people private message me and tell me that they're grateful that somebody is speaking up. And I'm amazed that a lot of my colleagues from San Diego were black. Almost every single one of them called me directly and said thank you. But again, if we end at shallow symbolism we've completely failed. We need systemic change. And I am doing that by speaking out amongst my colleagues by creating the right policies internally by educating my officers. And it's beginning to work. Today at the protest, the folks that are out there, I had 18 officers, 18 asked to be part of the protest. That would never have happened in most cities, including this city because they're beginning to understand that we're not a part from the community. We are part of the community. And that's where the change has to come. The biggest thing if I'll close with us that we absolutely have to do. And we are committed to doing internally as neighborhood policing. And here's why. When you work with people, shoulder to shoulder, when you're solving common problems with one another and you find success, how do you hate that person? Part of the biggest issue we have is the separation of all of our ethnicities, of all of our communities of color, of all of our LGBT versus heterosexual. There's so much separation and the only way you can bridge that is to actually working together. And that's why we're committed to continuing this by working with the community to solve these problems, to find actionable things that we can do. And I think Vice President Biden talked about this just the day before yesterday, that there really used to be real community policing. When President Clinton announced the crime bill, in 1993 I flew out to New York and I was the, I represented uniform law enforcement in speaking at when he announced the crime bill. Now the problem with the bill as it was is they gave 100,000 cops and most of those police agencies didn't do one bit of community policing. They put them into rapid response and put people in jail and the jail swelled and now we have the problem we have today of over-incarceration. So we have to do community policing right if we're going to do it. And that means working with the community and you know what, sometimes you get feedback from the community that's not very comfortable. Well, suck it up guys and gals. That's part of dealing with people who actually have an opinion about stuff. So thank you for your question. And you know, one of the things I'll just add to make sure that we highlight in this is that some folks might know there's a list that's been floating around the internet and it's five demands on what people can do to police better. I just want to point out that number three of that was refocus police resources on training, de-escalation and community building. And you know, I think if you've been on the line this whole time or if you're just joining one of the things that's been pointed out is that de-escalation training is something that Santa Cruz is already doing and that we're committed to doing. So a lot of the recommendations that we're seeing online are some of the things that we're already implementing and that's why we're also having this forum so that we can hear more from the community on what else we can do. With that, it's 7.13. We're going to take a short break and we'll come back. Mia, are you on the line? The next thing I would like to ask the chief is if he would be willing to expand the department policy to include a duty to intervene in examples of excessive use of force. I noticed that the policy laid out an encouragement in terms of bias-based actions but not in terms of excessive use of force and I think that that could really improve our police department. In addition, I saw that there was an updated carotid restraint policy which is great and I was wondering where the policy for de-escalation was also, if he could point to that or point that out that would be great. I see that it is encouraged but not dissuaded in terms of mental illness but how does that apply to community members in general whereas that line delineated specifically? And lastly, I have questions about the social media policy, specifically the Facebook page. I believe that the chief mentioned he had a goal of lessening implicit bias but I do believe that some of the of seemingly individuals under arrest that are seemingly charged but not prosecuted can lead to increasing social stereotypes in our community. There is, simply by photographing someone, you transmit their cultural group, their identity and this, when primed with a crime alert also will lead to more stigma in our community and increasing implicit bias. So I was wondering if that could be addressed as well? I think I have, so I'm wondering. I think you have most of what you asked for. So again, let me start with the reverse. Our social media is handled by our public information officer who does a phenomenal job keeping the community informed and we have a lot of people asking us for information every single day. And but I appreciate you bringing up the fact that we need to be careful, very careful about increasing stigma and bias on what we post and I will speak with my PIO, Joyce Blotsky to make sure that we're doing this in a thoughtful way. But yet also still being transparent as an organization and letting people know what's going on. It's always a difficult balancing act to make sure that the community is adequately informed or doing in a way that is not stigmatizing or unduly prejudicing