 City of Residence. Thank you. Good evening. Welcome to your Fort Worth City Council's public comment meeting. We're so glad that you're with us. I'll call the meeting to order. Our invocation today will be by Bishop Kevin Dickerson from the Day Spring Family Church. Please stand for the invocation and remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance. Let us bow our heads. Graces and loving God. We're grateful for life, health and strength. Right now we're living in turbulent and uncertain times in our world. And we ask for your protection for the people of Ukraine. And we ask for a quick and peaceful end to this conflict. We pray for our government leaders nationally across our state of Texas and here in Fort Worth. We ask for your guidance and direction as they navigate through the health and economic and employment challenges they face. We pray for the leadership of the City of Fort Worth, Mayor Parker, and the members of the City Council. We ask that you guide the proceedings of tonight's City Council meeting. Let every voice be heard, every viewpoint be given fair consideration, and allow the decisions that are made to be beneficial to all the citizens of Fort Worth. May you remind them of the privilege and honor they have in serving the people of Fort Worth. May you remind them that no matter where we live, everyone is our neighbor, and that we have been appointed as leaders to respect and protect them all. May you remind them that the greatness of this city will be measured by how we serve the least, the left out, and those who have no voice to speak for them. Grant them the wisdom and the courage not to do what's convenient, but to do what's right, what's good, and what's just for all of Fort Worth. We pray for tonight's City Council meeting to be a starving example of the excellence of the City of Fort Worth. Thank you for blessing us with a beautiful, progressive, and diverse city. We ask it all in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. Bishop, thank you for joining us this evening. The First Lady, we appreciate you coming. Our first speaker this evening is Bob Willoughby. I'm sorry, no, we're going to minutes. I'm skipping ahead. Sorry, Jeanette. That's okay. First item is consideration of the minutes from the February 15, 2022 work session, the February 15, 2022 public comment, and the February 22, 2022 council meeting. Thank you. Motion from... Thank you. Okay, perfect. Any other discussion? Please vote. Just got to figure out Williams, I think. Thank you. Motion carries. That's the last item there. Thank you very much. Our first speaker is Bob Willoughby. Go ahead and play the video. Bob Willoughby was called a racist at the last council meeting by City Council member, Elizabeth Beck. Lots of speakers after that one. Who wants to go first? Elizabeth? I reminded him that his not so thinly veiled racism is not welcome in these chambers, nor is it welcome in this city. So you can keep it at home. You sway no vote on this council. We did not come to try and persuade the mayor and council. The mayor and council are the problem. You pick up not a single ounce of public opinion when you come in here with that mess. Who does council member Beck think she is, saying nasty lies and speaking for the public? To keep your racism outside of this chamber. Council member Beck has been asked to provide the proof of the nasty things she said about Mr. Willoughby. Or she should provide a written an apologies to Mr. Willoughby. We have invited council member Beck to come on our local voter education program to make her case. No reply. I've still got lights on. I think council member Nettles was next. Sure. Thank you chamber. And I will say this and it may be me or it may be the council here. But if we take the right away from you to speak, you would not have the opportunity to speak like you just spoke. So I don't know if I missed that in English or in speech, but every week we give you an opportunity to speak. And I thank the mayor and the council for allowing him to speak again today, even if it's awful topic. That's my comments. Pastor Chris Nettles is a council member. And he does not know that the public presentation has been removed from the city council meetings agenda. He voted for it. I am not sure he knows what he is voting on. We no longer have the freedom to speak on any topic. We can only speak on the ones the mayor and council give us. And we are oversensored by Mayor Maddie Parker. And here is a notification that the local voter education program wants to thank the police oversight monitor Kim Neil because she will be on the local voter education at blog talk radio.com. Monitor Kim Neil will take questions from the public. Be sure to tune in on March 13th, 8pm for more FW district 5.com or 8174 467056. Dr. Amola Olabody. Dr. Olabody? Yes, it's Dr. Olabody. Please go ahead. You have three minutes. Yes, I'm speaking on the behalf of Officer Charles Rogers. I was actually disturbed when I received the phone call that he had actually been demoted from the gang unit there that he had served on with the Fort Worth Police Department for the last 16 years. It was another incident that kind of circled in it around him and I was actually in Canada and I thought he was so important and the situation was so important that I flew back to the state, you know, just at that time to be a part of it. But I want to say that I'm just disturbing that what I've understood with the Fort Worth Police Department that we have achieved, that it's not playing fair in when it comes to the politics and policing the Fort Worth Police Department. Also Charles Rogers, from what I know of him and what I understand about him from meeting this man, he's more than dedicated to the community. He's put