either cases or people. As far as our crowd restraint, it was updated today and because we made that decision today and that's already online. So it's been removed saying there's no longer authorized in our department. Deescalation has trained that we have done. I don't know if we have a policy in our actual policy manual on it, but we do have a standing operating order that designates that they shall deescalate in the training near that. And on top of that, we also reward people for deescalating events. And so there's a kind of a Maslowian hierarchy here where we try to encourage people to do that. And so far it has worked well. And look, I need to be honest, it may not always work, but that's the expectation for our officers is that they do everything within their power to deescalate these as much as possible. And I'm missing one of the questions. Duty to intercede or intervene. And there's a very clear policy on that. It's in the 300 section, I believe, which is the use of force section that they absolutely have the responsibility to intervene in excessive use of force. I'll look at the language and see if we can clean that up a little bit. We get it from Lexapol to service that gives us our policies, but I'll make sure that it's everything that we need it to be. And beyond that, our conversation with our officers on a regular and ongoing basis is if you see it, you own it. If you see something take place and you don't intervene and you don't intercede or intervene in that action, it's as though you were doing it yourself. That's pretty clear to all of our folks. And I think that they get that. But thank you for your questions. The public, given how much time we have left, if we can keep our questions to about a minute and try to focus on maybe what's the most important question you'd like to ask at this moment in time. And if you'd like to follow up with this, you can always email your questions, but wanting to hopefully get to as many people as possible and a lot of people have their hands up. So we'll move on to the next person. Mike, you'll have a minute. And so if you have a question for the chief or any comments you'd like to make, we'll unmute you now. So Mike, you should be able to unmute. To talk to you. I've been listening to a lot of this and there's a couple of things I've seen completely absent in this and that is complimenting the millions of peace officers who out there doing a great job every day. Seems like a parade all about a few bad ones and there's always gonna be bad ones. I was just curious after seeing what I've been seeing in certain big cities, I'm just wondering if this anarchy is helping a cause or making it worse. That's one thing. How are we helping to make things better for their cause? And I'm curious about, does a media outlet cover the death of like a white man that's in custody and he's died at the hands of the police? I don't ever see that. So just kind of curious why we're kind of getting differential treatment here. And those are just some of the things. I've got quite a few things which upset me but I'd be curious about that. I'd like to see your PIOs at all agencies start to stand up for the officers and start setting the record straight because we're hearing a lot of stuff that will occur. So anyway, just listen to that and please. I don't know if you want to follow up on that at all. Well, I can follow up on the last part. I really can't. I don't have an opinion on whether it's helping or hurting a cause and somebody else can answer that. But I can tell you this that the media does report and we do get sued when somebody dies in the custody of the jail or the police when the person is not the person of color. And I don't think that the lawyers that are out there who sued to get care less of the person's color is and neither does the media. So it does happen regularly where people are held accountable for that or tough questions are asked and that's how it should be because taking a life or the death of a human in our custody is something we take seriously. And so we want to make sure that that's done. And just let me add, there are about 750,000 police officers in the nation. Of the 750,000, the city of 750,000 people, would you expect there to be some level of crime? Would the answer is yes. And so among 750,000 cops, there's gonna be more than just one or two bad apples in the country. There are several. And it's our job as police leaders to ferret them out and to get rid of them. Now there's some, it can be difficult. There's labor issues, there's union issues, there's police officer bill rights, there's all kinds of rights afford to them which we absolutely believe in and that they need. But if you want the chiefs of police to clean this up, they've gotta be given the ability to do it. And that's one of the things that nationally we're gonna have to take a good hard look at. But by and large, the vast majority of police officers out there who I would lay my life down for any day are honorable, kind, generous, thoughtful, careful people who are the top of the heap. And if you follow our social media, both Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, we try to show regularly, almost every day, the great work that our officers and men and women are doing. And they do a phenomenal job. And so to answer Mike's question, yeah, if you follow us at all, you'd think you'd know that. It's me. Okay, good. I love you. I thought you would pass me over completely. All right. About the use of a deadly force instead of disabling force. And on, couldn't a lot of time police shoot a hand or an arm or a knee? And of course that would be terrible. The person from having to be killed, I'll mute myself. And thank you. Thank you for your good effort in all this. Thank you. Yeah, so Jacqueline, that's a fair question that we get actually pretty frequently. And I maybe have two comments for you. And there's other people that are even more expert at the support than I am. If you're going to use the level of force to shoot somebody, it better be so egregious that you have to stop that, missing three times, trying to hit a leg or a hand or an arm. Those rounds are going down range someplace. And who's gonna get hit by those? If my officers are going to use that level of force, they must not that threat immediately has to be so grave that they have no other option. Other than that, then we're torturing people by maiming them. And that doesn't make any sense. Now, what we were teaching our folks to do is to rather than using their firearms at all, is to deescalate this through using shields, through using 40 millimeter extended impact rounds, through using tasers, through using talk. That's a much better option than maiming people. And we do not permit that. You're on the line. I think this is true. So Chief Mills, this is a PD volunteer, George Staggi. George, I just wanted to make, I just wanted to make a quick comment. You know, Chief knows how much I love him. And I love the police department and my PD volunteers. And I just can't wait to get back in there. But you know, something may or coming, you are just an awesome dude and you're doing a great job for our community. And I just think you're awesome. And I appreciate everything you're doing. And that's all I wanted to say. And I love my community. I've been here since 1972. And I just think the world of the Santa Cruz and thank you for all you're doing. I love you guys. That's all. Thank you, George. We appreciate it very much. We love you too, George. There was an individual named Scott. You're on the line. Scott Graham, I have a few suggestions here. De-militarize the police. What is the police department doing about racial profiling? What about harassing the poorest members of our society endlessly? Reinstituting a police review board. A use of force. Who has the ability to fire an officer? Is it only the chiefs? Can the city manager fire somebody? Can the city council fire somebody? More non-lethal options. And give us back the parking for the post office on Water Street. Over and out. Thanks, Scott. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, you can. Good evening. So I am wondering, knowing that Santa Cruz has been putting their police officers in Oakland and Alameda County with knowledge that Oakland police department used tear gas and rubber bullets 20 minutes before curfew after a youth led protest. I'm wondering if you're not going to pull out your police forces in Oakland. What are you doing to actively prevent police brutality in these spaces? I don't know if that was done or not. If you're telling me that was done, then I'm assuming that that to be the case. But like I explained earlier on this broadcast, one of the things I'm doing is sending a high ranking member of the department with our officers to make sure that if there's something untoward or that we're being used inappropriately, that we pull our officers back immediately. And that we've sent them twice so far. And that's it. And we'll continue to evaluate it based on need. And we'll go from there. You're on the line. I'd first like to note that the district attorney works hand in glove with the police on an ongoing basis. And as the mayor said, you can't really be an adversary of someone you sit beside every day. How will you ensure that there is a sufficient level of separation and independence between you to ensure that the DA will be objective in serving the needs of the community while investigating any offer accused of improper use of legal force or any other wrongdoing for that matter? I also would like to commend you chief mills for being willing to command your officers to no longer choke people. But frankly, that sounds like damning with faint praise. You need to reform all use of legal force, not just certain methods. It must be the absolute last resort. And this is especially crucial for people who are suffering a mental health crisis like Sean Arles whose life was taken by an SCPD officer four years ago because he was holding a rake. And for that matter, you need to end the militarization of the SCPD overall, including the Bearcat. The impression that you are an appropriate paramilitary organization that's prepared to crush anyone and everyone at any time only serves to alienate the SCPD from our community and destroy the trust that they have in you. Thanks, Tom. Yes, can you hear me? One complaint of Minneapolis residents is that just 8% of their police force live inside the city. People who patrol places where they don't live for pay have historically been called mercenaries. Cities without residency requirements are shown to have more violent police outcome. And I wasn't able to find any data on SCPD residency just that we don't have a requirement. So I'm wondering how many of your officers can live within the city of Santa Cruz? If you don't know, are you willing to make that information public? And Mayor Cunnings, would you be willing to support a residency requirement for a certain percentage of the police department? I