a lot of time in the community with the children. It's adults that believe in him. It's children that believe in him and the entire community that believes in him and for police of police chief, you know, who is upstanding a officer that is wrong, you know, wrong in doing his duties, you know, to punish a good officer, you know, for just doing his job. I find it highly disturbing and I find it highly disturbing that another group of police officers that has been reprimanded, they get promoted. But we have a great officer that is being demoted due to his affiliation of the individual that he has no dealings with. I think it's highly egregious. I think it's unfair. And I think that if it's not resolved in the Fort Worth Police Department, I've tried to call Maddie Parker, your office. I spoke with Alex. I spoke with Gina Bivens on an unrelated issue. And I think it's terrible. I think it gives the state of Texas a bad life to have a bad apple that's making the entire city look terrible. And I do work in Washington DC. And I think that it's time that state officials see the things that have gone on right there in Fort Worth, Texas. I think it's a shame that y'all have a cheat that is playing politics with a very good officer. And that's all I have to say. Thank you for your call. Our next speaker is another caller, Osana Hermosillo. Osana? Osana? Yes, ma'am. Please go ahead. You have three minutes. Great. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and City Council. My name is Osana Hermosillo. I live at 9201 Shoveler Trail in District 5. I'll be brief as I'm literally standing in a utility closet at my kid's elementary school. But I just wanted to break your comment on your earlier council meeting about a couple points that I do believe are important to clarify, particularly since I did serve on the Registricting Task Force. While staff presented today that map version 3 had considerable support from Hispanic residents at last night's public hearing, if it incorporated a horseshoe that connected parts of Southside with Polly on the east side, this is only true in so much as it was the only possible option that considered creation of a second Hispanic opportunity district in the city at all. However, I do feel compelled to say that the Task Force almost unanimously recommended Map X with revisions that outlined a clear framework from which council could have chosen to discuss and deliberate on publicly in that, unfortunately, never happened. What's further concerning about this is that it did include a strong option for a strong Southside Hispanic opportunity district, the one that if more Hispanic residents had had the opportunity to see you discuss, would have seen a better and stronger option for groups in Hispanic communities of interest together without diluting Black voting strength across the city. Then the same thing happened with Councilman Floor's recent efforts to submit version 4 for further consideration, which, again, I feel compelled to clarify, is really the only map that seems to be some derivative of the Map X that the Task Force recommended to. But that also was rarely given the respective Council consideration, much less any opportunity provided for public input. In both cases, the new Hispanic opportunity district in the South would have had the appearance of a cleaner and more compact district rather than an awkward horseshoe of sorts that Councilman Firestone expressed concerns about as well. I just think for the sake of transparency through this process, the Hispanic community and residents across the city need to be aware that a much better option did and still does exist other than the horseshoe or whatever horseshoe scenario is being considered version 3. That said, I trust that I look forward to the continued process here, which I understand is evolving, and look forward to the best version of a second surrounding Hispanic opportunity district in the South and, again, final opportunity for public input. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is George Charles. My name is George Ronald Charles. My residence address is number 74 290 101 Travis Avenue, Fort Worth. I'm reading from the notes where I stood here and said on the 12th of January, the same of 16 2016, the same words. I imagine it's the issue of an increase in compensation will cause some to pose the rhetorical question. What does it City Council does to tear worth more money? I suggest in any so inclined to remove the rhetorical and find out firsthand. Go to every pre-council meeting. Go to every council meeting. If a member stays after adjournment to discuss something that comes up during the meeting, note how much time that took, be it ever ribbon cutting, ever groundbreaking that any member attends. But wait, there's more. Be prepared to find out about a universe of meetings and hearings involving causes and organizations that few people know exist. And if a member attends, be there. Usually these will be followed by schmoozathons where people sometimes with conflicting viewpoints want to talk to a member. The last time I participated in one of these, there were either three or four other members waiting to pounce. All of us had our say. A valid evaluation would only begin with the noting of the physical presence of a member and its duration, because quite often this is only the beginning of effort. And all of this effort will take place while the ghost of decisions past rattles chains to remind that no matter what is done, or if nothing is done, some people, perhaps a lot of them, are going to be not at all happy. I think that what I describe is worth every cent of the proposed increase. Did I feel that way now? I'm not going to tell you. I'm going to show you. Games were played with the first amendment by cutting 12 minutes a month and a half by ignoring the difference between six o'clock and seven o'clock and the rhythms of human life on weekdays that even pets are aware of. By answering a change to the topic of you getting more money with a welcoming smile, instead of the instant refusal that answers any other change of topic, you made your decision and we have to live with it into election. Then it will be your turn to live with it. Just think how much this could increase the time to have, quote, a life outside this building, unquote. Our next speaker is Thomas Torland-Cosse. Mayor Parker, council members. It's been quite a while since I was here in this chamber, almost 24 hours, I think. Since I watched the work session this afternoon on redistricting, I call it now re-re-re-districting. I wanted to change the subject because part of my point, even though I see a few smirks and frowns, is that there is a lot of other serious, important, necessary business that the city needs the council members to get to. While you continue to flounder and flip-flop over redistricting and ignoring the voice of the people, let me bring up the Brady Bunch, because that's what I signed up to talk about tonight. The Brady Bunch is not that 1960s, 1970s blended family. The Brady Bunch is a list of people that exist in every major jurisdiction across the country. It's actually nicknamed after the 1963 landmark case, Brady versus the state of Maryland. No one goes to law school without studying that case. The point is that when it comes to police oversight, please understand. I believe in competent, professional, ethical law enforcement. They are necessary. One of my cousins is a homicide detective. In fact, I dated a Fort Worth police officer of the year before. The reality is that right now, circulating in the public, is a 37-page list of at least 160 current officers on the Fort Worth police department who have committed crimes or offenses that include perjury or falsifying police reports. That's a dirty little secret that the district attorney doesn't want people to know, because they keep their version of a Brady list. The reliability of witnesses and convictions relies on the public not knowing the number of offenses committed. You know, we hear about the high-profile situations and the horrible circumstances, like in the Tatiana Jefferson case. But the reality is, is that the most common thing on the Brady list for the 170 or so officers, that's 10% of the current force, most of which have been promoted since they've been put onto the Brady list, is for falsification or dishonesty. What's toughest about this is there's also assault, sexual assault, violations of U.S. federal code, having sex and police vehicles which are not their property, even though the media constantly says so, it's the public's property. The number of offenses and the number of issues that need to be cleaned up need to be done by an independent police oversight community. Thank you. Our next speaker is Natasha Nelson. Hello. All right, so I'm here today to do something that I've never done before. And if anyone knows my history, I'm totally against the police. The black community does not embrace them. We don't trust them. We don't have a solid partnership with them. But for the first time, I ran into an officer, I call him Chuck. To me, he's a black man that's employed by the Fort Worth Police Department. We went to the same high school and he invited me last summer to work in middle schools with him with the kids. I'm still connected with every kid I met to this day. And he also started another program this year that I was preparing a curricular from so I could join. And I had another artist and just several people in the black community trying to intercept and keep our kids from being raised by rappers on YouTube and all of the violence because the solution is not putting more cameras in black communities is not putting more officers is directly dealing with the people that are going to potentially be a criminal if led in the wrong direction. So I'm here to support him and I strongly advise and I recommend he be placed back in those schools immediately because what else do we have these black children have nothing these children of color have absolutely no mentors. And we had a man go around and collect different people that all these kids look up to and brought them to the city of Fort Worth, the city of neglect. We're not Dallas where we get all the attention all the Dallas cowboys and superstars with Fort Worth Texas. We have nothing here for our black children. And we brought all of that there and it's been dismantled and it shows instability within a police department to me. It shows a lack of focus, a lack of concern and a lack of growth. I've sat at the table plenty of times where we say we're going to do this we're going to do that and when I see a program this strong and effective, be dismantled just like that for whatever reasons that I don't know. But I think that he needs to be placed back and I think every member here we truly care about the future of Fort Worth and ending gang violence and ending everything. This is where we're starting it in middle school. We have a chance to stop them. Some of them are already lost or lost cause, but we've developed something to reach out and stop children from going in the wrong direction and we need that back immediately ASAP. I was a part of that several friends were the part was a part of that Charleston White helped facilitate the people that we needed because he has that pool regardless of anyone's opinion. People have opinions about me. I've said a lot of things that people don't agree with but at the end of the day we're helping our youth and our children that