also wanna say cost of living is on the top of people's minds. I've seen your starting salaries and I make do with less than your newest officers. So that's not really a reason to not require residency. Thanks, guys. Thank you. I guess I'll start by speaking to that because so when growing up in Chicago, if you are a city employee in the city of Chicago, you have to live inside the city limits. And when I first moved, and if Martin Van All-Stelman line, maybe he can speak to this as well, but when I was considering running for council and I kind of first got on council, one of the first questions I asked was, is there any requirement for, is there any ability of cities to require their employees to live within city limits? And my understanding is that at the level of the state of California, that that's not possible. So Martin, I don't know if you could speak to that at all. Yes, there are legal constraints to that at the state level. I've already, we do encourage obviously and would prefer for our employees to live in the city. Overall, I can tell you that overall city statistics, we have quite a few relatively speaking compared to many other areas. I don't have the statistics for the police department, but we do have officers that live in the city or in the county. Quite a few employees live in the county as well. And so relative to many of the departments, we have quite a few, we can still get the statistics and I don't know if the chief minister says for his department, but we don't, we can't legally require it to do that. I came forward to discuss about building a housing that might be able to, you know, host some of our police officers just outside the city limits. And so we were taking a look at that. We pulled some data. And if I might be wrong, but if I recall correctly, it was about 60% of our department was within 10 minutes of the building. And I could be wrong on that. That seems to be what the number was. You mentioned that there's statistically higher incidents of officers using force when they don't live in the city. I have never seen a piece of research like that. If you have a piece of research that says that, please email it to me. And I'd like, love to take a look at and see what we can do. And it is difficult for the officers to live in the city with families and the cost of living and housing that they choose to live in. So it can be difficult. And but many of our officers do live here. They were raised here. They went to high school here. They worked at the seaside company or other places in town. And so we do have a lot of people that are from Santa Cruz. Just to add, I can tell you that having worked over the hill on coming to Santa Cruz, that was a big change for me, even when I moved into the city. There were, and to still are quite a few officers to live in and around my neighborhood. Whereas when I worked over the hill, most employees of cities lived in other cities. So that is something that I think we do have a little bit more of that with Santa Cruz. All right, we'll keep moving down the line. Shaka, you are on the line and you can unmute yourself now. Yes, can you hear me? Yes, I'm leaving. Yeah, thank you for having me. I have a question slash comment. I'm African-American and I was pulled over on my bicycle. This happened a couple months ago. And I have no record and I'm an Iraq veteran. I wanna know what I can do about cops that profile. If I lodge a formal complaint, what will be done on your part to remove this officer if needed be? That's a category one complaint as we talked about earlier. That will be a time for internal affairs section. It will talk with you, interview you and then they will talk to the officer, interview the officer and then they'll pull the body warm camera footage and examine that and then make a determination based on those three things unless there's more evidence that we could collect to make a determination. If in fact the person was profiling you, that's unacceptable and the appropriate discipline would be needed to the officer. And then we evaluate that on what's the best way to either improve this officer or get rid of this officer. Now, you have to remember our investment in an officer is a couple hundred dollars and dollars by the time they are on their own. And so we wanna make sure that we're doing up the weekend to train people properly to not profile and treat people like you and Iraq war veteran with disrespect or suspicion that's inappropriate. Jasmine, you are on the line. Actually, Jasmine husband Reggie, Frank about something. The communities of color access like Black Lives Matter, Black Visions Collective and others are loudly and clearly saying that we need fewer police, we need them left and we need the money that they have to be invested in their communities which have been divested due to historical structural racism. Police have giant budgets right now. Santa Cruz has a $30 million a year police budget and just a small amount of that could go a very long way. Healthy and low-income communities, homeless communities and communities of color more generally. I guess I just wanted to put that out there. Reform is reforms. In terms of reforms, reforms happen to provide. Minneapolis itself tried many reforms. We've seen body cameras and community review boards. And so what's that? Your last four digits are 1835. Hey, graduate student at UC Santa Cruz. One of the things I'm seeing circulated a lot right now in the Santa Cruz media are stories about when our police chief reported