proceeds and supersedes any opinions any type of personal vendettas or anything. So we need to get officer Rogers back in the schools immediately. I will protest. I will bring people back in these streets. This is important. Gang violence is the number one thing we need to stop in Fort Worth. It is out of control. I'm tired of seeing articles with 13 year olds dying, 14 year olds dying. I'm tired of seeing kids wanting to be rappers. I want them to be something totally different. We're teaching them business how to be entrepreneurs and we need that back. That's very important to me. You guys haven't seen me because I've been working with kids. I've been facilitating black people starting a staff from the agency, giving them jobs, everything. That's what I've been doing. So we need officer Chuck Rogers back. I'm willing to meet with anyone on this board from the Fort Worth police department but we need them back. Thank you. I'm sorry to cut you off. Thank you guys. Laurie Dugdale is our next speaker. Laurie Dugdale, no. Jesse Taylor. I saw Jesse come in. Jesse, Jesse Taylor and I'm here just repeating this what she just said. I agree with everything she said. Right now, we got over 22 young men on Kimbo Road for murder or attempted murder. Charleston White is able to go in any facility in Texas, juvenile facility. Here he is in his own hometown and it's proven, got proven records that his curriculum works. I was there with him. I'm verifying that it actually works. It's kind of sad that today I went inside the school. Same school that we went into. When I got there, it was an eighth grader and a sixth grader in the principal and the eighth grader had done, shook the little boy down yesterday and stole all his money. These are the type of problems they're having in the school. They're having drug problems in the school, people that sell drugs in the school, fighting in the school, you know. So sometimes we might have to go outside the box. So the little guy you see behind me, he's outside the box and that's what Fort Worth needs right now. It's not only Fort Worth, it's almost every major city in the country right now is going through this here. All our little boys want to do, like she says, is be rappers. The little girls, they want a boy there. They got a body and if you don't know what that means, they want a little boy that will shot somebody. That's what we're dealing with right now on the streets. So we're not dealing with the same kids that we were dealing with 30, 40, 20 years ago. That's not what we're dealing with right now. We have to think outside the box right now. Charles, Chuck Rogers, me and Chuck met each other. We were neighbors. He was in the school in the forward police department. I went back to going to school in a mechanic school. That's how we met. We were neighbors and he told me one day and I'll never forget. He told me why he decided to be a police officer. He said, man, because I know, I know what it's like growing up without a daddy. The same kids last week that we spoke to in middle in Meadowbrook. It was around about maybe 15 of them right there that we spoke with. I'm gonna ask all of them, how many you got your boys? How many young boys got your fathers at home? It was mostly all black, one Hispanic guy. None of them raised a hand. None of them raised a hand. Not even the Hispanic guy. I was like, come on, Hispanic guy, come on, raise a hand. I know you got a daddy at home. None of them. We took almost 20 black men inside Meadowbrook Middle School to help this school out. They need Charleston life and I back everything he said. I wasn't here when he was here, but I hear him all the time and I back everything he says and I'm going to be a part of that program. It wasn't all about Charleston in between whatever Charleston and other officer guy going, that's personal. But don't take Charleston from those kids because those kids need Charleston and those kids need Officer Chuck Rogers also. I appreciate your time. Thank you, Mr. Taylor. Our next speaker is Rebell Kenyon. I get some kind of nervous so you have to forgive me, but when I heard about what happened to Charles Rogers, I had to come up and give my opinion that my voice be heard because I've been knowing Charles Rogers for over 30-some years. When you say that or I say that a good police officer, he's born. He's not made. I mean, you can have, y'all might disagree with me, but you can have the special training, but it doesn't necessarily make you a good police officer because you have the necessary training and for those that's familiar with the Bible or that read the Bible, the Bible is all about righteous and unrighteous, a positive and a negative, a good and bad, so you can't have one without the other. And Charles Rogers is that positive, he is that righteousness. And he's just an excellent guy. We speak on a daily basis and prior to February the 14th, we were talking and he was just excited about getting involved and being with the kids and actually being a part of something. And he told me, he said, man, my mom, she instilled this in me and she would be so proud of me if she knew what it was that I was doing. So Charles is just an excellent guy and it's disappointing to see what's going on. And I think that the forward police department is an accrucial point right now because we have a choice or y'all have a choice to pave the way for the rest of the nation and to correct the right or the wrong that's being done, to put our egos aside and do the right thing for the kids. I take it that we're all God-fearing people and we say that, but when it's time to do God's will, we turn our back on God for man. And when we're sick and we're on our backs, then we want to come pray to God and ask God to heal us and come help us. And it doesn't work like that. He turns his back on us because we didn't do his will. So we are in a position, y'all are in a position right now to do the right thing from what I'm hearing. I don't have access to files, but I know Chuck, he's an upstanding guy, always doing the right thing. I ride for him. I ride with Charleston White. Those guys, you know, regardless of what he do or what he say, I'm sorry, regardless of what he say, I'm looking at what he's doing and he's speaking the truth. Charleston is against the bad guys and I'm for that. Hey, thank you for hearing me. Thank you for coming. Our next speaker is Jim DeLong. Good evening. I'm Jim DeLong, a resident of Fort Worth since 1993 and proud to be so. Tonight I want to talk about human nature. But before I do, I remember when I went to a task force on race and culture monthly meeting and they had the county sheriff come and talk and he made a startling statistic. 80% of people in our county jail are from fatherless homes. And, you know, there's something, you can never take the place of a father, but we can sure help young men and women have a father figure in their life. Back to human nature. The media reveals a lot about human nature. Bad news sells. Good news doesn't. And that says a lot about basic human nature. Each one of us, within each one of us, is the propensity to do good and the propensity to do not so good. And it's a choice. Every day I make tens or hundreds of choices of whether to do good or not. And it's easy to complain. It's easy to find fault, to demean and belittle. It takes more effort and character to build up and to encourage. Mayor, I remember years ago I had a meeting with Mayor Price and you were chief of staff. We were sitting in her office and I posed a question. I said, Mayor, you know the difference between an optimist and a pessimist. She said, yes, the glass half full, the glass half empty. And I said, Mayor, this is the kind of optimist I am. There might not even be a vapor of water in that glass and it's running over. That's a perspective. We have major challenges in our city. How we go about solving them. If we go about solving them tearing down systems instead of building them up, fomenting division and sectarianism, putting people down instead of calling them up. The point is this. We live in a day that magnifies our differences and doesn't celebrate and amplify those that we have in common. You, as our city council, can step up to the plate in a greater dimension and let's work on the positive. Let's work on how we can bring people together, not discuss what is separating us. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dalong. Our last speaker is Charleston White. This has been a pattern for years. I'm always the last speaker. I remember being given permission by the Fort Worth Police Department to sail marijuana in this city. I had a meeting with Deputy Chief Dean and he instructed us. He said, Charleston, I don't want any hard drugs down there. I want you to tell the old man that I don't want to hear anything but he can't stop it. So we sow weed forever. So I never applied for any federal grant money, right? So I never needed you guys to help me feed children. I went to the streets. We sowed drugs. We got the whores coming out of the tenor road, whatever we needed to do to keep you guys out of our business. So when I get a call from Officer Charles Rogers and say, hey, can you help me get some guys that will volunteer to come into the middle school? I'm already know you guys are going to play politics, right? Because I infiltrated your police department and stole a lot of information. And so you guys try to keep me out of things, but the community keeps doing. When you guys push me down, this is what the community does. They push me right back in front of your faces. Now I have a national audience. So let me tell you about Officer Rogers. I was in a strip club one night and Officer Rogers, I contacted the NAACP president. I contacted US Department of Homeland Security Special Agent Keith Thorns for the Human Trafficking Division. And I called Charles Rogers about one o'clock in the morning with music playing and strippers around me. And we rescued that lady the next day. Officer Tracy Carter involved himself in that and interfered just like he's interfering now. It wasn't until we put together a group of men, 19 other men, myself including 20, we went to a struggling black business in Arlington, Texas, because Fort Worth don't support what we do. We supported this business. She made thousands of dollars that day because we advertised it and promoted her business on social media. We put together a program, invited Officer Snyder, found out he's not a racist white cop. He's a Detroit boy, just works for a racist police department, so he gets a bad rap with the children. We're going to teach these children that this is a good man. Well, how do you know they're good? Do they feel bad when they do wrong? Do they feel bad when they do wrong? So here we go, the police department interferes and say, hey, he's on a video with Charleston with 19 other men in a community event doing gang intervention and prevention. You guys pay a lot of money for the VIP program that Kelly Alling Gray put together. We don't need you guys funding, but we got the manpower that the VIP program doesn't have, right? So I'm doing something that I've never done before. I'm standing against the police department. You guys have never seen me do that. Never. It's easy to hate now because you guys are interfering with children lives. It's easy to spread the narrative that we hate y'all after police because I see it's not about kids. It's about your politics. That's the last of our speakers this evening. Meeting adjourned.