a firefighter for wearing a Black Lives Matter pin while he himself was wearing a Blue Lives Matter bracelet. I don't know if that's he's so cool. And if it is, then how he reconciliates that message with the solidarity showed by kneeling with protesters. That was an event that took place about four years ago. And on our uniforms, you can see that we don't have pins and badges and things like that. That could, that would bring controversy to the uniform. If someone wants to wear a Black Lives Matter pin or any other pin, then they cannot do so on their uniform. Because we have uniform standards unless they ask for permission first. The firefighter wearing that did not ask for permission from his fire chief. And his fire chief and I were sitting next to each other in council chambers at the time. And the fire chief talks about that and ultimately asked them to remove it. And that's what took place. I approved my officers came to me and asked for a variety of things to wear on their uniforms. Some of which I felt were inappropriate, whether it be religious or second amendment. The list could go on and on what people want to wear on their uniforms. Because they have an opinion about things. And if I open that door and permit it, then it becomes problematic. I did approve our officers to wear a wristband on their arm, not on their uniform, on their arm that said blue lives matter. And the reason for that is five officers that just been slain in Dallas and the community raised money to send three of our officers to the funeral in Dallas. And they got to go. The ones that didn't get to go were able to wear that wristband for a while. If someone comes to me and says chief, I'd really like to wear a black lives matter or anything else on their wrist. They're more than welcome to. In fact, I would encourage it. I was just standing with a crowd of people chanting black lives matter because I truly believe that in all of its historical sense also. But as far as putting stuff on uniforms, if I open that door, that becomes Pandora's box. Even no matter how much I agree with the person who wants to post or wants to host something on their uniform. I've had all kinds of requests come to me to wear different things on their uniforms. And we generally say no, but it's something I would consider if in fact it would benefit a community and we do it in uniform as a department and not just a one-off person deciding that they're gonna do something without informing the boss. And by the way, that firefighter appealed that decision by the fire chief and it was upheld by the Civil Service Commission. And chief, I just also like to point out that I know that this month being the celebration of Pride Month that the Santa Cruz Police Department actually came up with their own badge with the rainbow flag in the background standing in solidarity with the LGBTQ community. And so I just wanted to make sure that the public was aware of that as well. One other thing I might add Justin on that is we had a local artist doing Black Lives Matter in Santa Cruz art show. And other than the Center for Nonviolence, the Santa Cruz Police Department was the first one to host that art show in our building as a message to our personnel. And lots of people came in and were able to take a look at her beautiful stories of African-American people and the struggles they face, including with the police in our own building. And it was a powerful message. And so I strongly believe that Black Lives do matter. And that was just an incident that took place with a pin on a uniform that just didn't belong there. All right, we're gonna open the lines back up. We only have about 10 more minutes. So we're gonna hope to get through a lot of these calls but encourage folks to send in their questions if we can't get to you. We've gotten a lot of questions tonight and I know that some questions have been asked multiple times and we've been able to address those. So also try to find this video online. It will be posted on the city's Facebook page and we're also gonna try to get it up on the city's website for those people who don't use Facebook. We'll move to the next caller. There you go. Yeah, I'm for holding this forum. A specific question that kind of looks at training and biases that might be happening in the police force and this is obviously for Santa Cruz but I guess it's kind of a two-part question. I have recently learned about training program and authority that is used by numerous police departments throughout the country. And I'm curious if the Santa Cruz police use this training program. It's called The Bulletproof Mindset by Lieutenant Colonel, what's his name? Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman. Grossman. Yeah, and everything I've learned about it is appalling. His pseudoscience of keelology really seems to underlie the phenomenon we're seeing of cops being excessively violent and I'm wondering if Santa Cruz uses his trainings and if they do, I'm gonna strongly encourage that we need to scrub that entirely from Santa Cruz's training. And then if we're not, what are you doing to encourage other PDs to not use his training? So I'm familiar with Dave Grossman and he's very popular in police circles overall and but we do not use his training in Santa Cruz. We have not used, since I've been here I don't know of any training we've used that deals with his books and so forth. But all I can say about that other than I try to exert my influence as a police chief with my colleagues around the country as often as possible. That's why I write a blog. It's not only targeted for our community but it's also for policing in general. It's cheapmills.com. I would encourage people to sign up and to get alerts to kind of let you know my thinking and what we're trying to do as a police agent. And I'm always welcome to take feedback from people to shoot me an email directly. We're gonna go to our next caller. He's been unmuted, the next caller. So you wanna unmute your phone. This is Hari Krishna speaking your phone a little bit closer. How are you doing that, is it better? That's a little bit better. Okay, yeah. So I have a lot of respect for the police workers in Santa Cruz and I understand what the chief was saying about restoring border against riots versus managing protests. But the thing is a lot of us have keen reports and videos of excessive police brutality even against peaceful protesting. And I think that's eroded a lot of trust in the community. I think many of us understand that not all cops act like this. But enough do that make us lose our trust in the policing system even here in Santa Cruz. So how do you effectively plan to restore that trust because it's gonna take more than just promises of reform to do that? Yeah, when I start out my discussion I talked about being broken and I think that intellectually, emotionally that this has really taken the wind out of sales of a lot of police officers as well as police agencies. And I think that's the first spot to start. You know, there really need to be a lot of humility of policing, of me, to start learning and listening to people. And it's, you're right. It is gonna take time to rebuild trust, to rebuild the confidence of the public. And if we don't do this in a thoughtful, systematic and powerful and expeditious way, then we look to our ability to be the defenders of justice for our communities. We fully police with the community's consent. We can only police when the community believes in us. And I get that that's been eroded. But again, the policies, the laws, the planning, the training, that all has to take place and has to be in a visible way for people to actually see and touch and understand. And then last, we need to work with people on an intimate and personal level. And that's what we're doing. They've heard policing here in Santa Cruz. It's just not a platitude of community policing and throw a program out there of some kind and get reached 10 people a year. We're actually trying to solve problems with our community members. And that's where people build that trust. Many people are listening on this on the show right now that have worked with us to continue to work with us. We've got almost 30 volunteers, 40 people who give of their own time to solve community problems. And that's a powerful way to begin. All the people who are shut in at their own home during COVID-19 and unable to get out, taking them food occasionally, talking to people on the phone, checking in on them, looking for vehicles that have been stolen in part. They're doing an amazing job. And that was just one example of many that we're doing to help bring this city closer together and work with people. All right, next caller, you can unmute yourself at this time. Hey, how you doing? Can you hear me? Yep, how you doing? Hey, thanks for the opportunity. So I like your idea about being able to wear a bracelet that says Black Lives Matter on it. I think that it seems like a great idea. It would be great if you could leave a charge on that and start wearing that and lead by example. So first statement, a question I have is that obviously we sent police officers to Oakland. Police violence is a systemic issue. And when we sent our officers there, we are entirely complicit in that systematic problem no matter how nice we are as a community here, we are involved actively. You said earlier that you didn't know if you were conducting any violence there as our officers. But early in the conversation, you mentioned that you were getting reports back. I'm a little confused about that. I want to know if we can get any more information on how many officers have been sent to Oakland, how many officers are currently in Oakland and what you are doing to personally ensure that we are not conducting police brutality there like so many other officers are. Thanks, Nick, for those comments. I'm gonna see possibly if the police chief's office can maybe get back because we've tested that subject a lot and I want to make sure that we, in the last couple of minutes, we give a couple of people a little bit more time to speak. So the next speaker you're on the line or you can unmute yourself. There you go. Yes, hi, good evening. My name is Karima Spencer and I'm a member of the community. And I'm wondering, body cams have been mentioned several times and I'm wondering if police officers are required to have their body cam on when they make a stop or any interaction. And if not, if that could be our policy and then also if the officers turn their camera off, is there a penalty for that? Those are very good questions. And yes, it's by policy that any enforcement contact of any kind, the officer has to have their body camera on or they're doing an investigation. They need to have it on with certain limitations. For instance, sexual assaults, we probably don't want to record those and make the person feel that they can't tell us intimate details and have it recorded. So there are some limitations, but overall they absolutely have to have them on. When I have it on, they receive discipline. And on top of that, I have our sergeants randomly pull traffic stops to make sure that officers are wearing their body cameras and that they have them on. And that the recording on all those stops that they're not shutting them off prematurely and they're not missing valuable pieces of information. So we do an inspection process that I implemented to make sure that they're wearing the body cameras active when they're contacting people from the community. Not only the officers, but the Rangers and the CSOs as well. I want to be respectful of our time. We've asked for, we've had this going on from six PM to eight PM this evening. And I want to thank everybody who was able to come out and join us on this call this evening. Chief, is there anything? And I would like to also say that we got a lot of questions for some folks. I would encourage you to watch parts of this webinar again, because many of the questions that have come up have come up multiple times and have been answered. And also for those of you who were unable to speak on the line tonight, please email us your questions and we will try to get back to you as soon as possible. And Chief, I was just going to see closing out if there's anything, any final remarks you had to the community? I do want the community to understand how seriously I'm taking this. This is a huge movement that is taking place in our country. And if we don't capture this opportunity to really make a difference, a systemic difference in how we police and how we relate to one another. We get a lot of calls, for instance, of a black man walking down the street. And at Netcom, not to send us those calls. That man has as much right to walk down the street as anybody else. Why on earth are we going to send white police officers to go talk to that guy? Not too long ago, I was walking downtown with one of my deputy chiefs, and a radio call came out of two black men selling CDs on Pacific Avenue with some writing on their shirts. I was close by and I didn't want an officer to handle it, so I walked over there and talked to the guys, wonderful guys, just selling CDs and their shirts said, white slavery now. Do we want our police officers to actually contact these folks? Absolutely not. This is the kind of change that has to come, and it has to come from the community as well, the people calling in those complaints. And it has to come from the policy of saying, we're not going to answer those calls for service because that's unjust. I can go through a lot of these and tell you on all races and all kinds of things. But the bottom line is, in order for there to be real change, it has to be systemic, not just in policing, although that's critically important. It has to be in the court systems. You ever heard a judge speak out about how they're making changes in the court system? It has to be in probation and parole. It has to be in the correction system. It has to be in the education system. It has to be in the healthcare system. And if we don't fix all those things, we will continue to have problems of violence. But I can only control what I'm responsible for. And I'm telling you with my last breath, I'm going to make some changes in the Santa Cruz Department. It's a big shift that doesn't turn easily. But at the same time, it's time to throw the rest to the side so we can get it turning. Thank you for the opportunity, Mayor. Yeah, Nolan, thank you for being on this call with us. I think that many folks, and I know that there are many folks from other communities who were joining us tonight or reached out because they want to see this video and see how this conversation went. And so for people who are on this call from this community or from other communities, I would just encourage you all to, whether you're encouraging your friends who live in other cities or whether you live in another city, get your elected officials to meet with your police chiefs, get them to commit to making changes. And try and work with them, right? Everybody's been out protesting and everybody has been making their voices heard. And it's now when we need to take action. The chief and I spoke with them the other day and we're going to be working together on writing a letter to the League of California Cities, the National League of Cities and the U.S. Conference of Mayors to let other mayors and elected officials know and these organizations know that here at Santa Cruz we're taking this seriously. We're doing something about it and we need to get everybody on board now because we've seen this happen time and time again. We see people go out to the streets. We really don't hear of any changes happening and given the situation that we're in and our ability to work together myself with our chiefs, the community, we want to do something and we're going to do something. And so we ask you to please let us know how we can help, please let us know how we can do things better and we'll be continuing to bring policy forward that helps our police and our community live and work together in a way that's peaceful. So with that, thank you all for joining us tonight. Please feel free to email us and you'll be able to find this video on the Cities Facebook page. We're going to try to get it posted to the city's website and then if you'll bear with me for a minute, you can also email citynews at cityofsantacruz.com if you'd like a copy of the video. And with that, thank you all. Take care, stay safe and have a good evening. Thank you.